Walmart has removed imported frozen shrimp from store shelves in 13 states after the Food and Drug Administration said that contamination from a radioactive isotope had been found in shipping containers and in one sample.
The recalled shrimp won’t make you glow green. The FDA said that no frozen shrimp that tested positive for the isotope, cesium-137, had reached stores. And Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University, said the risk to the public was very low.
“I think they’re doing the recall as a precautionary approach,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
The FDA urged consumers on Tuesday to throw out certain packages of Great Value-brand frozen raw shrimp that they purchased at Walmart stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia.
The agency said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had reported the detection of cesium-137 in shipping containers at U.S. ports in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami and Savannah, Georgia. The FDA said it collected multiple samples and confirmed the presence of cesium-137 in one sample of breaded shrimp. The agency said that none of the containers or products that tested positive for the substance were allowed into the country.
“The product appears to have been prepared, packed or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated,” the agency said.
The shrimp was processed by PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati, an Indonesian supplier also known as BMS Foods, according to the FDA. All of the packages affected by the recall have a “best by” date of March 15, 2027.
Walmart said in a statement Wednesday that “the health and safety of our customers is always a top priority.”
“We have issued a sales restriction and removed this product from our impacted stores,” the statement said. “We are working with the supplier to investigate.”
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