Consumers have "nothing to fear" from new research showing farmed salmon contains more toxic chemicals than wild salmon, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has said.
Mr Alan Reilly, acting chief executive of the regulatory body, said "the health benefits of eating oily fish would outweigh any negative aspects about dioxin levels quoted in the study".
The US-based survey of 700 farmed and wild salmon, taken from markets in 16 cities in Europe and North America, published this week, found hugely varying levels of suspected cancer-causing chemicals in what is generally considered a healthy food because of its omega-3 fatty acids. These can lower the risk of heart disease.
Citing US Environmental Protection Agency standards, the researchers said consumers should eat no more than one-half to two meals of farmed salmon a month in certain areas, but they said it was safe to eat up to eight wild salmon meals in the same period.
While Mr Reilly said the FSAI had recorded "the same ball-park figures" for dioxins in a 2002 study in Ireland, "the levels of dioxins found were below the safety levels set by the World Health Organisation and the European Union. Those levels are based on a worst-case scenario of salmon intake every day of the year for 70 years."
He said it would "not be unexpected" for farmed salmon to have higher levels of dioxins because they were fed on fish-meal from higher up the food chain, generally mackerel and herring, compared to the plankton and small fish eaten by wild salmon.
New regulations were introduced last summer requiring vendors to label fish either wild or farmed, along with the country of origin. Mr Reilly said these regulations would be enforced by the FSAI along with sea fisheries officers from the Department of the Marine, and environmental health officers from the health boards.
Stressing the importance of enforcement in the area, Green Party MEP Ms Patricia McKenna said "the labelling on farmed fish can be quite misleading". Details were hidden "in small print at the bottom left-hand corner on the back of the packet". She said: "Consumers need to know at a glance that they are buying farmed salmon and that they must limit their consumption of the product."
The Labour Party's marine spokesman Mr Tommy Broughan called on the Minister for the Marine, Mr Ahern, to clarify the situation regarding safety guidelines in light of the survey findings.
Bord Iascaigh Mhara stressed that farmed Irish salmon was not surveyed for the report, noting such fish was fed mostly on low-dioxin fishmeals derived from pelagic stocks caught off the north-west coast of Ireland.
