You may recall a story from a few weeks ago, when Walmart recalled some Great Value frozen shrimp due to concerns that they might be contaminated with radiation. There’s a minor update on that—one that doesn’t have much to do with the irradiated shrimp themselves as much as it is one, possibly unwell, senator’s got to say on the subject.
In what seems like a mix of seafood safety PSA and the kind of rambling that used to be found exclusively on cable access television, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana hit the Senate floor armed with a giant picture of the freshly born chest-bursting alien from Alien.
He did this to provide an urgent warning: those radioactive frozen Walmart shrimp might give you extra eyes or lead to an alien using your torso as an incubator. Or something.
Louisiana Senator Warns Walmart’s Radioactive Shrimp Could Burst Out of Your Chest Like ‘Alien’
Kennedy, representing the top shrimp-producing state in the U.S., delivered a five-minute monologue, using the adorable alien chest burster to warn that imported shrimp could cause… chest bursters? I guess? I think that was the point being made. If that is indeed it, he says it’s because of the radioactivity.
Let’s set aside the fact that he is clearly never watched Alien, has no idea why the aliens exist, and will likely never be convinced that radioactivity has, to my knowledge, never once played a role in any Alien story, from the original Ridley Scott film, through the Alien vs. Predator movies, up to the current (and quite good) Alien: Earth TV series.
Not that a minor detail like this matters to Senator Kennedy of Louisiana. He is using the chest burster to illustrate a larger point about… I’m not sure what to be quite honest. I watched the entire monologue. I get the gist: radioactive shrimp = bad. I don’t think many people want to have a shrimp cocktail with a side of cesium-137.
I don’t know how I feel about a sitting US Senator pointing to a picture of a chest burster and then saying, “This is what you could end up looking like if you eat some of the raw frozen shrimp being sent to the United States by other countries.”
And…
“If you eat it, how could you end up looking like an alien in the Alien? Because the shrimp was radioactive. I kid you not.”
Are the Radioactive Walmart Shrimp Real?
That’s not to say that the radioactive Walmart shrimp story is made up. It is totally real. The shrimp, distributed by BMS Foods, were flagged by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for containing extremely high levels of cesium-137, a man-made radioactive isotope.
The levels, 68 BQ/KG, didn’t even come close to triggering federal intervention, which doesn’t happen until levels hit 1200 BQ/KG. Ultimately, the whole story was overblown, as bananas regularly register similar radiation levels.
Still, Kennedy ran with it, adding that the shrimp were “shot full” of “radioactive isotopes.” That’s a lie, by the way. He made that up. Experts all seem to agree that the shrimp’s exposure to radiation was likely accidental.
Eventually, Kennedy cut to his real point: promoting Gulf shrimp. He said, “I believe in homegrown Louisiana shrimp. Fresh, out of the Gulf, not radioactive. But I understand that some stores prefer to buy foreign shrimp because it’s cheaper. Now we know why. The damn stuff’s radioactive.”
I read that entire passage as if Kennedy were an old-timey lawyer with those garters wrapped around his shirtsleeves, sweating profusely in a steamy Louisiana courtroom, trying to convince a jury to buy his slightly expired shrimp over some foreigner’s radioactive shrimp.
I don’t know what to make of any of this. All I know for sure is that this once again proves that there isn’t a single normal Kennedy in the United States.
The post Louisiana Senator Warns Eating Walmart’s Radioactive Shrimp Could Turn You into an Alien appeared first on VICE.
