A Brazilian lawmaker is calling for a parliamentary hearing after a Mongabay investigation found government agencies have sought to purchase thousands of metric tons of shark meat for public institutions, including schools, hospitals and prisons.

Nilto Tatto, leader of the environmental caucus in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, said he was “shocked” at the scale of the purchases revealed in our article published in late July. “We can’t accept it,” Tatto, a member of the Workers’ Party representing São Paulo state, said by phone.

The investigation — supported by the Pulitzer Center and republished by Brazilian outlets Folha de S.Paulo and ((o))eco — identified more than 1,000 shark meat tenders issued since 2004 by municipal and state agencies across 10 Brazilian states.

It named 5,900 public institutions as possible shark meat recipients based on a review of tender documents. Although in Brazil some tenders don’t result in actual purchases (which can be executed or not), the investigation showed that products were mainly procured for schools, but also military bases, homeless shelters, maternity wards, elderly care centers and other institutions.

The trade in shark meat, as opposed to shark fins, is generally murky, with scientists only just beginning to delve into it. In the wake of the investigation, conservationists and researchers told Mongabay they either hadn’t been aware of the extent of Brazil’s shark meat procurements or didn’t know they existed at all.

Catarina Abril, fisheries and climate officer at Portuguese NGO Sciaena, reacted to the story, saying the numbers presented in the article were “staggering.” Gilles Hosch, a fisheries expert who worked on a 2022 report about the shark trade for the NGO Oceana, said after the publication that he’d been “genuinely stunned” at the time to learn Brazil was a top shark meat consumer and that public procurements were not on his radar.

“The shark meat trade is larger and more damaging to the survival of these ancient ocean predators than anyone has previously realized,” Luke Warwick, director of shark and ray conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, wrote in an email after reading the investigation. “We are only now getting a true understanding of its scale and scope.”

Trade in sharks is an issue because the animals have declined by 71% in the open ocean over the past 50 years due to overfishing. Their meat can also contain high levels of heavy metals like mercury and arsenic that scientists say can harm human health when consumed in large enough quantities.

Industry groups defend shark meat, arguing that commercially fishing some species is sustainable and calling it a healthy source of cheap protein, rich in omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients. They say the low price makes shark meat especially suitable for a country like Brazil, with its tens of millions of impoverished people, and that eating it in moderation presents no problem.

However, many people unknowingly eat shark due to vague or misleading labeling. In Brazil, shark meat is typically sold under the generic name cação rather than as tubarão, the Portuguese word for shark, and surveys show that most Brazilians who eat cação don’t realize it’s shark. Similar labeling practices are known to occur inmanycountries.

A second article published as part of the investigation found that government agencies across Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, have issued tenders for at least 211 metric tons of angelshark, which are endangered. Some procurement officials told Mongabay they didn’t know the term used in these tenders — peixe anjo, which literally means “angel fish” — referred to a shark until we contacted them.

After being contacted by Mongabay, the state administration and two municipalities said they would remove angelsharks from meal programs.

Capture or sale of endangered species is forbidden in Brazil, but imported specimens can be traded legally under an exemption in Ordinance No. 445/2014 of the Ministry of the Environment. In April, Jair Schmitt, director of environmental protection at Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, asked the ministry to eliminate this “contradiction,” given that the angelsharks in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, which export to Brazil, are all part of the same population.

On Aug. 20, three weeks after the first story was published, the ministry told Mongabay in an emailed statement it would review the ordinance “with the possibility of including new related guidelines, including on the consumption of some species.”

In 2023, Tatto introduced a bill to ban federal purchases of shark meat, but it has stalled in the Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in the lower house of Congress, which would also need to approve Tatto’s parliamentary hearing in order for it to go ahead. The committee did not respond to requests for comment.

Tatto said he would send Mongabay’s investigation, which includes a database of shark meat tenders, to all federal agencies involved in food procurements, requesting they cease any shark meat purchases.

Besides the municipal and state procurements, Mongabay’s investigation included a list of federal tenders, compiled by Sea Shepherd, totaling around 230 metric tons of shark meat.

Solange Bergami, president of the school feeding council of Duque de Caxias, a city in Rio de Janeiro’s metropolitan area, said she would share the investigation with her counterparts in other parts of Brazil. While Bergami has spent years trying to get shark meat removed from school meals where she lives, she said “many people were surprised” to learn the procurements were so widespread across the country.

Sandra Helena Pedroso, adviser to the school feeding council of Rio de Janeiro state, referenced the investigation in a July 30 meeting of the National Forum of School Feeding Councils, known as FNCAE.

“I appeal here to the councilors — take note, look closely at the menu, what is being served, whether it is actually suitable, whether there are any restrictions,” Pedroso said at the meeting.

Brazil’s National Fund for Education Development, the FNDE, which oversees the National School Feeding Program, told Mongabay after we published our first story that it would look into concerns over heavy metals in shark meat.

The FNDE said in a statement that fish acquired by government agencies “must be of legal origin, undergo quality control and present up-to-date laboratory reports proving that it is within the limits allowed for mercury and other heavy metals, as established by the health authorities and national legislation.”

It added, “It is therefore the suppliers’ responsibility to present, at the time of delivery, a technical report issued by an official or accredited laboratory … attesting to the product’s compliance with these limits.”

A debate over arsenic

Industry responses to Mongabay’s investigation were mainly concerned with the issue of heavy metals.

In reaction to the investigation, Eduardo Lobo Naslavsky, president of the Brazilian Association of Fish Industries, known as Abipesca, called the story “alarmist” and said concerns over heavy metals were unfounded.

To support his claim, Naslavsky cited a 2024 report from Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, known as MAPA, that found that 33 samples of “wild-caught fish” all tested below legal limits for arsenic in seafood.

“None showed levels of inorganic arsenic above safety thresholds,” Naslavsky said in a written statement. “Data from the last five years show the same trend: 100% compliance.”

Abipesca’s remarks were echoed by Alexandra Moraes, ombudswoman at Folha, the Brazilian newspaper that republished a shorter version of our first article. She criticized Folha’s piece in an Aug. 2 column, saying it “blurs the lines between journalism and activism” and that it presented claims about shark meat consumption risks “without evidence.”

The MAPA report, available online, does not say if any of the 33 samples were shark. MAPA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Unless they disclose which were the 33 wild-caught fish in this MAPA study it is impossible to confirm the information they cited,” Patricia Charvet, biology professor and visiting researcher at the Federal University of Ceará and regional vice chair of the Shark Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, wrote Mongabay in an email after being asked to comment on the Abipesca claims. She said it was possible that “sardines and other low-trophic level species were analysed.”

Sharks or not, “33 samples are obviously ridiculous, not representative at all of the entire Brazilian coast,” said Rachel Hauser-Davis, a British environmental researcher based at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Fiocruz, a research institute affiliated with Brazil’s Ministry of Health. She commented on Abipesca’s allegations in response to a request from Mongabay.

As apex predators, sharks are susceptible to the bioaccumulation of heavy metals, according to a wide bodyof research. Hauser-Davis wrote in a 2024 paper that arsenic was “generally the most prevalent element detected” in previous studies on metal contamination in sharks.

Abipesca’s Naslavsky argued that studies often fail to distinguish between organic and inorganic arsenic.

“The World Health Organization (WHO) is unequivocal: organic arsenic, which is present in fish, does not pose a health risk,” Naslavsky wrote.

“Alarmism around fish arises from the way some lab reports are publicized. Many analyses measure only ‘total arsenic,’ summing both the harmless organic form and the potentially toxic inorganic form (when above legal thresholds).

“This is like weighing an entire basket of fruit to find out if there is one rotten apple inside. The result may seem alarming, but it does not reflect actual risk.”

An arsenic fact sheet published by the World Health Organization in 2022 calls inorganic arsenic “highly toxic” and organic arsenic “less harmful to health,” but does not describe the latter as “harmless.” It adds, “In seafood, arsenic is mainly found in its less toxic organic form.”

Inorganic arsenic percentages of total arsenic can “vary INSANELY” among sharks depending on factors like species, sex, life stage and the waters they swim in, Hauser-Davis told Mongabay in a text message.

“The literature indicates inorganic as varying from 1 to 10% in elasmobranchs, for example, but this may range up to much higher percentages of up to 30% in some cases,” she wrote, referring to the group of carnivorous fish that sharks belong to.

“So… if Brazil’s ANVISA indicates … a limit of Total Arsenic of up to 1 mg/kg, and I detect 40 mg/kg, it is almost a certainty that I’ll find inorganic As above the prior 1 mg/kg limit, for example … still extremely high.”

Charvet said, “It does not matter differentiating which arsenic it is, both become harmful when they bioaccumulate. … The issue is the result of the meat that is being served to children, prisoners, and elders: that cartilaginous fishes build it up on their tissues, and that we do have various levels of arsenic contamination in different places and species.”

Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency, known as ANVISA, issued recallnotices in 2014 and 2016 for shark meat found to contain excessive mercury levels, although it’s unclear how often this has happened. The agency told us last week that it had never received direct complaints about heavy metals in shark but that it had discovered some cases through routine inspections.

In April, IBAMA seized a shipment of 77 metric tons of blue shark (Prionace glauca) from Taiwan in the port of Rio de Janeiro after it was found to contain arsenic levels 13 times higher than legal limits, the agency said.

Industry groups ABRAPES and SINDIPI put out similar statements in response to Mongabay’s investigation, with ABRAPES saying the story “inappropriately questioned the safety, legality and sustainability” of shark meat and SINDIPI saying it “deeply regrets that the appropriate authorities, such as MAPA and ANVISA, were not consulted for input in the report.”

Mongabay did make contact with MAPA’s press office ahead of the first article’s publication, but questions we sent them went unanswered. In 2024, we also obtained a statement from ANVISA in which the agency explained its inspection procedures and quality-control requirements but didn’t directly reference it in that article. Last week, we also obtained a new statements from ANVISA in which the agency said it had not identified complaints related to contaminant levels above the limit, such as mercury in commercially available fish, including shark. ANVISA also said its sanitary surveillance does not act solely based on receiving complaints but also conducts routine monitoring and inspections.

The Office of the Chief of Staff of the Presidency and the ministries of health and fisheries did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent before and after we published our initial article. Mongabay also sent interview requests and right-to-replies to dozens of government agencies we identified as procuring shark meat, several of which were directly quoted in our stories.

Not just Brazil

Sciaena’s Abril said Portugal had the “same problem” of sharks being sold under vague colloquial names.

She also said Portuguese government agencies had issued “plenty” of shark meat procurements, though probably not on the same scale as Brazil.

Simone Niedermüller, a marine biologist working on seafood trade and marine conservation for WWF, said angelsharks were “regularly illegally caught and sold under misguiding common names” in the Mediterranean, where she works.

“Public procurement rules should include a range of aspects, including sustainability and transparency,” she told Mongabay last week. “They should be built on a set of solid criteria, including the exclusion of threatened species and mandate traceable supply chains.”

Deise Regina Baptista, president of the Regional Council of Nutritionists — 8th Region (CRN-8), an independent body that oversees nutrition professionals in Paraná, said before our investigation was published that the state’s education agency stopped buying cação in 2023 “once the potential risk of consuming threatened species was recognized. … The issue is that cação meat is not legally required to have species identification, and its sale in the country does not require the species to be specified (with the exception of the state of Paraná, which has a law requiring species identification).

“Furthermore, the consumption of shark and ray meat can be extremely harmful to human health, since the meat of these animals often presents high concentrations of metals and other contaminants such as mercury, arsenic, and lead.”

WCS’s Warwick said the possibility of angelsharks being imported in bulk to feed schoolchildren may support a case for adding the animals to CITES, the global treaty regulating international trade in wildlife.

“This evidence indicates that CITES trade controls or bans may well be needed in addition to national protections to prevent the regional extinctions seen for angel sharks in Europe from being replicated in South America,” he wrote in an email.

Banner image: Shark meat is prepared for distribution at CEAGESP in São Paulo city. Image by Philip Jacobson/Mongabay.

That ‘fish’ on the menu? In Brazil’s schools and prisons, it’s often shark

Citation:

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De Carvalho, G. G., Degaspari, I. A., Branco, V., Canário, J., De Amorim, A. F., Kennedy, V. H., & Ferreira, J. R. (2014). Assessment of total and organic mercury levels in blue sharks (Prionace glauca) from the south and southeastern Brazilian coast. Biological Trace Element Research, 159(1-3), 128-134. doi:10.1007/s12011-014-9995-6

Hauser-Davis, R. A., Wosnick, N., Chaves, A. P., Giareta, E. P., Leite, R. D., & Torres-Florez, J. P. (2024). The global issue of metal contamination in sharks, rays and skates and associated human health risks. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 288, 117358. doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2024.117358

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