The fire retardant in the seafood chain
A chemical additive helped stop fishmeal from catching fire on ships, but it carried a downstream carcinogenic risk to modern food systems.
In January 1966, a South African ship caught fire at sea and later spread to a port in Bristol, England, burning for five days. Shortly after, a Liberian steamship near Rotterdam ignited a storage area, sinking the vessel. These fires were attributed to fishmeal, a dark yellow powder made from fish, which can spontaneously combust if not treated. Fishmeal was linked to at least 90 ship and plant fires from the 1950s to the 1970s, causing significant concern among seafarers, insurers, and dock workers.
In response to this issue, Cargill, an American feed producer, introduced ethoxyquin in 1967. This chemical, originally used as a preservative for rubber tires and fruits, proved highly effective in preventing fishmeal from spontaneously combusting. By the 1970s, the number of reported fires had dropped significantly, from an average of 16 per year to just five.
By 1976, the U.S. Coast Guard mandated ethoxyquin treatment for fishmeal shipments, and the United Nations body overseeing maritime activity later recommended its use to prevent spontaneous combustion.
However, ethoxyquin, a carcinogen, raised health concerns. Studies found it caused severe damage and potentially carcinogenic effects in rats. By 2015, the European Food Safety Authority warned that an impurity within ethoxyquin, p-phenetidine, could cause mutations in genetic material. While there is no scientific consensus on the safety of consuming seafood raised on ethoxyquin-treated feed, some countries have banned or restricted its use.
In 2017, the European Commission suspended ethoxyquin's use in animal feed across the European Union, and it has since been banned in the U.K. and in members of the European Economic Area. Despite these restrictions, ethoxyquin remains permitted in animal feed in Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., where it is used in fishmeal and fish oil fed to farmed seafood.
As seafood consumption continues to rise globally, with most species fed fishmeal and fish oil, the potential contamination of our food supply due to chemicals like ethoxyquin has become a significant concern.
Written by urgent.news from Grist's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
