Risible--But They Still Know Best

Zero Risk and Fourteen Tonnes of Trout

And now, a story which will resonate with all readers from around the world who have experienced the scintillating skills of bureaucrats at the top of their game.  

New Zealand is one of the last countries in the world to deploy the poison 1080 in an effort to control noxious pests (possums, stoats, weasels, rats--and so forth).  Whenever it is deployed in a vast industrial scale there are worries about it getting into the food chain.

At such times, not infrequently, the local bureaucrats and government functionaries get caught like the hapless possum in car headlights.  Then they proceed to talk out of both sides of their mouths so volubly that one suspects they have two, even three, tongues.  Here is the latest show from the travelling circus, coming to a neighbourhood near you:

The Department of Conservation ["DoC"] is warning anglers not to eat trout in areas where 1080 poison has been dropped - a reversal of its position seven months ago.  The caution comes just days before the trout fishing season opens on October 1. [NZ Herald]

So, what confronts us ordinary rubes here is a position reversal--a well known move favoured by bureaucrats under pressure.  What's the problem?
  Well, imagine a mouse terminated by eating aerial dropped 1080 poison pellets.  Imagine, further, that said mouse got washed into a waterway, and was eaten by a hungry trout.  At that point, the flesh of the trout would contain levels of the 1080 poison that were beyond tolerable limits as defined by the NZ Food Safety Authority.

Now comes the risible double tongued bureaucratic-speak:

Yesterday, DoC advised anglers to take a "zero risk" approach and not eat fish from catchments where 1080 had been dropped.

Zero risk, eh.  Now we are approaching sacred mountain territory.  The gummint wants a society, apparently, in which there is zero risk. Let's apply that to crossing the street, shall we?  Zero risk would be never to cross the street. Ever. Yup, that's zero risk all right.

But the department said the risk to human health was extremely low.  "Researchers calculated that at these levels, an 80kg adult would need to eat more than 14 tonnes of trout flesh in one serving to have a 50 per cent chance of receiving a fatal dose." [Emphasis, ours.]

Fourteen tonnes of trout in one serving to have half a chance of dying from 1080.  Don't worry, mate.  The belly would have exploded long before 1080 poisoning could have taken hold.

Behold, the slavering forked tongue of the bureaucrat-possum in the headlights.  No problem eating a trout which has, in turn, eaten a poisoned mouse.  But, zero risk says there may, possibly, just be a teensie weensie problem--so don't eat the trout.  But, the hapless bureaucratic possum hastens to add, in order for there to be a problem, you would need to eat 14 tonnes of trout flesh at one sitting--all fourteen tonnes, presumably, infected with 1080 poisoning. So, no problem at all.  But there might be.  But not really.  Don't eat trout.  Best advice.  Ever. 

Bryce Johnson of Fish and Game said he thought DoC had played down the issue in its statement.  "They commissioned the research. If they're saying take a zero-risk approach, and in the next breath saying you've got to eat 14 tonnes of trout flesh, it makes a mockery of their own advice."

You don't say.  Either way, we suspect the bureaucrats are not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  They are engaged in a butt covering exercise.  Risk-reduction requires us to be intensely sceptical in such cases.  Zero-risk would mean never listening to them.  Ever.