NATION IN BRIEF : ALASKA : Officials React to Tainted Fish Reports

Alaska officials said a Consumer Reports story about contaminated seafood in supermarkets has created a public-relations disaster for the state, where commercial fishing is the top private employer and salmon one of its primary products. The magazine had reported that nearly half of 20 samples of salmon from New York and Chicago stores were tainted with cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls. State lawmakers have called for stiff national fish-inspection standards and for an aggressive marketing program to separate wild Alaska salmon from the farmed products the magazine called inferior. Alaska harvests only wild salmon. The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has hired the same public relations firm it used during the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.