Fish oil sector finds diplomatic solution to Californian Prop 65 contamination case

When several fish oil suppliers were sued in a Californian court over contamination issues at the beginning of 2010 many feared the worst for the sector, but Ocean Nutrition Canada chairman Robert Orr explains why the soon-to-be-settled case has yielded many positives.

The suit named a number of mainly cod liver oil products for possessing PCB [polychlorinated biphenyl] levels in excess of California’s Proposition 65 regulation that requires products to bear warning labels, and gained a lot of publicity at the time.

“We saw this because of the negative publicity that came out in the media as a potential to the organizations and to the fish oil category,” Orr, one of the founding members of the Global Organization for EPA and DHA Omega-3s (GOED), said. GOED had, “struck a sub-committee that I am chairing to engage the plaintiffs in the case.”

Orr said meeting with the plaintiffs had demonstrated their genuine concern for public safety and brought the realization that many of their objectives were in alignment.

“Now we have reached a tentative settlement with these plaintiffs and put some new standards into place in California which will subsequently also become new standards for GOED.”