Right now, everybody’s seeing red.

By Colin S. Sargent

Maine lobster has become a political football in trade wars with China, COVID politics, and saving the right whale. We can expect it to continue to be targeted as an international symbol of luxury consumption in the future. 

“On November 11, 2019, at 4:04 a.m., China Eastern Airlines flight MU298 landed at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. A batch of U.S. cold chain cargo on board was unloaded from the cabin of the North Cargo Terminal of the airport and transported to the international cargo entry area for customs clearance. Among them were 55 boxes of chilled American [Maine] lobsters totaling 823.4 kilograms…From July to the end of October 2019, the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, local media, and residents’ personal social accounts repeatedly reported ‘e-cigarette pneumonia,’ which is the ‘suspected new coronavirus pneumonia’ case that has been hidden in the United States…I am afraid it is this batch of American lobsters that opened the Pandora’s box of the epidemic in the South China seafood market.” 

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.