I don't know, the link that Mike Connor posted suggested the problem is
quite real, and severe. I don;t think it is a ploy at all.

Tim Lysyk

The 'ploy' thing taken aside I still see a few diverging opinions. E.g. the FDA
says the levels are
"not dangerous" and "the figures may be misleading" where as the group doing
the investigation
claims "unlimited consumption is unwise" and "thresholds set too low".

The latter must be a misquote for this to make sense at all, i.e. it should
have been "too high".
And what does "unlimited consumption" mean ?

In gradschool we once did a calculation to see how much coffe you had to drink
to die from instant
coffein poisoning. I think it came down to about 20L (or ~6G) in 20min.
"unlimited consumption"
of almost anything we eat is bad for you.

Naturally the levels should be reduced if at all possible, and Im assuming that
the farmers will do what
they can at least to avoid the bad publicity. But Im not convinced that the
levels are so high that you should
panic.

I tried to find the article to look at the numbers, but need to sign up for the
Science mag online. All I could
find were two bad charts doing an overlaid comparision of PCB and Dioxin
content and the quality was
such that I find it inconclusive. And I have to admit that I was always a bit
sceptical of research published
in certain mags. Some of them, like Nature, seem to check the validity of
research better than others before
it gets published.

Another possible source for the contaminents could be in the packaging since
most of it seems to
be concentrated in the skin of the fish. E.g. its well know that you should not
pack/store food items in garbage bags since they give off similar chemicals. So
do the northern european fish show higher level
because they have been wrapped in plastics longer ? (Were they shipped to the
lab from overseas ?).

If they only compared locally caught wild salmon to the farmed onces then the
wild salmon might not even have been wrapped in plastic and thus have lower
levels for that particular reason.

There's a lot of variables in an investigation like this, and unless they have
taken steps to eliminate
other sources and done a controlled experiment the results could in worst case
be worthless and the
conclusions misleading.

The only way to make sure you can 'blame the fish' is to do the measurements
locally on fresh fish
as they are taken from the water. Then compare local fresh farmed vs local wild
fish to determine
wether or not the farmed fish have significantly elevated levels of pollutants.
If so then you have a 'case',
if not the problem lies elsewhere i.e. the handling. And naturally you will
have regional variations
as well.

Without reading the published article we dont know how they did the
investigation, and it may not
even be mentioned. And was the quality of the investigation chekked/verified by
other independent researchers before the results were announced ?