Is it safe to eat Gulf Coast shrimp following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Yes, for now. But the long-term effects on the fishing industry as well as the plants and animals in the region could be devastating, experts say.
Oil-contaminated shrimp would smell like oil, says Charles Wohlforth, author of “The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth.”
“It would be pretty obvious,” he says. “No one would want to buy or eat it.”
So far, it’s not a problem, but if fishermen in the Gulf region lose their livelihood for the foreseeable future, shrimp may be very hard to come by. Price increases are a definite possibility and market conditions will determine the price, experts say.
“We won’t have a choice, and neither will the consumer in the end,” Russell Knapp of E. Goodwin & Sons in Maryland, told a local TV station, according to The Daily Finance. “What will affect them is how much it’ll cost.”
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