Brazil has ordered at least 5,600 metric tons of potentially contaminated shark meat to serve in schools and other public institutions since 2004, a Mongabay investigation has revealed.
Shark meat tends to have higher concentrations of toxic heavy metals, as top predators accumulate contaminants like mercury from lower down in the food chain.
The contaminants have been shown to cause brain damage, kidney damage and increased cancer risk, and can be especially harmful to young children. But of the nearly 6,000 public institutions across 10 Brazilian states for which shark meat was potentially purchased, 90% were schools. Shark meat was bought for more than 1,100 nurseries and preschools.
“You’re giving, every week, contaminated meat to children,” Nathalie Gil, director of Sea Shepherd Brazil, told Mongabay by phone. “It’s super absurd.”
A study of blue sharks, one of the most common species caught and served as cação, a generic name for shark meat in Brazil, found that 40% of the animals caught off Brazil’s coast were found to have mercury exceeding the safe limit of 1 milligram per kilogram of body weight, or 1 part per million. Mercury concentrations in some of the sharks reached 2.4 mg/kg (2.4 ppm).
In Duque de Caxias, a municipality of Greater Rio de Janeiro, nearly 200 public schools serve shark meat every other Monday. Solange Bergami, a local educator, said students routinely complain about the smell and taste of shark meat, and many refuse to eat it.
Sharks have cartilage skeletons, which makes them easier to prepare and reduces the choking risk posed by fish bones, especially for small children and youth with disabilities. But the shark’s blood and tissues are high in urea, which turns into pungent ammonia if the carcasses aren’t handled properly.
Bergami said she had asked the education department to replace cação with a different fish, but she said they told her it couldn’t be done. “The nutritionist claimed it was the fish with the least bones,” she said. “There was no new bidding process and the fish — the cação — kept being served.”
Some cities, including São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous, have canceled shark meat contracts or banned it from school meals, but hundreds of purchase contracts remain active throughout the nation.
“People are consuming it without knowing it may be harmful,” Bergami added. “This is not happening at a restaurant of your own choosing, where consumption is voluntary, but in a public space within an educational institution.”
Industry groups say concerns over contaminants in shark meat are overblown, arguing, for example, that the selenium in shark meat counters mercury toxicity.
“Shark sold in Brazil … does not present any type of contamination, meaning it poses no health risk to consumers,” the Brazilian Association of Fish Industries wrote in response to the investigation.
Read the full story by Philip Jacobson, Karla Mendes and Kuang Keng Kuek Ser here.
Banner image: Workers at the CEAGESP food warehouse in São Paulo sort shark meat for distribution. Image by Philip Jacobson/Mongabay.
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