Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 08/99) - The contamination of country food is a frightening, and tricky, business.

The issue came to a head recently as both Canadian aboriginal and federal delegates attended a United Nations conference in Africa where they sought to bring attention to the negative effects of globally-produced chemical contaminants on the Arctic food chain.

Carole Mills works with the problem daily, both in the contaminants division of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs and as a representative of the Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples Against POPs, or persistent organic pollutants.

"The contamination of animals is confusing and sometimes even alarming and even my own family members have sometimes stopped eating fish until I could talk to them and explain that the contaminants do concentrate in specific parts, so you don't have to stop eating the animals," she said.

Mills said the concentration of chemical pollutants in marine mammals increases as its position in the food chain gets higher. Consequently, micro-organisms carry little contamination, the fish that eat them carry slightly more and the build-up continues through the chain to include predatory fish, seals, walruses, whales and polar bears and, lastly, humans.

Mills said land-based animals like caribou are very clean. She said it is only the organs and fat of marine mammals that concerned individuals might want to avoid. She said concentrations are bound to be higher in muktuk, a dish made from seal, walrus or whale fat.

Ultimately, Mills stressed a calm, sensible approach, advice seconded by Eric Loring, environmental wildlife co-ordinator with the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada.

"We don't really know what the effects of the contamination are and that's the problem," Loring said Thursday, adding that while contaminants are tracked in animals and are passed from mother to child through the umbilical cord and breast milk, research is ongoing.

Both Mills and Loring stressed the importance of not scaring people away from country food, while they continue their research and lobbying efforts to turn off the global "chemical tap."

"I would say right now it's more of a health risk to not eat country food than to eat it," Loring said, "because it contains vitamins and nutrients that they would never find in store-bought food."

Both Mills, who is of Gwich'in descent, and Loring stressed the importance of country food to aboriginal peoples' sense of identity.

"It's important as a cultural activity -- so much so that at the ITC office every day for lunch we have raw seal, fish, caribou or berries," said Loring. "We have access to the same great supermarkets as anyone else in Ottawa, but this is our healthy choice."