Health And Safety Hazards Associated With Seafood From Asia

Do you love fish and shrimp? Most do yes? But in December 2013 I discovered information on seafood that is so shocking, I will never touch it again. And perhaps you won't either after reading this blog. Many might not be aware that about 90% of fish and shrimp sold in the U.S. comes from Asia. And this seafood is raised in filthy conditions that cannot be safe for human consumption. Due to lack of funding, the FDA does very little testing of these products. But when they do, they find high levels of toxins that are known to cause illness and cancer. And many shipments of this seafood are turned away from entering the U.S.

And this info has been reported on the following websites: The New York Times (12-15-07), Business Insider (10-23-12), Time (9-19-07), ABC News (10-17-12), Bloomberg (10-11-12), Food Safety News (10-11-13), Consumer Reports (6-29-07), NBC News (10-5-11), and the list goes on.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reported repeatedly that inspectors found cancer-causing chemicals in farm-raised Chinese seafood. The conditions that seafood are raised in in Asia is disgusting. Many are fed and raised in raw sewage. In July of 2009 a report by the FDA on food import safety from China noted that "Fish are often raised in ponds where they feed on waste from poultry and livestock" and cited an increased rate of FDA rejection of fish imports from China between 2000 and 2008.



In 2012 Bloomberg reported that in the Ca Mau province of Vietnam, shrimp headed for the U.S. are routinely packed in dirty plastic tubs, and covered in ice made with tap water that the Vietnamese Health Ministry says should be boiled before drinking because of the risk of contamination with bacteria. Vietnam ships roughly 100 million pounds of shrimp to the U.S. every year. Using ice made from tap water in Vietnam is dangerous because it can spread bacteria to the shrimp, says microbiologist and CEO of IEH Labratories (a food safety company) Mansour Samadpour.

I'm just blown away that I missed this info for so long. Hopefully people can investigate many other sources about this story and share it with as many people as possible. From now on, I'll only be buying local seafood that should be a lot safer. Thank you for seeing.