Neither Hollywood celebrities nor corporate trade groups are good sources of information on health issues. That doesn't make the National Fisheries Institute's response to Jeremy Piven any less interesting.

Piven famously dropped out of his starring role on Broadway play Speed the Plow over supposed mercury poisoning issues. From the start, speculation was thick that elements of Piven's lifestyle other than diet were the real reason he quit.

The NFI took Piven's Today appearance and annotated it with the group's own, written comments. The group basically denies that mercury poisoning is an issue at all when it comes to the average consumer eating fish; one of its first slides reads, "there is no peer-reviewed evidence that anyone in the U.S. has ever suffered from mercury poisoning from eating commercial seafood," and the rest go from there. Here's the clip:

But virtually all states have issued warnings about mercury and fish, as have the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration. Some academics are concerned these warnings don't go far enough. Having unreliable Jeremy Piven as a spokesman may be the worst thing that's ever happened to these people.