Study: China Is Selling Kenya Fish Poisoned with Mercury, Lead, Pesticides

The Chinese government is selling Kenya tons of fish poisoned with high levels of toxins like mercury, lead, and arsenic, the African country’s the Nation newspaper revealed in a study published Wednesday.

In the past three years, China has overwhelmed the Kenyan fish market with high volumes of cheap farmed fish like tilapia, making it impossible for Kenyans to subsist off of fishing in Lake Victoria as they cannot compete with the low prices of the Chinese product. Yet for years, reports have warned that the fish imported from Nairobi’s communist business partner is toxic, particularly dangerous to pregnant or nursing women who may pass on the poison to infant children.

Concern over both China’s devastation of Kenya’s traditional fishing economy and the dangers of eating Chinese fish led Kenyan authorities to impose a short-lived ban on Chinese fish in early 2019. The Communist Party responded by branding Kenyan officials’ reasonable concerns a “trade war” and threatening to cut funding for Kenyan Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. The ban barely lasted through February of that year.

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