These days, there's no food safety reason to rinse store-bought shrimp and a load of tiny, invisible reasons not to. But rinsing shrimp — or indeed, meat in general — can be a contentious topic. The U.
S. Department of Health & Human Services continues to shout from the rooftops strongly recommend against washing meat, poultry, or seafood of any kind. And they aren't alone.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture notes that rinsing or washing animal proteins like shrimp just spreads bacteria — some of which can be pretty serious — to your sink, the countertops, any utensils you use, anything in the sink, and potentially anything within the three-foot splash zone.
According to the U.S. government, if you suspect your shrimp is bad, you shouldn't eat it at all.
Rinsing it might remove some of that telltale fishy smell in any juices that have formed around the shrimp, but the only way to kill bacteria is to cook it. Unfortunately, it's not so simple. There are religious, cultural, and practical reasons to rinse meat, including shrimp.
Ultimately, you're in charge of whether your shrimp go for a final swim. But you should make that decision armed with the facts. Why not rinse raw shrimp? A 2015 study that appeared in Letters in Applied Microbiology notes that 55% of almost 300 shrimp samples scientists tested contained a dangerous bacteria called vibrio, which can cause gastritis, cholera, and (potentially flesh-eating) infections.
Some of those strains were even (eek!) .