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[Washington, DC – August 22, 2025] The health advocacy group Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN) hailed this week’s FDA warnings flagging shipments of Indonesian shrimp that tested positive for the radioactive isotope Cesium 137, which resulted in recalls from store shelves. But while the action is welcome and overdue, the group said, it raises more questions about the nature and source of the radioactive contamination and underscores the unmet need for protective US standards limiting radioactivity in food, and for labeling to inform consumers of potential risks.
Earlier this year FFAN urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take swift action on radioactive contamination in food, including via a sign-on letter the group spearheaded and delivered to the agencies.
This week’s FDA press release on Tuesday warned consumers that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection had tested shipments of imported “Great Value-brand” frozen shrimp processed by the Indonesian company BMS Food. At least one shrimp sample tested positive for Cesium 137, and the FDA said the levels detected “could represent a potential health concern.” Any shipping containers testing positive for Cesium 137 were denied entry into the US. The FDA said it was investigating the incident and urged consumers to throw away certain lots of “Great Value-brand” shrimp they had bought at WalMart as a precaution. WalMart then recalled the shrimp. On Thursday, FDA issued another warning, prompting more voluntary recalls of potentially contaminated shrimp, the latest one announced by Southwind Foods, LLC of California which sells shrimp under the brand names Sand Bar, Arctic Shores, Best Yet, Great American, and First Street.
“We’re grateful the problem was caught and that FDA took these steps to flag it, but it points up past failures of the US regulatory system to confront the growing threat of radioactive contamination in our food,” said Kimberly Roberson, founder and project director of the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network, with a project of the National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy.
“For example, the Make America Healthy Again Commission left radioactive contamination entirely out of its 2025 report on factors in the rise in cancers and chronic illnesses that should be investigated, despite our repeated pleas that it should be included” Roberson said. “Historically, there has been perfunctory regulation and very little transparency about FDA testing for radioactive contamination in food, and no labeling to enable consumers to make informed choices about foods with potential contamination risk, such as fish caught in the Pacific where it may be affected by the dumping of radioactive water from the Fukushima disaster.”
“US standards for how much radioactivity is allowable in food are much more lax than some other countries,” Robeson said. “Foods that are too contaminated to be sold in Japan can be sold here and served to US servicemen and women overseas. The limit in Japan is 50 becquerels per kilogram for children and 100 for adults, vs. 1200 bq/kg for both adults and children in the US. And even that minimal standard in the US is only advisory and therefore unenforceable. We petitioned the FDA repeatedly about the need to change this and wrote to Secretary Kennedy about it, first in March 2025 after the White House issued an executive order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission, and when we received no response, again in May. We’re hopeful this week’s shrimp recalls are a sign that we may finally be getting heard.”
The updated FDA warning yesterday pointed out that the Cesium levels found in the shrimp were approximately 68 bq/kg, which exceeds the safe level in Japan. While it does not come close to the US “derived intervention levels” of 1200 bq/kg, the FDA still cited a potential health concern. “That raises the question of whether the federal government is becoming aware that current US standards for radioactive contamination in food are insufficient to protect health,” said Roberson.
The FDA warnings did not address possible sources of the radioactive contamination. They said only that the imported shrimp that tested positive for Cesium 137 “appears to have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with Cs-137” and that shipments from BMS Foods would be banned “from coming into the U.S. until the firm has resolved the conditions that gave rise to the appearance of the violation.”
“The wording of the FDA warnings begs the question of how the Cesium 137, a manmade isotope produced only by nuclear reactions, got into the shrimp,” Roberson said. “We don’t know where it came from, and let’s be clear: the goal of the investigation should be to find out. Whether ‘insanitary conditions’ permitted the shrimp to be contaminated, the mystery of where the radioactive material it was contaminated with came from needs to be front and center.”
“We know that at Fukushima, a planned 40-year program of dumping radioactive contaminated water stored since the 2011 nuclear power plant disaster into the Pacific began in August 2023 and is ongoing, which poses potential risks from consuming Pacific fish.” Roberson said. “Bluefin tuna, for example, migrates from northern Japan to the west coast of the US and can accumulate Cesium in their bodies across their lifespan of 30 years or more prior to human consumption. We also know that Japan catches shrimp off Northern Japan and sends it to the United States by way of Indonesia. The point is, unless we drill down on the source of the radioactive contamination, we could unknowingly be importing more food that comes in contact with it.”
Following the Fukushima disaster, health advocacy and watchdog groups submitted petitions asking FDA to confront radioactive contamination in food. In 2013, the California delegation to the American Medical Association adopted a resolution urging the AMA to call for federal monitoring and reporting on radioactivity in Pacific fish sold in the U.S. that could reasonably have been exposed to radiation from Fukushima, including the potential health implications of consuming them. Also in 2013, a Citizen Petition (file docket number FDA-2013-P-0291) called on FDA to slash allowable levels of cancer-causing Cesium in the U.S. food supply.
The FDA has thus far taken no action on the petitions or the AMA resolution. Even though worldwide radiative contamination has decreased in the past decades, that has resulted from the decay of short-lived isotopes from past incidents, not longer-lasting elements like Cesium 137. Meanwhile, Americans continue to consume food from Japan that is potentially 12 to 24 times higher in Cesium than Japan permits to be sold to or consumed by its citizens.
In May 2025, FFAN and its allies sent a sign-on letter to HHS urging it to “finally address the impact of radiation contamination of U.S. food on the trajectory of cancer and chronic illness by setting and enforcing much safer levels for Americans.” The letter renewed the 2013 Citizen Petition’s call for FDA to reset standards so that food commercially available in the U.S. has no more than 5 Bq/kg of cesium 134/137 contamination. And it called on HHS Secretary Kennedy and the MAHA Commission to direct the FDA to respond to the Citizen Petition and report back.
The full letter is posted here. It was spearheaded by the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN), and endorsed by the National Institute for Science, Law & Public Policy, Organic Consumers Association, Citizens for Health, Samuel Lawrence Foundation, Fairewinds Energy Education, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Beyond Nuclear, and Ecological Options Network.
Last year FFAN and allied groups organized a Congressional briefing on “Radioactive Contamination of U.S. Food and Water and What Congress Can Do About It” featuring leading independent scientists, which the May 2025 letter to HHS summarized. “Experts on the panel agreed that radioactive contamination of U.S. food and water is in urgent need of oversight, deserving the same level of attention policymakers and regulators once paid to DDT and mercury,” the letter states. The briefing transcript is posted here.
