On the menu today: Radioactive shrimp — well, actually, those are not on the menu, provided your local seafood restaurant is not buying from a certain supplier to Walmart. Elsewhere, President Trump sees a brown wall and he wants to paint it black. Meanwhile, New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo is awaiting an endorsement from Donald Trump, and why it matters that the New York Times gave glowing early coverage to a relatively unknown Democratic Senate candidate.
A Jumbo (Shrimp) Problem
The suddenly ubiquitous actor Walton Goggins* is now on your television screen, telling you that “the Walmart you thought you knew is now new.” This includes some extremely new products, such as radioactive shrimp.
Packages of frozen shrimp, imported from Indonesia, are being recalled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency warns that you should not “eat or serve certain lots of Great Value raw frozen shrimp sold at Walmart stores” in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia.
Also, if you live in most of those states, you live on or fairly close to the . . . (eye roll) Gulf of America coast, so why aren’t you eating the better shrimp, caught here in America? You’re stealing jobs from hardworking American shrimp.
At this time, no product that has tested positive or alerted for Cesium-137 (Cs-137) has entered the U.S. commerce. FDA is working with distributors and retailers that received product from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati after the date of first detection of Cs-137 by Customs & Border Protection, but from shipments that did not alert for Cs-137, to recommend that firms conduct a recall. In conjunction with other information, FDA determined that product from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati violates the Federal Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act in that it appears to have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with Cs-137 and may pose a safety concern.
FDA detected Cs-137 in a single shipment of imported frozen shrimp from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati that did not enter U.S. commerce. The level of Cs-137 detected in the detained shipment was approximately 68 Bq/kg, which is below FDA’s Derived Intervention Level for Cs-137 of 1200 Bq/kg. At this level, the product would not pose an acute hazard to consumers. Avoiding products like the shipment FDA tested with similar levels of Cs-137 is a measure intended to reduce exposure to low-level radiation that could have health impacts with continued exposure over a long period of time.
You’re probably wondering, “how does shrimp become radioactive?”
According to the Environmental Protection Agency:
Cesium (chemical symbol Cs) is a soft, flexible, silvery-white metal that becomes liquid near room temperature, but easily bonds with chlorides to create a crystalline powder. The most common radioactive form of cesium is Cs-137. Cesium-137 is produced by nuclear fission for use in medical devices and gauges. It is also one of the byproducts of nuclear fission processes in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons testing.
Because Cs-137 bonds with chlorides to make a crystalline powder, it reacts in the environment like table salt (sodium chloride):
- Cesium moves easily through the air.
- Cesium dissolves easily in water.
- Cesium binds strongly to soil and concrete, but does not travel very far below the surface.
- Plants and vegetation growing in or nearby contaminated soil may take up small amounts of Cs-137 from the soil.
Small quantities of Cs-137 can be found in the environment from nuclear weapons and from nuclear reactor accidents.
Cs-137 is a byproduct of nuclear fission in reactors and is not naturally occurring.
It is also worth noting that small amounts of Cs-137 are, ironically, used in Geiger counters and radiation detectors, as well as medical devices, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
Cs-137 is used in small amounts for calibration of radiation-detection equipment, such as Geiger-Mueller counters.
In larger amounts, Cs-137 is used in
- Medical radiation therapy devices for treating cancer
- Medical sterilization
- Industrial gauges that detect the flow of liquid through pipes
Other industrial devices to measure the thickness of materials, such as paper, photographic film, or sheets of metal. . . .
People are exposed to some Cs-137 every day, because amounts of Cs-137 are present in the environment from weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s. However, Cs-137 is dangerous in the large, concentrated amounts found in radiation therapy units and industrial gauges. The sources in these devices are designed to remain sealed and keep people from being exposed. If these canisters are intentionally or accidentally opened, the Cs-137 inside could be dispersed.
Indonesia does not have a nuclear weapons program, or at least there is no evidence of one. However, according to the World Nuclear Association, the National Nuclear Energy Agency of Indonesia operates three research reactors in:
- Serpong, Banten, on the western outskirts of Jakarta (30 MW);
- Bandung, west Java (2 MW); and
- Yogyakarta, central Java (100 kW).
The country also has front-end capabilities in ore processing, conversion, and fuel fabrication, all at a laboratory scale, though PT Batan Teknologi assembles fuel elements for the research reactors using imported U.S. fuel:
There have been no experiments in reprocessing, but BATAN operates a radwaste program including for spent fuel from the research reactors.
The FDA alert states, “Elevated amounts of Cs-137 can be present at locations where contamination settled from accidents such as Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.”
I would be surprised if the Fukushima reactor was the cause of these shrimps’ radioactivity. Indonesia is roughly 3,700 miles away from Fukushima. “As of July 28, 2023, the U.S. FDA has tested 51 samples from an area associated with the Fukushima/Daiichi facility for radionuclide contamination. None of these samples contained detectable levels of Cesium.”
PT Bahari Makmur Sejati is described as “the largest Indonesian shrimp supplier to the United States.” Well, not for long.
You might be surprised how much seafood consumed by Americans is imported from other countries on the other side of the globe. In 2024, Indonesia exported 296.22 million pounds of seafood to the U.S. — a slight decline from the previous year.
It will not surprise you that U.S. domestic shrimp producers detest imported shrimp, and are eager to spotlight how frequently the FDA bars a shipment for health-related reasons. The Southern Shrimp Alliance writes:
With several more months of the year left to go, the FDA has refused more entry lines of Indonesian shrimp this year than any year since 2011 when the agency refused 80.
These refusals have been for a variety of different reasons. As described in more detail below, for the first time in many years, the FDA has once again been finding banned veterinary drug residues in Indonesian shrimp. Further, the federal agency has also rejected a number of shipments for undeclared sulfites and has continued actions taken last year to counter economic fraud through short-weighting and miscounts.
It would be a more exciting world if eating a radioactive shrimp would give you the proportional powers of, say, a peacock mantis shrimp. (“When it locates prey, the shrimp delivers a swift punch by springing out one of its club-like front claws. The punch is 50 times faster than a bullet from a gun and strong enough to break glass.”) But alas, eating one or more is simply likely to slightly elevate your long-term risk for cancer, just as getting stung by a radioactive wasp in South Carolina is likely to just hurt, not turn you into a matriarchal flying warrior with zombifying venom.
*Somewhere Pedro Pascal is looking at his television and saying, “Man, that guy’s in everything.”
I See a Red Wall and I Want to Paint it Black
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during a visit with the U.S. Border Patrol at the border wall in Santa Theresa, N.M.:
Today, we are also going to be painting it black. uh that that is specifically at the request of the president who understands that in the hot temperatures down here when an something is painted black it gets even warmer and it will make it even harder for people to climb. So, we are going to be painting the entire southern border wall black to make sure that we encourage individuals to not come into our country illegally, uh to not break our federal laws, but that they will abide and come to our country the right way so that they can stay and have the opportunity to become United States citizens and pursue the American dream.
If only there was some way to make the border wall as hot as your car’s dark-colored seat on an August afternoon.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Andrew Cuomo is convinced Donald Trump is going to endorse him.
Separately, the New York Times has found another extremely little-known long-shot Democratic Senate candidate to adore, even if he doesn’t really know how the Big Beautiful Bill Act passed. A reader complained that that Corner post was “whiny.”
A largely positive profile with a flattering photograph on page A19 of the New York Times is a tremendously big deal for a U.S. Senate candidate. There are candidates with much better polling position, fundraising, experience, and accomplishments who never get that in their entire careers. The New York Times has the second-highest print circulation in the country behind the Wall Street Journal and the largest web circulation of any U.S. newspaper.
The New York Times giving Graham Platner a profile like that is a de facto announcement, “Hey, this guy you’ve never heard of is going to be a big deal.”
Maybe that will come to pass, but I’m skeptical.
As I’ve documented year after year, the biggest institutions of the mainstream media don’t just prefer Democrats and give them more favorable coverage; they often fall for wildly unrealistic, self-serving narratives from these candidates. Beto O’Rourke, Stacey Abrams, Kirsten Gillibrand’s presidential bid, Jaime Harrison, Dan Osborn, Colin Allred, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell — all of these Democratic candidates faced much tougher odds than the national media coverage would suggest. And I feel like even if you prefer a particular candidate, you should level with your audience about their chances for victory and the obstacles they face. Supposedly, the New York Times prioritizes informing their audience over cheerleading for the Democratic Party.
As I’ve laid out, almost every cycle, Democrats are convinced they’re going to send Maine GOP Senator Susan Collins packing, and every cycle so far, she’s mopped the floor with her Democratic opponent — often demonstrating that pre-election polling in her state is disturbingly inaccurate.
And now we’re getting told some unknown who is a little shaky about how a bill becomes a law is going to come along and knock off the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee?
It’s like me predicting the New York Jets will be in the Super Bowl this year. Sure, it’s within the realm of theoretical possibility, but those are some very long odds against that outcome.