[Note: I'm in Anchorage at the American Fisheries Society meetings all week. This afternoon I'll be attending the Human Dimensions of Fisheries session and judging student presentations. All work, no play.
I've been saving up my fish posts that were bumped by Katrina so that I could dump them this week. Below is a real good one |;-> (note the unibrow winking guy to the left. It indicates I'm joking about this being a good post).]
One piece of conventional wisdom that I remember from prospective reference theory is that people overestimate the impact of low probability events (e.g., read Freakonomics about child safety seats and then watch my spouse spend a couple of hours installing a pair) and underestimate the impact of relatively high probability events (especially if the risks are due to consumer choice, e.g., cigarette smoking).
One low probability event that people over-react to is the potential negative effects of seafood consumption. It is no problem for pregnant women to eat a can of tuna a week. It really is no problem, I think. The gov't uses a serious margin of safety (please send your counter examples w/out profanity please).
But, whenever the government tells the public that something is safe to eat they don't believe it (With sales ...):
As awareness has increased about the high levels of mercury in some kinds of canned tuna fish, tuna has taken on an image problem. Some consumers are shunning the product in favor of other kinds of fish or are avoiding fish altogether. Now 21 percent of consumers say they are "extremely concerned" about mercury in fish, up from 17 percent two years ago, according to the NPD Group research firm.
As a result, industry sales are sagging. Since March 2004, when the federal government issued a new advisory about seafood consumption and mercury, sales of canned tuna in the United States swung from modest growth to a steady decline. Sales are down 10 percent in the last year, causing a revenue loss of $150 million for the $1.5 billion industry, according to ACNielsen.
The tuna industry will begin their own information campaign, telling consumers that it is safe to eat their product. But, consumers will believe the industry even less than they'll believe the government.
George Parsons, Ash Morgan, myself and Tim looked into this problem in the context of Pfiesteria (half-plant, half-animal, flesh eating dinoflagelate). Pfiesteria did a number on menhaden in the 1990s, a little fish caught for its oil and for catfood that people don't eat. But whenever there was a big Pfiesteria-related fish kill the seafood industry would get kilt. From the paper's abstract, we find that:
- seafood consumers are nonresponsive to expert risk information designed to reassure consumers that seafood is safe in the presence of a fish kill
- a mandatory seafood inspection program completely eliminates avoidance costs incurred due to misinformation.
So, good luck to the tuna industry!
