Posted on 12/16/2016 2:32:18 PM PST by nickcarraway
The food supply has already shown itself to be alarmingly adept at vectoring superbugs into the human body, but a new report suggests maybe China really wants to see if it can push this to the next level. While the rest of the world finally understands antibiotics in meat are causing an epidemic of multidrug-resistant bacteria, China’s aquaculture industry apparently remains a place that, to quote Bloomberg’s story, “exposes the fish to almost the same doses of medicine the livestock get,” plus whatever drug cocktail gets tossed into the water to fight aquatic disease.
This industry currently accounts for about a quarter of the world’s seafood. Many farms will have pigs next to their tilapia or shrimp, and waste swimming with swine antibiotics drains from the pigpens directly into the ponds. This has scientists extra nervous because it suggests some of Earth’s hardest-to-treat bacteria “could be lingering in people’s refrigerators or on their kitchen countertops” — special home delivery, basically, instead of requiring international travel.
Americans really put away the shrimp in particular these days (intake has doubled since the ’90s). Ninety percent of that is imported, though at least on paper not much comes from China. Problem is, as is basically common knowledge now, there are reasons to be dubious of almost any claim made by Asian seafood suppliers, and Bloomberg guesses lots of the “Malaysian” fish in the frozen aisle is secretly still Chinese, and therefore possibly teeming with fecal swine germs.
The U.S. government still does a pretty decent job keeping most of it out, but it’s hardly perfect. And anyone wondering how bad things could get needs to look no further than China, where the rate of drug resistance, unsurprisingly, is already one of the world’s worst. As many as 83 percent of “healthy” people there carry bacteria in their guts that can destroy penicillin, and 43 percent of random seafood samples in the country were shown to harbor some germ that’s multidrug-resistant.
Liver flukes have been especially dangerous to Vietnam Veterans.
Then in Phoenix, you would essentially not eat shrimp. I noted that all of the packaged shrimp from our local supermarket came from Thailand. I found one package labelled Baja Mexico shrimp. I was preparing to buy it when I read the fine print. It was shipped to Thailand for processing. I put it back.
We should never trade with China on ANYTHING!!
Here in Tulsa, we have a local seafood shop/restaurant that files in fresh fish from around the US. It is more expensive, but usually delicious with a great selection. I'd rather have a smaller portion of a higher quality product anyway.
As the obesity and diabetes epidemic shows, cheap bad food is not a good value decision.
You don’t think you do. Country of origin labeling has been repealed for beef and pork.
That is why I buy meat and fish from local merchants, and not the big chains. They source locally for beef and pork, and I trust the Fish guy. They would be out of business if they sell shrimp from Vietnam or didn't know the source of their products. One local grocer (large chain) has entered a deal with pork, chicken and beef producers to create a store brand that is all sourced in the US, with no hormones.
Yes, it takes me a bit longer to shop but it is worth it.
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