Gulf seafood may be the most tested, and safest, fish you can find.
When President Obama took his August microvacation along the Gulf of Mexico, he swam in the water, munched on fish tacos, and said, “Let me be clear. Seafood from the gulf is safe to eat.”
More than 90 percent of the shrimp consumed in this country comes from Thailand, China, India, and Ecuador, where the shrimp is raised in ponds so overcrowded, they also serve as breeding grounds for salmonella, bacteria, and parasites, which are combated by adding massive doses of antibiotics and fungicides to the water. Then there’s the taste and texture, which Dave Pasternack, chef at Manhattan’s Italian seafood mecca Esca, calls “disgusting.”
Given the imports’ lovely provenance, it’s ironic that Americans are now squeamish about the catch in the gulf. We spot-test less than 2 percent of the shrimp that comes in, compared with the 20 to 30 percent required by the European Union. Contrast that to what’s going on in the gulf, where waters must be free of oil for a month before fishing is allowed. Samples of all fish and shellfish (directly from the water, as well as from docks and markets) are then aggressively tested for contaminants by both the FDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which subjects them to microscopic analysis and the “sniff test” (by people trained to detect the presence of oil). To Pasternack, such measures mean that “gulf seafood is the safest seafood in the world right now.”
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