Published on: Sept 04, 2025 07:04 am IST
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in August, issued a warning about radioactive shrimp.
Louisiana Senator John Kennedy chose to highlight the potential dangers of people eating radioactive shrimp by drawing a parallel to the iconic sci-fi, horror movie Alien.
“If you eat some of the radioactive frozen shrimp that foreign countries are sending to America, you may end up looking like this picture from the movie, ‘Alien!’,” he said.
The 73-year-old Republican made his point with a photograph showing an alien from the Ridley Scott-directed film. The picture appears to show a Chestburster – an infant form of the Xenomorph alien that gets its name because of the violent way it bursts out of a host’s chest.
Kennedy’s point comes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning in August for customers not to eat certain lots of frozen shrimps sold under the Great Value brand of Walmart, flagging potential contamination with cesium-137, a radioactive isotope.
“Avoiding products like the shipment FDA tested with similar levels of Cs-137 is a measure intended to reduce exposure to low-level radiation that could have health impacts with continued exposure over time,” the FDA said in a statement.
Internet reacts to Sen Kennedy’s Alien reference
Senator Kennedy’s pop culture Alien movie reference to make his point has garnered various reactions from those online. One person gushed, calling him a ‘national treasure’ in an X post. Another quipped “On your spare time you gotta do comedy honestly your a natural.”
“You are priceless!!,” said another, while one person claimed the senator ‘always’ made them laugh.
Others had different takes, like one person who noted that Democrats lacked a sense of humor – “I just love a Senator with a great sense of humor. It’s too bad that this is the thing all the Democrats are lacking,” they said. Yet another commented that the poster printing budget must be defunded, calling the Alien movie presentation a ‘joke’.
The FDA, in its August press release, noted that the contaminated shrimps were processed by PT Bahari Makmur Sejati (BMS Foods), an Indonesia-based seafood company.
