The Biggest Shrimp Recalls To Hit The US

On one hand, there's reason to believe eating shrimp is a little safer than public perception suggests. Contrary to one false fact about shrimp, for example, it's OK to eat shrimp raw if it's fresh enough. However, there are still some precautions worth knowing before eating shrimp, like poor safety regulations on shrimp farmed abroad, or faulty labeling on commercial shrimp packaging.

Altogether, the severity of domestic shrimp recalls over the years is considerably lesser than, say, the biggest produce recalls in U.S. history. Nevertheless, reasons for shrimp recalls have included active salmonella infections and sometimes added up to more than 400,000 pounds of potentially contaminated product. The following are all of the biggest domestic shrimp recalls in reverse chronological order. For a recall to qualify on this list, its quantity had to significantly eclipse the majority of shrimp recalls — looking at almost 25 years of data from the Food Industry Counsel's food recall search, that meant a threshold of approximately 5,000 pounds of shrimp. Since there have been virtually no major health crises linked to a shrimp recall outside the purview of those criteria, this list is based solely on quantity. With that said, these are the largest-ever United States shrimp recalls in their totality.

Boar's Head deli meat ended up becoming one of the most deadly recalled foods in U.S. history once it was linked to a 2024 listeria outbreak with a serious death toll. The prior year, budget grocery chain Lidl identified listeria bacteria in a package of Cocktail Shrimp, sold under its Tapas brand. As a result, the chain recalled 8,948 pounds of the product as a precautionary measure.

While this recall affected every single Lidl location the United States, the chain operates in nine East Coast and Southern states as well as the District of Colombia, so its scope was geographically limited. It was actually a routine test initiated by Lidl and not a governmental agency like the FDA that identified the bacteria in the first place. Customers in possession of a package of Tapas Cocktail Shrimp at the time were encouraged to return the product to their nearest Lidl store for a full refund.

In the first half 2023, a major recall was announced for canned shrimp, packaged under a brand called Geisha. This particular recall is significant for its reach across the majority of the United States.

Initially, in February of 2023, parent company Kawasho Foods USA Inc. recalled just one lot of 4-ounce Geisha canned shrimp sold in four states due to insufficient processing — this meant that some cans were found to swell, leak, or burst, leading to the potential for contamination. A few months later, in April, Kawasho Foods expanded the scope of its recall to encompass all cans of 4-ounce Geisha canned shrimp in circulation at the time. They were sold in a total of 31 states. While canned shrimp may have posed a risk with this recall, no illness was ever publicly linked to a faulty can of Geisha shrimp, suggesting the recall successfully took care of the issue before it caused any real harm.

Listeria monocytogenes — which is the technical name for the bacteria that causes listeria infections in humans — was also the culprit behind a significant shrimp recall in 2021. In November of that year, listeria concerns triggered a recall of over 20,000 packages of shrimp sold at stores under the Southeastern Grocers umbrella.

It was a routine test that identified the listeria bacteria in this case as well. The resultant recall was limited solely to frozen, 1-pound bags of 16 to 20-count Fisherman's Wharf Jumbo Cooked Shrimp. Stores that carried the product included Winn-Dixie, Harveys Supermarket, and Fresco y Más. While the sheer quantity of the recall was significant, Southeastern Grocers is highly regional, operating in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Customers with a bag of the potentially contaminated shrimp were told to either dispose of it or return it for a refund at any store operated by Southeastern Grocers.

For what it's worth, the most dangerous shrimp recall to ever hit the United States pales in comparison to say, some of the biggest flour recalls in U.S. history. While nobody has died domestically after consuming contaminated flour, a couple of those cases resulted in plenty of severe illnesses, some of which required hospitalization. The single most dangerous shrimp recall, meanwhile, resulted in nine reported illnesses and two confirmed hospitalizations — still significant, of course, but simply not as bad as major recalls of many other types of products.

Specifically, 407,855 pounds of over 30 different shrimp products were recalled for their potential to carry salmonella. While the recalled products were packaged under brands ranging from Chicken of the Sea to Whole Foods 365, they were all sourced from a major frozen shrimp supplier called Avanti Frozen Foods. An initial recall in June of 2021 only consisted of nine products, but a subsequent expansion two months later more than tripled that total. Accordingly, Avanti Frozen Foods promised that it instituted some new precautions as a result of this incident in order to prevent something similar from happening in its wake.

Avanti Frozen Foods was actually the source of another major shrimp recall just months before the massive salmonella incident in 2021. This earlier recall, however, involved just one product sold at Whole Foods, and there were no reported illnesses linked to the faulty shrimp.

In this case, what were supposed to be bags of pre-cooked shrimp actually contained raw shrimp. Fortunately, the gaffe was limited to just one lot of one specific shrimp product packaged by Avanti Frozen Foods under the Whole Foods 365 brand. The product even utilized a clear bag, so the error was most likely apparent prior to the point of sale. Despite the relative inanity of this mistake, the total quantity of recalled product added up to 16,580 pounds — Whole Foods is a sizable grocery store chain, after all. For what it's worth, even the recall's considerable scale did not elevate it beyond Class III, which the FDA uses to indicate recalls with the least significant health risk.

The sole incident prior to the Avanti Frozen Foods recall in 2021 — to necessitate recalling hundreds of thousands of pounds of shrimp — happened just about one year earlier, in August of 2020. Salmonella was likewise responsible, but unlike the later case, salmonella risk was identified before potentially contaminated products could cause any real infections.

Inciting this recall was an FDA test that identified salmonella bacteria in a batch of frozen, cooked shrimp imported by a brand called Kader Exports. Brands for which they supplied shrimp included Unistar, Wellsley Farms, Kirkland Signature, Aqua Star Reserve, Censea, Fresh Market, and Tops. In full, 406,080 pounds of shrimp products under those brand names were implicated in the recall. At just 1,775 pounds fewer than the Avanti Frozen Foods incident, this is technically the second-largest shrimp recall in U.S. history. Like Avanti Frozen Foods, Kader Exports claimed to have identified and eliminated whatever was responsible for contaminating its shrimp with salmonella.

In June of 2019, 46,585 pounds of frozen shrimp were recalled after, according to the FDA's enforcement report, "there was a foreign object found inside product packaging." What that foreign object was and why it affected tens of thousands of pounds of frozen shrimp were unspecified, making this easily the vaguest reason for a major shrimp recall.

The affected products were packaged under the Ocean Supreme and Yaquina Bay brands, both supplied by a company called California Shellfish, Inc. Foreign objects necessitating food recalls have included anything from metal fragments to, somehow, plastic that came from a permanent marker. Since the health risk of eating material not fit for human consumption can be considerable, product recalls in cases like these are often pretty sizable. While it's not clear just what foreign object California Shellfish found, it was implicitly something no paying customer would ever want to find in their bag of frozen shrimp.

Prepackaged garlic shrimp sold at Aldi under its Bremer brand was hit with a major recall in 2013 after the product was determined to contain eggs with no mention of the ingredient — a possible allergen — on its packaging. A frozen meal company called Gourmet Express, LLC supplied Aldi with the item, in addition to chicken lo mein and Bremer 3 Cheese Chicken meals. The latter products were also found to contain undeclared eggs at that time, but they were removed from circulation before they hit store shelves.

The quantity of Bremer Garlic Shrimp recalled totaled 10,395 pounds. Due to the danger the product might have posed to customers allergic to eggs, the recall was labeled Class I by the FDA, indicating the highest level of danger. Fortunately, no incidents were reported stemming from the mislabeled product. As a result of the recall, Aldi and Gourmet Express, LLC worked with the FDA to prevent future undeclared allergen incidents.

In May of 2013, a supplier called Blessings, Inc. had to recall 36,920 pounds of so-called EZ Peel Shrimp. On the packaging of the affected product was some sort of verbiage claiming the shrimp was sulfite-free, but at least three lots of EZ Peel Shrimp product were found to contain a quantity of sulfites in excess of the threshold required for sulfite-free labeling.

These bags of EZ Peel Shrimp were produced for the Hy-Vee grocery store chain, limiting the recall's scope to the eight states in which the chain operates: Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. For whatever reason, a stand-alone store called Cedar Valley Fish Market in Waterloo, Iowa also carried the recalled product. As was the case with the undeclared egg incident just months later, the level of danger undeclared sulfites could have posed to a customer with a sulfite allergy earned this recall Class I classification from the FDA.

Undeclared allergens were behind another major shrimp recall in February of 2009. Specifically, 26,223 pounds of a prepackaged Aqua Star product simply called Shrimp Appetizers were implicated after they were determined to contain undeclared peanuts.

What makes this case unique is that one customer did, in fact, report falling ill as a result of the product's peanut content. Reports about the case include no further details beyond the mere fact that a customer fell ill, so their allergic reaction was likely not too severe. Coincidentally, peanuts were already in the news at the time of this recall after peanut butter contaminated with salmonella caused multiple deaths and hundreds of illnesses. The fact that the Aqua Star shrimp recall involved peanuts too was happenstance, but given the severity of the peanut butter outbreak, it warranted mentioning in reports about the recall issued at the time.