Frozen shrimp recalled from Jewel-Osco grocery stores in Illinois over safety concerns

Bags of frozen shrimp sold at Jewel-Osco grocery stores in Illinois are being recalled, with the Federal Drug Administration saying the shrimp may have been “packaged, prepared or held under insanitary conditions” and could potentially be radioactive.

The recall, issued Friday, from Direct Source Seafood LLC from Bellevue, Washington, applies to more than 83,800 bags of frozen shrimp sold in a number of Albertsons and Price Chopper retailers nationwide. In Illinois, they were sold in Jewel-Osco stores in two pound bags under the “Waterfront Bistro” brand.

The recall is part of the FDA’s active investigation into contamination in shipping containers and frozen shrimp products manufactured in Indonesia by PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati, or BMS Foods. Frozen shrimp associated with the investigation has already been recalled from Kroger, Mariano’s and Walmart grocery stores across dozens of states.

According to health officials, the shrimp could be contaminated with Cesium-137, a man-made radioisotope of cesium. The main health concern associated with low dose exposure to Cesium-137 — like consuming contaminated food or water over time — is an elevated risk of cancer.

No illnesses associated with the product have been reported to date, the FDA said, but consumers who purchased the shrimp should dispose of it or return for a full refund.

Here’s the full list of products included in the most recent recall:

Officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection earlier this year detected the potential radioactive contamination in shipping containers sent to U.S. ports in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami and Savannah, Georgia. Customs officials alerted the FDA, which conducted tests of packaged shrimp and confirmed Cesium-137 in a single sample.

Experts in nuclear radiation agreed that the health risk is low, but said it’s important to determine the source of the contamination and share that information with the public.

The level of Cesium-137 detected in the frozen shrimp was about 68 becquerels per kilogram, a measure of radioactivity. That is far below the FDA’s level of 1,200 becquerels per kilogram that could trigger the need for health protections.

It is unusual to see this concentration of Cesium-137 in shrimp, said Steve Biegalski, who chairs the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Routine levels detected in shrimp from the Pacific Ocean are about 100 times lower than those found in the BMS shrimp, according to the American Nuclear Society.

“We sometimes can see Cesium-137 from historic nuclear weapons fallout, nuclear accidents such as Fukushima or Chernobyl, but the levels in the environment are super, super, super low right now and cannot explain what’s going on here,” Biegalski said.