“No measures have been taken to protect consumers, in particular children“, Which is why eight French cities, including Paris, who together represent more than 3.5 million inhabitants, temporarily banned tuna from the menus of their school canteens in an attempt to “Stop the exposure of children to mercury”.
Bègles, Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Mouens-Sartoux, Paris and Rennes have thus announced that they will eliminate the canned tuna from the school canteens they are responsible for, as a sign of “protest“Against the inaction of the national and European authorities and the tuna industry, despite the warnings launched almost a year ago by the Bloom and Foodwatch NGOs.
In October 2024, in fact, the Bloom and Foodwatch NGOs had launched the alarm on the tuna mercury contamination after having made 148 tuna boxes from an independent laboratory test. The study showed that 100% of the tatted cans were contaminated by Mercury, classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the ten substances of greatest concern for public health.
Bloom’s investigation
The latest investigation, which we talked about here, reveals that all tuna boxes analyzed in Europe, regardless of the packaging, are contaminated by Mercury. The research involved 148 packs of canned tuna from five European countries: Germany, England, Spain, France and Italy. The tests emerged from the presence of Mercury in 100% of the packages analyzed.
The data are alarming: over half of the cans (57% of the sample) exceeded the mercury limit allowed for other fish species, set at 0.3 mg/kg. Among the most striking cases, a pack of the Petit Navire brand, purchased in a Carrefour City of Paris, showed a mercury content of 3.9 mg/kg – or 13 times higher than the limit applied to fish such as cod. These values reflect an accumulation of mercury in the tuna due to its position at the top of the food chain: each prey ingested contributes to increasing the concentration of heavy metals, making this fish one of the most contaminated among those commonly consumed in Europe.
The ban in France
The 8 municipal administrations now declare they have “decided not to serve tuna -based products in school menus“And they subordinate any revision of this decision to lower the maximum mercury limit in the tuna. Now set at 1 mg/kg by the European Commission, they ask that it is reduced to 0.3 mg/kg, the most rigorous threshold applied to other fish species.
For the common signatories “The question is serious, and it is moral duty of the state and elected officials protect citizens, starting with children“.
We will see.
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