I don’t necessarily believe all of the science on Google, and I don’t really trust “authorities” who use sententious published sources.
The tin foil hat act should not be taken too far, but it is now an option for me.
When I was young, conspiracy theories swirled about the assassination of JFK, and I poo-poohed them. Then the government fessed up that JFK was, indeed, assassinated by Castro as retaliation for the Bay of Pigs and for the harboring of Cuban ricos in general. At that point, I lost all faith in the news and decided to just take conspiracy theories on a case-by-case basis.
So here we are with the tuna, and while I haven’t worked the numbers substantively, and I certainly don’t have any more access to the data than listening to NPR, the sheer amount of tuna on the shelves vis-a-vis the number of fish in the world’s oceans does not make sense. There are surely not enough tuna fish for all these sandwiches.
So what is going on with the tuna?
One thought is, the animal inside of those cans is not tuna but a different protein engineered to taste a certain way. Maybe it is chicken. Maybe another white fish. It is against the law to mislabel food, but the government might have decided that, in the interest of keeping the peace, and not scaring everyone with Marxism or something, we are going to have cans and cans of tasty fish flesh sitting there, and nobody needs to worry.
Fair enough. There are probably certain basic products that carry the weight of PEACE, whereas telling the truth about these canned items, while in the interest of science, would not be good in the interest of how people are. So we are keeping the tuna section stocked, and nobody need be the wiser.
Perhaps there are vast farms of tuna out on the ocean where the fish are raised to a few inches, run through modern cannery equipment, and used in a less-magnificent state than we like to think, which is a thousand-pound fish that feeds hundreds, not a little thing shredded one way for humans and another for pets.
Perhaps what is on the shelf is not animal product at all but jackfruit or algae or something that is very clever but not actually fish. Not in its configuration as the Chicken McNugget of fish.
In any case, I am looking at the warning label and wondering how much warning I should be warned about. But I still will be. Perhaps there is some tiny portion of that can that is fish, and that would, in fact, contain plenty of methylmercury given how much we drive our cars, buy stuff off Amazon, and tap away at our MacBook Airs. Which I know I won’t stop entirely — just try to take the bus more.
