But there is a good chance Canadians have already eaten some of the types of fish most likely to be contaminated with cesium, based on the Japanese fisheries data.
Japan exported $76 million of food products to Canada in 2010, including $13 million of fish and crustaceans. No figures were available for 2011.
The Gazette analyzed the Japanese fisheries data for 22 seafood species that Japan has exported to Canada in recent years.
Some cesium was found in 16 of these 22 species in November, the last full month for which data was available.
Cesium was especially prevalent in certain of the species:
73 per cent of mackerel tested
91 per cent of the halibut
92 per cent of the sardines
93 per cent of the tuna and eel
94 per cent of the cod and anchovies
100 per cent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish
Some of the fish were caught in Japanese coastal waters. Other catches were made hundreds of kilometres away in the open ocean.
There, the fish can also be caught by fishers from dozens of other nations that ply the waters of the Pacific.
Yet, Japan is the only country that appears to be systematically testing fish for radiation and publicly reporting the results.
CFIA is no longer doing any testing of its own. It did some radiation tests on food imports from areas of Japan around the stricken nuclear plant in the weeks after the Fukushima accident.
Only one of the 169 tested products showed any radiation. CFIA stopped doing the tests last June, saying they weren’t needed.
“The quantities of radioactive material reaching Canada are very small and within normal ranges,” CFIA spokesperson Lisa Gauthier said in an emailed statement.
“They do not pose any health risk to Canadians, the food we eat or the plants and animals in Canada.”
NOTE: This is but a tiny excerpt from the lengthy article, well worth reading entire article
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