Sweden will continue to utilise an exemption from EU rules on the dioxin content in fat fish from the Baltic Sea, the responsible minister announced.
Sweden – and Finland – has a dispensation from those rules, most notably concerning salmon and herring, that runs out after 2011.
The Ministry for Rural Affairs had asked two of its agencies, the Board of Fisheries and the National Food Administration, to commit recommendations on whether or not to ask for a prolongation.
Claiming that most small-scale fisheries along the east coast would “most probably” be wiped out if the dispensation were revoked, the Board of Fisheries recommended a prolongation, while the National Food Administration was against it, holding forth public health aspects.
“The government has today decided to accept the Commission’s offer of a continued exemption to market certain fat fish from the Baltic Sea”, Rural Affairs Minister Eskil Erlandsson said in a statement.
The government said it was possible to “give satisfactory protection to the public health” through extended information work “with directed dietary advice to risk groups”, while at the same time allowing a “viable small-scale fishery” along the east coast and in the major lakes. The statement added that the decision “saves almost a quarter of the fishing profession”.
Under the heading “The government wants to go on poisoning the population”, the Swedish Society for Nature Protection immediately released a statement sharply criticising the decision.
Pointing out that dioxin is one of the world’s most poisonous substances, the organisation’s chairman Mikael Karlsson commented that “again, (the government) places itself on the lap of a small interest group – in this case a few professional fishermen – and that on the expense of public health. More than one hundred times more women and children risk poisoning”.
In Sweden much of the public interest around the question has focused on the future of “surströmming”, fermented – some say “rotten” – and canned herring, which is a popular traditional course in the northern parts.