Brazil, the world’s top importer of shark meat, is feeding much of it to preschoolers, hospital patients, military staff, public workers and more via government procurements, Mongabay has found. This influx of shark meat into public buildings is exposing infants and other vulnerable groups to high levels of heavy metals like mercury and arsenic, which accumulate in sharks and can harm human health. We identified 5,900 public institutions named as possible shark meat recipients in 1,012 government tenders. The species to be acquired was almost always unspecified, raising concerns that endangered sharks and rays may be entering government meal programs. This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, where Philip Jacobson was recently a fellow. Brazilian government agencies are bulk-buying shark meat and serving it in thousands of schools, hospitals, prisons and other institutions, raising serious environmental and public health concerns, a Mongabay investigation has found. Millions of children have likely been fed shark meat through Brazil’s National School Feeding Program, including infants and toddlers in more than 1,000 day cares and preschools, along with inmates at 92 São Paulo state prisons, the 43,000-strong military police force of Rio de Janeiro state and patients at dozens of hospitals, among others, documents show. Shark meat is high in heavy metal toxins like mercury and arsenic, which pose particular risks to young children and other vulnerable populations. But because shark meat is packaged and sold in Brazil under the generic name cação, rather than as tubarão, the Portuguese word…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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