Great, thoughtful post! Thank you for being a voice of reason in an otherwise reactive, jump-to-conclusions world.
As an oyster nerd (who does oyster nerd things professionally), I wanted to help by raising a couple points of clarification. The primary vibrio that is linked to getting food-borne illness from eating raw oysters is actually a strain called Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Much harder to say, but much more prevalent, and far less life-threatening.
If you look at the FDA data, most deaths caused by Vibrio vulnificus are through exposure of open wounds and not by ingesting any food containing the pathogen. Furthermore, once you slice the data further to isolate the people who die from vibrio vulnificus via raw oysters, it's actually really, really low.
We hosted a really fascinating webinar with Robert Rheault, the Executive Director of East Coast Shellfish Growers Association and known as the "vibrio evangelist" amongst the industry to get all of the facts about vibrio and oysters. Happy to share that with you, in case if you're interested!
Great, thoughtful post! Thank you for being a voice of reason in an otherwise reactive, jump-to-conclusions world.
As an oyster nerd (who does oyster nerd things professionally), I wanted to help by raising a couple points of clarification. The primary vibrio that is linked to getting food-borne illness from eating raw oysters is actually a strain called Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Much harder to say, but much more prevalent, and far less life-threatening.
If you look at the FDA data, most deaths caused by Vibrio vulnificus are through exposure of open wounds and not by ingesting any food containing the pathogen. Furthermore, once you slice the data further to isolate the people who die from vibrio vulnificus via raw oysters, it's actually really, really low.
We hosted a really fascinating webinar with Robert Rheault, the Executive Director of East Coast Shellfish Growers Association and known as the "vibrio evangelist" amongst the industry to get all of the facts about vibrio and oysters. Happy to share that with you, in case if you're interested!
Hi! I'd love to see the webinar, thank you!