Radioactive shrimp. That’s not a typo. That’s not clickbait. That’s what’s going down at Walmart right now.
The retail giant has issued a multi-state recall for several lots of its Great Value frozen shrimp after the FDA flagged potential contamination with Cesium-137 — a radioactive byproduct most commonly associated with nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. So, yeah, not exactly the seasoning you expect with your seafood.
It started with U.S. Customs and Border Protection doing a routine inspection. They found traces of Cesium-137 in a batch of shipping containers from Indonesia, and tipped off the FDA. Tests revealed that not just the containers—but one actual sample of breaded frozen shrimp—was contaminated. That’s when Walmart got involved.
Turns out, some of the possibly affected shrimp had already made it into stores across 13 states. Cue the recall.
The recalled products include:
- Great Value frozen raw shrimp
- Lot codes: 8005540-1, 8005538-1, 8005539-1
- Best-by date: March 15, 2027
They’re sold in: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia.
If you’ve got a bag of Great Value shrimp in your freezer, it’s worth checking. Walmart says you can toss it or return it for a refund—no receipt needed.
That depends who you ask. The FDA says the risk is “quite low,” and Rutgers food safety expert Donald Schaffner agrees. The levels found were way below the FDA’s official “intervention” threshold.
But let’s be honest: radioactive seafood, no matter how mildly seasoned with isotopes, is enough to put you off shrimp for a minute.
The supplier in question—BMS Foods out of Indonesia—is now under investigation. This incident underscores how fragile the global supply chain can be. One glitch at one port, and suddenly you’ve got a radioactive surf-and-turf situation in suburban Ohio.
It also raises questions about how many contaminated shipments don’t get flagged. In this case, the tainted shrimp got in because it came from a different shipment than the one that originally triggered the alert. In other words, the detection system caught one batch, but the next one slipped past.
No, you’re probably not going to get radiation sickness from this. But if you’ve got Walmart shrimp in your freezer with those lot numbers, it’s not worth playing culinary roulette.
You don’t need a Geiger counter—just check the bag and skip dinner with Cesium-137.