Round-tailed horseshoe crab
According to news reports, a family in Fuzhou bought round-tailed horseshoe crab from the market to cook, and on the same day, a family of 5 had different degrees of poisoning, one of them had an acute myocardial infarction, became a vegetative person, and eventually died of ineffective treatment. It has been identified as having a tetrodotoxin content of 9.2 mg/kg. Recently, the court sentenced the stall owner of the market to sell roundtail horseshoe crab to 7 years in prison and compensate for economic losses for the crime of selling food that does not meet safety standards (selling roundtail horseshoe crab in his own stall after knowing that it cannot be sold and that people may cause physical discomfort after eating it).
What is round-tailed horseshoe crab? Why is it poisoned? In 2014, the Fujian Food and Drug Administration issued a consumer safety warning to remind the general public not to buy and eat round-tailed horseshoe crab, and if accidental consumption occurs and similar neurological poisoning symptoms such as lip numbness occur, they should immediately go to the hospital for treatment.
Round-tailed horseshoe crab, also known as horseshoe crab or horseshoe crab, limb-mouthed sword-tailed marine arthropods, horseshoe crabs also known as climbing stoves, husband and wife fish, Mandarin duck fish, oriental horseshoe crabs, sea kings, but not crabs, but are related to scorpions, spiders and extinct trilobites. It is the smallest of the extant horseshoe crabs (there are 4 species of horseshoe crabs living on Earth), with an average body length of about 30 cm and an average weight of about 0.5 kg.
delicacies
The theory of poisoning by eating horseshoe crabs is reliable, but not all horseshoe crabs can cause poisoning. Among the four species of horseshoe crabs, there are no reports of poisoning by Eating American Horseshoe Crabs, and birds have not seen reports of poisoning by stealing crab eggs during the breeding season, which may be non-toxic; although there are experiments that believe that southern horseshoe crabs have certain toxicity, but birds have not seen symptoms of poisoning after eating a large number of horseshoe eggs, it is estimated that the toxicity is not large; as for Chinese horseshoe crabs, except for some cases of edible allergies, there are no poisoning reports, which should be safe, but Chinese horseshoe crabs have become increasingly rare, becoming a national second-level protected animal and a second-level protected animal in Guangxi Province. It is forbidden for any unit or individual to illegally hunt, buy, process and carry; the current poisonous round-tailed horseshoe crab is different, this thing can really eat dead people, scientists have detected highly toxic tetrodotoxin and other substances in the body of round-tailed horseshoe crabs, as well as some shellfish paralytic toxins...
Tetrodotoxin
How toxic is tetrodotoxin? It is easy to decompose in alkaline and strongly acidic environments, but traditional food processing methods such as boiling, salting and exposure cannot remove it, and can only be removed by heating at 100 ° C for 7 hours or heating at 200 ° C for 10 minutes and long-term alkali treatment. Tetrodotoxin disease depends on the amount of food, the incubation period is short, generally within 10-45 minutes of symptoms, some in a few hours after the onset of the disease, the course of the disease is rapid, the initial blush, headache and other symptoms, followed by a violent intestinal reaction, followed by sensory nerve paralysis, severe breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure will be affected. Lethal doses can cause patients to die of respiratory failure within 4 to 6 hours, and the death can occur as soon as 10 minutes after the onset of symptoms.
Why do round-tailed horseshoe crabs produce tetrodotoxin? Is it self-generated? Kungsuwan et al. discovered in 1988 that in the intestines of round-tailed horseshoe, Vibrio alginolyticus,mainly Vibrio alginolyticus, can produce tetrodotoxin, which is the main bacterium that makes horseshoe virulent. In 1994, scientists detected at least three types of bacteria from the intestines, eggs and ovaries of the round-tailed crab that can produce toxins. These bacteria have a symbiotic relationship with them at least since the larvae of the round-tailed horseshoe crab, allowing toxins to accumulate in the round-tailed horseshoe crabs. Experiments have confirmed that round-tailed horseshoe crabs have a strong tolerance to these toxins, and these toxins have become a powerful weapon for round-tailed horseshoe crabs to retaliate against predators.
Horseshoe crab reagent
However, the horseshoe crab is not useless, and its extract of blue blood, the "horseshoe reagent", has high economic value. It can accurately and quickly detect whether the body's internal tissues are causing disease due to bacterial infections, and in the pharmaceutical and food industries, it can be used to monitor toxin contamination.
Horseshoe crabs, or eat less is better!