More packages of frozen shrimp potentially affected by radioactive contamination have been recalled, federal officials said Thursday.

California-based Southwind Foods recalled frozen shrimp sold under the brands Sand Bar, Arctic Shores, Best Yet, Great American and First Street. The bagged products were distributed between July 17 and Aug. 8 to stores and wholesalers in nine states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Washington state.

The products have the potential to be contaminated with Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of nuclear reactions.

  • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    22 hours ago

    FUCK.

    Normally, I’m a measured man, save some for later I tell myself. There’s always more listeria and if I had a dime for every salmonella salad recall I’d be able to afford eggs and coffee right now. But this time, this time seemed different. Radioactive Walmart shrimp. Surely, this was going to be a one time thing. Time to open the hatch, I thought. Drop all my jokes at once, get them out while they’re still fresh. Last thing you want is rotten radioactive shrimp jokes, you’ll never escape the stink of that, might as well delete your account and start over at that point.

    So, I blew my load the first round. Spent all my jokes on the radioactive Great Value shrimp from Walmart like a fool. And now I got nothing new. Just recycled radioactive shrimp jokes. And some kind of weird lump in my throat. Too bad I can’t afford to have a doctor check that out.

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    47
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    At this point the most surprising part of all of this is that a federal agency was permitted to do something beneficial to regular people.

  • Stern@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 day ago

    This got me thinking about being bit by a radioactive shrimp and getting powers like Spider-man. Not sure what powers I’d even get, I already have the shrimp dick.

  • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    1 day ago

    So this is how we persue larger and larger unit sized shrimp?

    But seriously, how the fuck?

    I’m trying to imagine the factory that both prepares shrimp and handles nuclear waste… it just does not make sense…

    • fullsquare@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      1 day ago

      some foods (and other things, like blood and some other medical products) are irradiated in order to sterilize them and make them last longer, 137Cs sources are used for this purpose because this material is easily available but can’t be used for other purposes (like radiography)

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        But it doesn’t exactly explain how the cs-137 contaminated the shrimp. Usually when irradiating anything the source is quite decoupled from the target.

        This story is sorr of getting weird

        • fullsquare@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          the source getting damaged or corroded somehow is the simplest explanation i can think of now, cesium is likely in form of chloride which is very easily soluble in water

          or maybe it was intentional sabotage by competitor, who the fuck knows

          The best known Chinese rodenticide, containing about 6–20% TETS, is Dushuqiang, “very strong rat poison”. It has been used for mass poisonings in China: in April 2004, there were 74 casualties after eating scallion-flavored pancakes tainted by their vendor’s competitor; and in September 2002, 400 people were poisoned and 38 died from contaminated food.[11][12] In 2002, there was one documented case of accidental poisoning in the US.[6]

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine

          • lemming741@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 day ago

            Smaller sources for sensing and detection are ceramic. Cobalt is preferred for larger sources but the half life is only ~5 years so I’m sure there are plenty of applications where the solubility of CsCl is outweighed by the 30 year half life.

            • fullsquare@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              20 hours ago

              CsCl is also much less active per gram because about half of fission product cesium is stable (on top of longer halflife)

  • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 day ago

    The U.S. imports between 1.7-2 billion pounds of shrimp a year. That’s a lot more than I expected. Someone is eating a lot more shrimp than I am.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        If the Earth had feelings I’m sure it’d be happy to know long after we accelerate the surfaces inhabitability for the majority of our population, it will keep chugging along. The amount of surface water and orbital path should guarantee a million years from now when humans have inevitably killed themselves, life will still exist on earth. And one day it will turn to see the sun rolling into its eyes and think to itself, after all these years. Rick Astley still never gave up on me.

  • Joeffect@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 day ago

    So how does this happen? Did they use shipping containers to transport radioactive waste? And then just said fuck it its good?

    • some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 day ago

      Imagine all the times it did happen and we just didn’t know. I don’t need this to be proud to not ever set for in a Walmart though.

    • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      There was a concern of radioactive shrimp after Fukushima, but you’d have to have been collecting shrimp right near the nuclear plant, and I believe they still would have been safe to eat

  • courval@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    1 day ago

    “Nuclear is the way” “Fukushima was nothing, it was all media drama” sigh… I’m surprised this hasn’t happened earlier… Or it has but no one’s been measuring it… Where can I buy one of those radioactivity measuring devices? I would like to keep eating fish and seafood at least for a few years longer…