ReturnOfJudah
Veteran
Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Feces Approved for U.S. Consumers
Seafood that thrives on feces created by pigs and covered with flies is now available to US consumers. Shrimp is one of the most popular seafood varieties in the United States, but people usually don’t pay close attention to the origin of the seafood they consume. About one hundred million pounds of shrimp or about 8% of all the shrimp Americans consume each year is produced in very poor conditions.
Picture a warehouse packed with workers working on dirty and dusty floors and trash everywhere. In addition, imagine baskets loaded with room temperature shrimp covered with flies in the middle of September in a place with tropical weather. After that, these manually processed shrimp are loaded into unclean plastic tubs loaded with ice that is created from tap water that is not very safe. Well, this story is not made up. This is how shrimp are produced in Vietnam and some of these shrimp are imported in the United States.
According to Mansour Samadpour, a microbiologist that works for IEH Laboratories and Consulting Company focused on making tests on water for fish farming, the conditions found in these factories are intolerable.
In addition, the Chinese have special tilapia farms where workers feed fish with goose and pig feces.
The mixture that these workers use as food is often polluted with microorganisms including salmonella. This was confirmed by Michael Doyle, head of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia who has done research in this field.
Even though Chinese officials say that they have issued a recommendation to manufacturers to stop using feces to feed fish because it pollutes the water and makes fish more prone to health problems, a huge number of farmers in Guangdong area reject these recommendations because they want to make big profit. As a matter of fact, there are many manufacturers who have stopped using other food and focused on feces because it is much cheaper compared to specially designed fish food.
In any case, some of these tilapia produced in China are imported in USA.
Don’t forget that about 30% of the seafood sold in America originates from China. There are many cases in which this seafood is rejected because it doesn’t meet the standards. Bloomberg Markets magazine has recently shared interesting information about this problem.
According to them, the Food and Drug Administration inspects less than 3% of imported food and during these inspections their inspectors rejected about 1400 loads of fish and other seafood from Vietnam and about 800 loads from China in the last eight years. These numbers are huge and the question is why are we allowing seafood from China and Vietnam when there are so many cases of bad food that comes from these countries?
Seafood that thrives on feces created by pigs and covered with flies is now available to US consumers. Shrimp is one of the most popular seafood varieties in the United States, but people usually don’t pay close attention to the origin of the seafood they consume. About one hundred million pounds of shrimp or about 8% of all the shrimp Americans consume each year is produced in very poor conditions.
Picture a warehouse packed with workers working on dirty and dusty floors and trash everywhere. In addition, imagine baskets loaded with room temperature shrimp covered with flies in the middle of September in a place with tropical weather. After that, these manually processed shrimp are loaded into unclean plastic tubs loaded with ice that is created from tap water that is not very safe. Well, this story is not made up. This is how shrimp are produced in Vietnam and some of these shrimp are imported in the United States.
According to Mansour Samadpour, a microbiologist that works for IEH Laboratories and Consulting Company focused on making tests on water for fish farming, the conditions found in these factories are intolerable.
In addition, the Chinese have special tilapia farms where workers feed fish with goose and pig feces.
The mixture that these workers use as food is often polluted with microorganisms including salmonella. This was confirmed by Michael Doyle, head of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia who has done research in this field.
Even though Chinese officials say that they have issued a recommendation to manufacturers to stop using feces to feed fish because it pollutes the water and makes fish more prone to health problems, a huge number of farmers in Guangdong area reject these recommendations because they want to make big profit. As a matter of fact, there are many manufacturers who have stopped using other food and focused on feces because it is much cheaper compared to specially designed fish food.
In any case, some of these tilapia produced in China are imported in USA.
Don’t forget that about 30% of the seafood sold in America originates from China. There are many cases in which this seafood is rejected because it doesn’t meet the standards. Bloomberg Markets magazine has recently shared interesting information about this problem.
According to them, the Food and Drug Administration inspects less than 3% of imported food and during these inspections their inspectors rejected about 1400 loads of fish and other seafood from Vietnam and about 800 loads from China in the last eight years. These numbers are huge and the question is why are we allowing seafood from China and Vietnam when there are so many cases of bad food that comes from these countries?
