Image by Getty / Futurism
Alas, nuclear waste may have seeped into a greater share of delectable sea bugs than initially believed.
On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration said that even more bags of frozen shrimp are being recalled for possible radioactive contamination after another company, Southwind Foods, voluntarily pulled its product.
“I think they’re doing the recall as a precautionary approach,” Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University, told the New York Times.
In an announcement, the California-based company said its recalled shrimp was distributed between July 17 and August 8 to locations in Alabama, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Washington state.
Unhelpfully, it did not say what those locations are, or why it suspects contamination. But watch out for the brand names “Sand Bar,” “Arctic Shores,” “Best Yet,” “Great American,” and “First Street.” If you bought these recently, throw the stuff away or return it for a full refund.
The escalating seafood setback comes just days after Walmart recalled its “Great Value” brand of frozen shrimp after the FDA detected the radioactive isotope Cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear fission, in shipping containers and at least one sample of the product. According to the agency, the detections were reported at ports in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and Savannah, Georgia. None of the containers or shrimp were allowed into the US, the FDA insists, and no product that’s tested positive for Cesium-137 is known to have entered circulation.
Who’s to say why the public is suddenly being barraged by radiated shellfish all at once. A common thread is that they all originated from the Indonesian supplier BMS, and it’s likely that the shrimps themselves aren’t the problem. Rather, the “product appears to have been prepared, packed or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated,” the FDA said.
Some observers speculated that somewhere along the supply chain, someone didn’t bother to use clean shipping containers.
Fortunately, the levels of cesium-137 detected aren’t so high that they’d require protection, but it could pose a health concern if exposed to over a prolonged period — say, by regularly eating shrimp.
“If you were eating shrimp all the time, like on a daily basis, then there might be more concern,” Kowalcyk told the NYT. “But a sporadic exposure is probably not as concerning, mainly because we’re all exposed at some level.”
An investigation is ongoing. Till then, go easy on the prawn.
More on food: Rejoice! Trump’s FDA Says You Can Eat a Surprising Amount of Walmart’s Radioactive Shrimp Without Major Issues
Credit: Source link
