Radioactivity. It’s what shrimp consumers need. It really happened and it sounds like a headline that would follow “Latest from Bawndo” in your news feed.
FDA warns against certain batches of Great Value shrimp.
Earlier this week, the FDA warned customers not to eat certain batches of Great Value frozen raw shrimp sold at Walmart because they tested positive for Cesium-137, an actual radioactive isotope. Southwind Foods, the supplier, has now recalled several brands beyond Walmart’s house label: Sand Bar, Arctic Shores, Best Yet, Great American, and First Street.
You could walk into Walmart for a frozen bag of shrimp and walk out with something that glows metaphorically, if not literally. It sounds like a Carl’s Jr. menu item.
Radioactive shrimp with your extra big ass fries?
How radioactivity landed in our shrimp cocktails.
According to the FDA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection flagged contaminated shipments from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati, an Indonesian supplier, at ports in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and Savannah. Testing showed about 68 Bq/kg of Cesium-137 in one breaded shrimp sample, below the FDA’s intervention threshold of 1200 Bq/kg, but still radioactive enough to trigger a full recall.
For context: Cesium-137 is a byproduct of nuclear fission. The kind you’d expect to find after Chernobyl or Fukushima, not in a deep freezer at Walmart. Long-term, even low-level exposure increases cancer risk. No illnesses have been reported, but the FDA isn’t taking chances.
Investigators haven’t pinned down one neat cause, but the most likely explanation is environmental contamination: shrimp farmed in Indonesian waters that were exposed to trace nuclear byproducts, probably from industrial waste or old fallout, absorbed Cesium-137 through the food chain. Another possibility is processing contamination at the plant itself in the form of tainted water, equipment, or additives introducing the isotope before shipping.
Why do we have a threshold for radioactivity in our consumer foods, anyway?
Details
- Lot codes recalled: 8005540-1, 8005538-1, and 8005539-1.
- What to do: Toss it or return it for a refund. Don’t feed it to your dog, your cat, or your passive-aggressive neighbor. Wash your hands if you’ve handled the package.
- Import ban: The supplier has been placed on an import red list until it can prove its shrimp won’t double as a physics experiment.
In a world that looks like Idiocracy.
Idiocracy showed us spraying nitrous on a frustrated consumer for not getting her extra big ass fries and watering plants with electrolytes. All tropes of a dumbing down and clear disconnect from safety and consumer rights.
Recalls for radioactivity in our food may be a sign of the times. Are the reasons for this really understandable? Either way, I’m glad I dodged the bullet. I’m probably full of microplastics, anyway.
A San Antonio seafood market even jumped in with ads for their non-radioactive local shrimp. That’s about as close to “Welcome to Costco, I love you” as you can get in real life marketing.
So yeah, radioactive shrimp at Walmart isn’t satire anymore. It’s dinner news. And if that’s not peak Idiocracy, I don’t know what is.
Sources
- FDA Warning – Contaminated Frozen Shrimp Recall
- AP News – More Frozen Shrimp Recalled
- Health.com – FDA Urges Walmart Customers Not to Eat Shrimp
- MySanAntonio – Local Market Parodying Recall
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