Farmed Tilapia - is it safe to eat?


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Tilapia

Tilapia is a farm-raised fish. You may be surprised to learn that they use Tiliapia to clean the water of farmed fish. Tilapia eat the poop and undigested droppings of other farmed fish. So they take in whatever chemicals or foods or antibiotics that the other fish ingested too. After they clean the water, they are sold for our dinner plates so it's a win-win for the fish farmer.

It is a safer choice in farm raised because it doesn't hurt the environment like so many other farm raised fish. Male fish grow bigger than female Tilapia so they are fed hormones at a critical stage in development so that they turn into males. I couldn't find very much more information, except for the links at the bottom of the page, so I asked the Environmental Defense Oceans Program, who have no warnings about this fish, and their response was:

My understanding is that the hormones are only used in tilapia for a finite period of time, and are flushed from their body long before they make it to market. In addition, our ranking of tilapia is based on the ecological impacts of their farming, along with contaminant levels found by FDA and the scientific literature. Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Timothy Fitzgerald

Environmental Defense

Oceans Program

CHEC advises that this fish should not be eaten more than once a week if no other fish is consumed that week.

Links:

Tilapia Sex Determination and Sex Reversal, Univ of Arizona
CHEC list of safe fish- which fish are safe to eat and not overfished?
Environmental Defense Seafood Selector - most comprehensive list of fish safe to eat based upon safe habitats and low levels of mercury, etc. with detailed information about each fish. Great site!
Wild versus Farm-raised fish and Which Fish are Safe To Eat, Delicious Organics

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