https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/9-dead-78-hospitalized-eating-sea-turtle-meat-zanzibars-pemba-island-rcna142635
In Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous region of the East African nation of Tanzania, sea turtle meat has proven to be a sometimes deadly delicacy. Officials have warned against consuming it.
Yeah, don't . . . . don't eat sea turtles, okay.
Everybody? Like if you were sitting around rubbing your belly and licking your lips going "Mmmm mmmm wish I had a big sea turtle meat dish right now", like - don't. Okay?
Just leave the sea turtles alone. They got enough hassles.
Agreed! Leave the turtles alone!
And the cows. And the pigs. And the chickens. They all have enough problems.
Everyone who downvoted this should know that pigs are raised in pens where they don't have enough room to turn around and have to sleep and give birth in their own shit.
But hey, the narwhal bacons at midnight, right?
The juvenile preoccupation with shaming vegans online is so fucking exhausting and annoying. You'd think the existence of vegans and the idea of eating less meat to reduce overall cruelty was like asking them to sell their child into slavery.
People would rather do anything than admit their contribution to the problem.
I see it all the time.
I raise my own pigs in large pens and they are treated well until slaughter.
What are your feelings on that?
I'm gonna lock you in my basement and give you lots of tasty food and nice magazines before I butcher and eat you. Yum!
That you are slaughtering them. So you aren't testing them well at all. That's just a thing you say so you can feel better about knowingly causing harm. Do you treat your cat well until you kill the for the pleasure of their body? Do you treat your dog well until someone pays you enough to kill it?
Being nice to a creature before murdering it doesn't absolve the murder. Not causing harm in another is the standard for ethical behavior, not you going the extra mile.
I do a rudimentary arithmetic and geometry test before slaughter.
They’re not going to live forever in nature and I give them a very good life.
Plus all the great meats come from pig.
Bacon, ham, and all the other great porky bits.
They’re not going to live forever in nature and I give them a very good life.
Again. Does not absolve murder. Literally no one will live forever, but that's not a reason why you can kill your neighbors.
Plus all the great meats come from pig.
Harming a creature for your own personal pleasure is the logic of dog fighting. You don't need to watch that as entertainment just as you don't need to kill for the enjoyment of food.
I feel like you using very selfish reasoning. Does assault, rape or murder become moral if I enjoy it enough?
Ok, so there's a risk of death. If I'm on a desert island then I'll risk it, otherwise I'll avoid.
Had to look up why sea turtle meat would kill, since it's not reported in the article. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelonitoxism
Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy by Zanzibar’s people even though it periodically results in deaths from chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning.
Second paragraph.
It's incredible, I've never seen a disease with so little information on the actual mechanism behind it. The articles just lists where it happens and every symptom you can think of. The word Chelonitoxin itself just refers to the scientific name of these turtles Chelonia followed by toxin.
I dug a little deeper and found this:
Salmonella sp., Proteus sp., Aeromonas, Escherichia coli, Citrobacter sp., Enterobacter sp., Klebsiella sp., Morganella morganii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella sp. and Shigella sp. are some of the pathogenic microorganisms found in this study. Some of these microorganisms are common bacterial flora of nesting green turtles (Santoro et al., 2006).
So it looks like the gut biome of the turtles is capable of killing humans. My first guess was going to be the diet of the turtles.
cyanobacteria infection of the turtle. it can also happen if they dont parboil the turtle meat correctly. that's the best i could find using an Internet search
Wikipedia notes that the likely cause is a neurotoxin. Apparently it's an area of little research, though.
It's painfully obvious that some cultures just haven't learned these lessons yet.
It would be awesome if this encouraged some young people to be proactive in learning about what they eat.
Holy fuck, the Wikipedia article for Chelonitoxism is crazy. No wonder everyone is dead or fucked up.
Children are especially susceptible, and the toxins have been reported to transfer readily via breastfeeding, even when the mother experiences no illness.
Motherfucking toxin from the Alien movies
Digestive system signs include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, dysphagia, tongue abnormalities and a firm, nontender liver. Autopsies have revealed hemorrhage in liver, esophagus and stomach, with mucosal edema of the esophagus, stomach and intestines. Fatty changes and necrosis of the liver were present. Other organs found to be abnormal on autopsy include swollen gall bladder, congested kidneys and enlarged spleen.
I don't wish anyone dead, really. But good, in a way. Leave the fucking turtles alone, we already make it hard enough for them. There's zero reason to kill and eat a bunch.
Edit: Well, I think there's zero reason. I have no clue what foods are available where they are or how plentiful they are. But since this is described as a "delicacy" I assume it's a luxury that could easily be skipped.
There are three known species of salt-water sea turtles that can cause this type of a death (chelonitoxism) - two of them are Vulnerable, one of them is Endangered.
🎶 Toxic marine threatened turtles, toxic marine threatened turtles, toxic marine threatened turtles. Revenge in a half shell, turtle chowder!🎶
Whenever something is described as a delicacy I see a bunch of rich cunts eating something that doesn't even taste good, but it's expensive so they must have it while looking down their noses at people eating a delicious fry up.
So yeah maybe read the article. Hint: it wasn't rich people, but indigenous people of Zanzibar. Apparently the dish is a delicacy to them but perhaps culturally significant. Especially if 3 year olds were consuming it (as fucking wild as that is), sounds like a cultural thing. I mean either way people shouldn't be eating turtles for a lot of reasons, hopefully the Tanzinian government could assist with some education on the subject I dunno.
This is tragic.
While the Wikipedia page lists food poisonings from sea turtles as rare, it still feels like a Russian Roulette kind of meal.
Would you eat something knowing that there is a nonzero chance it might kill you (as in really off you, not just give you a bad night at the bathroom)?
I suppose the answer is a lot of people would, since the article itself mentioned another recent poisoning.
It reminds me of the blowfish which is also lethally poisonous if not handled by someone who's certified to do so.
I suppose everything in life has a risk and I've done my share of reckless things, but rolling the dice on food never appealed to me.
Edit: fixed grammar
I think we're just kind of bad at evaluating risks of a relatively low order. In the US, E coli kills some 3000 people a year, and most of us have exposure to that risk. It might just be that people don't see much of a difference between chances in the range of, say, 0.1% and 0.00001% of serious illness.
Yea a while ago 20 people died at a wedding in Mada after being served Turtle. Hawksbill or Green, not sure. I should find the news article but I'm too lazy and it's late. Hawksbill is supposed to never be edible. Over here in Mayotte there are still poachers
I wouldn't eat something that could kill me, but I def will ingest something like that. But hey that's just me.
if not handled by someone who’s certified to do so.
Just wanna say, you can be uncertified and handle it properly and certified while handling it improperly.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
ZANZIBAR, Tanzania — Eight children and an adult died and 78 other people were hospitalized after eating sea turtle meat on Pemba Island in the Zanzibar archipelago, authorities said Saturday.
Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy by Zanzibar’s people even though it periodically results in deaths from chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning.
The adult who died late Friday was the mother of one of the children who succumbed earlier, said the Mkoani District medical officer, Dr. Haji Bakari.
Bakari told The Associated Press that laboratory tests had confirmed all the victims had eaten sea turtle meat.
Authorities in Zanzibar, which is a semi-autonomous region of the East African nation of Tanzania, sent a disaster management team led by Hamza Hassan Juma, who urged people to avoid consuming sea turtles.
In November 2021, seven people, including a 3-year-old, died on Pemba after eating turtle meat, while three others were hospitalized.
The original article contains 159 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 5%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
If only there was an article you could read about this incident that would answer your question...
I did read the article. In the west with modern healthcare we routinely survive things that would have killed someone with worse healthcare. The article doesn't discuss that. It just states that people died and what illness killed them.
