Seafood sellers in China caught scavenging shrimp from sewers to sell
By Elizabeth Licata
Consumers often put a lot of trust in the people who produce, distribute, and sell food.
At any step along the way, someone could try to cut corners to save some money, and we’d probably never know.
This week. Internet users in China were horrified to see photographic evidence of some seafood sellers scavenging discarded shrimp and fish from the sewers to serve to unsuspecting customers.
These photos show vendors in China using “sewer shrimp” to make street food: http://bit.ly/297cd1P
According to Shanghaiist, it’s not uncommon for there to be shrimp waste at the markets in Wuhan, China.
The waste shrimp fall into the sewers and, theoretically, that would be the last anyone would hear of them. But some seafood vendors were photographed “rescuing” the discarded shrimp, rinsing them off at a public toilet, then mixing them up with other fish and seafood to be made into “shrimp balls.”
Shrimp balls can be purchased from any number of street food vendors, and it’d be virtually impossible for a customer to know if a snack was made only from fresh shrimp and seafood– or if it was made of sewer shrimp on the floor of a public restroom.
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