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 basis with CDC. Dr. Paul Blake from the Centers for Disease 

 Control and Prevention will describe sentinel surveillance in 

 his testimony today. 



Neither the CDC data nor the risk assessment take into account 

 long-term risk from chemical contaminants, so I would like to 

 address this aspect of seafood safety separately. There are 

 simply no available illness data that link commercially 

 supplied seafood with chronic health effects from chemicals. 

 Nonetheless, we know that, like other sources of food, fish can 

 absorb chemicals from the environment, so the question of risk 

 posed by chemicals is a valid one. FDA surveillance programs 

 include monitoring seafood for the presence of chemicals. We 

 have more than doubled our sampling program for chemicals in 

 the past few years. 



We seldom detect chemical contaminants at levels of concern in 

 commercial species. Most problems with chemical contaminants 

 tend to be localized around known sources of pollution where 

 commercial fishing is restricted. 



The NAS similarly concluded that, except in some highly 

 specific situations, mostly relating to fish originating 

 outside of commercial channels, there is no evidence of an 

 urgently critical situation as far as the general population is 

 concerned. The NAS also pointed out that there are 



