About 90% of shrimp consumed in the United States is imported.

Because much important seafood is farm-raised in confined conditions, drugs are used to prevent

or treat disease and increase survival rates.

And residues of some of these drugs can cause cancer

or allergic reactions or contribute to antibiotic resistance.

Among different kinds of seafood shrimp have had the highest frequency of veterinary drug violations,

primarily for nitrofurans and chloramphenicol.

The United States banned chloramphenicol 35 years ago due to a link with a rare and often fatal disease called aplastic anemia.

Nitrofurans are also dangerous because they're potential cancer-causing properties,

so their use in animals produced for human consumption is similarly banned in Europe and the United States.

For something as potentially dangerous as

Chlorumphenical, governments around the world have established zero-tolerance policies,

which means that no residues in food are permissible. However, traces of chloramphenical

have been detected in shrimp. Unlike most of the animals we eat, who have multiple organs for drug excretion,

shrimp possess only one, which may allow more antibiotics to build up in them, but you don't

know until you put it to the test. There have been four studies published on the presence

of banned drugs in retail U.S. shrimp. One found that 92% of imported farm-rate shrimp tested positive for at least one drug that is banned

for use in the United States.

Another of just six shrimp from stores in Arizona and California found drugs in two of them.

The third tested dozens purchased in Louisiana from many of our main shrimp import

is in 70 percent tested positive for the zero-tolerance carcinogenic nitrophureantoin.

Of all the countries, Vietnam appeared to be sending a shrimp with the most types of antibiotic

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