At a press conference held at Sjávarútvegshúsið today, the results of a monitoring project that IFL is working on for the Ministry of Fisheries were presented. The results show that Icelandic seafood contains very few undesirable substances.
Einar K. Guðfinnsson, Minister of Fisheries, and Ásta Margrét Ásmundsdóttir, Project Manager at IFL, presented at the meeting a new IFL report on the results of monitoring of undesirable substances in marine products, which was conducted in 2004.
The project actually started in 2003 at the initiative of the ministry and will be continued in the coming years.
The report presented today is called Undesirable substances in seafood products– results from the monitoring activities in 2004 and contains results for the second year of the monitoring. As revealed by measurements in 2003, its results show that the edible part of fish caught in Icelandic waters contains very small amounts of dioxins, dioxin-like PCBs and the ten types of pesticides (insecticides and plant toxins) that were measured in the study.
So-called pointer PCBs also measure well below the maximum levels in force in our trading partners. The same can be said for mercury, which is measured in the worst case at a level that is 1/10 of the maximum agreed in the European Union.