Scary News About the Shrimp You’re Eating
In recent news, a study performed by Oceana, a group that believes in and fights for the protection of the world’s oceans and their species therein, revealed that nearly a third of all packaged shrimp sold in stores were being misrepresented to consumers.
As it turns out, shrimp in local grocery stores, restaurants, and other venues were often being sold as a certain variety, when in fact they were actually a completely different variety. Furthermore, shrimp that were actually raised in fish farms were often presented to the customers as fresh shrimp caught in the ocean.
Many of these farm-raised shrimp run the risk of harming consumers, because the farmers that raise these shrimp feed them antibiotics to protect them from all different forms of disease and illnesses, but high levels of antibiotics can actually harm consumers when transferred to them in their food.
The Oceana corporation went all across America testing 111 venues to see if the shrimp being offered were accurately represented to customers. They went to 70 different restaurants while on their journey, and they also went to 41 grocery stores in total. Sadly, they found that right at 31 percent of all restaurants they visited were not honest (or were otherwise unversed themselves) concerning the types of shrimp they were selling. Furthermore, 41 percent of all grocery stores were misrepresentative in their product.
In fact, they even found a location or two that had imbued “tank” shrimp with their regular shrimp. In other words, some locations had accidentally, or perhaps purposefully, allowed shrimp that would normally be in tanks in museums and things like that to be in their supply of edible shrimp. In reality, eating these kinds of shrimp can be extremely dangerous to humans, as they were never meant to be an edible variety.
While performing this study, it was Oceana’s goal to see if shrimp were being harvested in a way that wasn’t harmful to the ocean, but thank goodness they found what they found! They just might have saved you from a bad case of food poisoning!