If tonight’s dinner plans involve Walmart’s Great Value frozen shrimp, I have some unfortunate news for you. You see, the world is a silly place right now. So, of course, the FDA has announced that you should not eat Walmart Great Value frozen shrimp.
Why? Because they are radioactive.
It’s only certain bags of frozen shrimp distributed by Indonesia’s BMS Foods that might be contaminated with Cesium-137. This radioactive isotope commonly appears at nuclear disaster sites and has a delightful ability to cause radiation sickness and death. So don’t eat the rad shrimp.
The shrimp in question was intercepted thanks to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which detected something radioactively fishy in shipping containers at four U.S. ports. Follow-up testing confirmed Cesium-137 contamination in samples from BMS Foods. Thankfully, the FDA says none of the glowing crustaceans have worked into the U.S. food supply yet.
FDA Warns Walmart’s Great Value Frozen Shrimp Is Radioactive
Still, the FDA is issuing a public warning just to be safe while also urging a recall.
If you’re reading this, you probably remember that you have a bag of Walmart’s Great Value frozen shrimp in your freezer, so there’s no need to break out your Geiger counter. All you have to do is check the lot codes to see if they match any of these:
- Great Value brand frozen raw shrimp, lot code: 8005540-1, Best by Date: 3/15/2027
- Great Value brand frozen raw shrimp, lot code: 8005538-1, Best by Date: 3/15/2027
- Great Value brand frozen raw shrimp, lot code: 8005539-1, Best by Date: 3/15/2027
If you’ve got any of those in your freezer, the FDA recommends you don’t eat it, sell it, serve it, or hang several of them from a string so that their eerie green glow could tear through the darkness of pulse-pounding rave. Just throw it away.
Only the shipping containers in which the shrimp were transported tested positive for radiation. So far, the shrimp themselves have not tested positive. Still, the FDA isn’t taking any chances.
If you have these in your freezer, dust off your old hazmat suit, break out your most prolonged tongs, and toss them in the garbage where they can be destroyed by something, such as roaches.
The post Turns Out Walmart’s Great Value Frozen Shrimp Is Literally Radioactive appeared first on VICE.
