Americans deserve better than radioactive shrimp.
As a longtime commercial fisherman, that’s not something I thought I’d ever have to say. That changed last month when the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers to avoid certain frozen shrimp sold at Walmart, Kroger, and other stores. You may have seen headlines that sounded like something out of a bad comic-book movie: An overseas food supplier shipped shrimp found to be contaminated with Cesium-137, a radioactive material that can damage DNA.
Unfortunately, safety warnings about foreign-farmed seafood have become all too routine. The Government Accountability Office has even called on the Food and Drug Administration to do a better job protecting U.S. consumers from imported seafood contaminated with residue caused by the misuse of drugs used to prevent the spread of disease among farmed fish and shrimp.