Thats supposed to protect the food supply. Dr. Shini somara is a mechanical engineer. Shell share the results of her investigation. Now how dangerous is that for human beings . And im phil torres, im an entomologist. I visit a shrimp farm in the middle of indiana. Yes, indiana. That could revolutionize the industry. Wow, this is like a Little Laboratory here. Yes it is. And a shrimp farm. Cara santa maria is a neuroscientist. Imagine that you are one of the first to take a trip to mars. This is the definition of pioneering. Thats what makes it exciting. Thats our team, now lets do some science. Hey i got some hey guys and welcome to techknow im phil torres joined by doctor shini somara and cara santa maria. Now guys im not going to lie, one of my favorite things is shrimp sizzling away on a hot grill. But i also have a fair amount of hesitation when it comes to actually knowing where that shrimp comes from. Yeah and you may not realize it but shrimp raised overseas can have high levels of antibiotics and other additives that dont always pass American Safety standards. And america imports a lot of shrimp over a billion pounds worth. So we asked the food and Drug Administration, the Agency Responsible for policing u. S. Ports, if we could follow them while they test for unsafe shipments. America has a jumbo appetite for shrimp. Its a little piece of flesh that they can eat easy; its kinda like popcorn of the sea. Americans eat an average of four pounds per person per year. At fred 62 in los angeles, chef fred eric serves a lot of shrimp. Its very difficult as a chef or restaurateur to buy shrimp with the confidence that what you serving them is going to be good. Thai cob freshwhich, with shrimp. Americans taste for shrimp comes with a price. 90 percent of all the shrimp eaten in the u. S. Is imported. Much of it from countries like india, thailand and indonesia. Sometimes shrimp is raised overseas using production drugs like antibiotics that are approved for use in those countries but not approved for use in the us. Johns hopkins microbiologist david love surveyed federal data on drugs found in imported shrimp. Some of the top drugs that we found in shrimp were nitrofurans, chloramphenicol tetracycline, sulfonamides, and streptomycin. What does it means for the consumer to be exposed to the antibiotic resistant bacteria . If you get an infection from these bacteria it can be harder to treat with antibiotics, especially if these bacteria are resistant to the antibiotics that your doctor would prescribe. Overseas shrimp farms that use antibiotics often farm with overcrowded ponds. And diseases are a big deal in shrimp farming, there can be a high mortality rate in some shrimp farms. The food and Drug Administration polices shrimp imports. 5. 5 billion pounds of seafood is imported into the United States every year and much of it ends up in a cold Storage Facility like this one in southern california, but only a tiny fraction of all of that seafood is actually inspected so weve come here today to find out exactly how the fda does that. Emily morrison is a veteran fda inspector. We collected one sub sample out of 15 random boxes and now im in the process of bagging them up, put them in coolers and ship it to the lab. A Computer System red flags imports believed to pose the greatest risk based on country of origin and a companys past history of violations. Seafood by nature is a highrisk commodity. Dan solis heads inspections at the port of los angeles. There are many boxes here and they are all packed full, what percentage of this sample gets chosen to be taken to the lab . So, fda reviews all electronic transmissions. We utilized things like foreign inspection, domestic inspection, whether it was sampled in another port, all that information is gathered within the predict application and then that shipment will be given a risk score, the higher the risk score the more chances one of these officers will sample that shipment. Once the fda inspector picks samples for inspection they are sent to a fda lab like this one in irvine california. Are you making a shrimp smoothie . Im making a shrimp powder. Its like a magic trick yes. The shrimp powder is mixed with a chemical solvent, dried and liquefied again to run through an analyzer. Kai wang is a fda chemist. So kai the results are in from the test, what are they showing us . In this case, the compound i am looking for is nitrofurons. And how dangerous is that for human beings . Nitrofurons are dangerous for human beings because its carcinogenic. The fda action level for nitrofuron is one parts per billion. One parts per billion is the equivalent of looking for one gram of salt in an olympic sized Swimming Pool. Wow so how many parts is this per billion is this result . I would say its about 1 to 2 parts per billion. So two grains of salt in an olympic sized Swimming Pool and youve managed to find it it that vial . Yeah. Thats incredible. So that batch of shrimp is not allowed in this country, essentially . Its not going to be allowed in this country. The fda simply isnt testing enough on the imported market to really find all of these violative residues. Dr. Urvashi rangan headed a study of imported shrimp for the june 2015 issue of the influential magazine consumer reports. Of the 205 imported farm samples that we found, 11 of those actually had illegal residues of antibiotics on them. That comes out to about 5 of the imported farmed shrimp samples being contaminated with an illegal antibiotic residue. The fact that the fda only tests about. 7 percent of all the shrimp in this country for those antibiotic residues suggests that the agency is not actually testing enough shrimp to catch the amount of illegal residue products that may be coming into the market. However, many of the countries that export the shrimp permit the use of antibiotics. When you feed low levels of antibiotics every day, youre not feeding them enough to necessarily kill bacteria. Those bacteria can become resistant to those antibiotics that can make those antibiotics less effective in people if were infected by those bacteria. Just as worrisome was the number of shrimp that tested positive for bacteria. We found about a third of the shrimp that we had, had vibrio contamination. Vibrio is one of the few food borne illnesses on the rise. Seven of the samples we found had mrsa. Thats concerning too and thats probably primarily associated with the amount of processing that goes on with Shrimp Production. Both have the potential to cause illness, although through the cooking process they can be killed. We do know that there are shrimp farms and Shrimp Production practices that are doing a lot more to address those issues, that are addressing hygiene and addressing other issues so that they arent heavily reliant on drugs or other chemicals. Hey i got some yep when we come back, phil torres with some pioneers of shrimp farming. So, this is a clean shrimp . Thats a clean shrimp. We want to hear what you think about these stories. Join the conversation by following us on twitter and at aljazeera. Com techknow. Al jazeera america, weekday mornings. Catch up on what happened overnight with a full morning brief. Get a first hand look with indepth reports and investigations. Start weekday mornings with al jazeera america. Open your eyes to a world in motion. Six hundred miles from the nearest ocean. Nestled in a patchwork of windmills and soybean and cornfields is tiny fowler indiana, home to rdm aquaculture. A mom and pop indoor saltwater shrimp farm. Hi, how are you . Hi guys very good. Hi, im darryl. Darryl, very nice to meet you. And im karlanea. Welcome to rdm shrimp. Lets go. Karlanea and darryl brown are accidental shrimp farming pioneers. How we doing on count . Im at six pounds. With their two dozen basic Backyard Pools as growing tanks, theyve perfected an indoor system with zero waste. No chemicals and a 90 percent thats a third higher than traditional outdoor shrimp farms. Wow, this is like a Little Laboratory here . Yes it is. And a shrimp farm . Yes it is. We do nine tests every single day. We do temperature, dissolved oxygen, nitrite, co2, salinity alkalinity, ph, ammonia and floc. As you can see our water is brown. The test were doing here right now is were trying to see how much bacteria is in our water, and we call this settling. So youre basically waiting for all this bacteria to go to the bottom, and that tells you how much is in there . How much we have in it, exactly. And if were over a certain level than we have to get it out of the tanks otherwise its gonna start suffocating out the shrimp. Thats very important, that has to be done every day. Basically were not even shrimp farmers anymore we actually call ourselves guardians of water. As long as the water does what its supposed to be doing, the shrimp do just fine. We add no antibiotics, no hormones are ever added into our tanks. You heard that right, no antibiotics, no hormones, just fish food, salt and baking soda. Its called a heterotrophic biofloc system. A process that revolves around bacteria. Now it looks very brown, what is this brown that im seeing . The brown is the bacteria. The bacteria is what eats all their waste so they can survive without a major filter system. Heres whats happening below the surface. The shrimp eat their feed and excrete ammonia. The bacteria turns that into toxic nitrites. Other bacteria turn that into benign nitrates. And as the water is aerated, the nitrates turn into a harmless gas. And around and around. How long have you had this water . Four years. How does that compare to other shrimp farms . Most of them dont have water that long. We by mistake kept our water. Its like its maturing. Its like wine. Yeah it does. And we just found out that the older it gets the better it gets. And so too for the shrimp. The growing process starts every month with about 250 thousand newborns, called post larvals, nicknamed pls. Now we are going to show you our pls. And when they come in theyre the size of an eye lash. So its hard to see inside this water, but how many shrimp are actually in here . We stock about 17,000 in each one of my 6 tanks here. So what are all these tubes coming down . Those are air lines. And that adds the oxygen . Adds their oxygen and it keeps everything in suspension. Cause if this stuff settles i only have 20 minutes and theyre dead. 20 minutes . 20 minutes and theyll be dead. Everything here seems so precise. It has to be, its mother nature. Well, it is mother nature. But with a lot of help from a mother in indiana. I noticed theres foam on top, what is this foam . The foam is mostly c02 mixing with their feed that just comes to the top, and it will actually disappear. So its just part of the process . Just part of the process. Hey i got some yep, you did. Look at that. Wow. So this is not what you see in the supermarket when you get a shrimp . No, because they cant be frozen with the head on. Theyre very translucent and one of the characteristics we actually look for, you see the long antennas . That tells me theyre happy. If their antennas are short theyre stressing out. But if you can see here, this is their only protection, and hes mad right now. That mouth piece is coming forward and hes very angry at me right now. That shrimp has a little horn. Yeah and then if you can look right where your thumb is at thats where his heart is at also. And you can see his heart beating. Wow, you really can. A month later theyre promoted to the production tank. Where theyll turn into dinner. Now were talkin. So you need 40 of em to a pound. Im going to have to keep going. Youre gonna have to keep going. Youve got six. laughing are you saying im a bad scooper . The browns sell about 500 pounds directly to walkins each month at 18dollars a pound. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Theyve also sold their knowhow to 2dozen start up farms in the u. S. As well as ones in switzerland haiti and spain. These companies are really innovators, they are trying out new technology. Johns hopkins microbiologist david love studies Shrimp Production. He gives the production like the browns a high grade with one caveat. One that could ultimately make or break in the business world. A lot of these farms might start out with a bang but then fizzle out after a few years because they dont make money. For the browns shrimp farming is paying off. No financial fizzle, only sizzle as the business continues to grow. Is it ready yet . Just about. But the proof of their success is what ends up on the plate and in this case innovation tastes pretty good when served with a profit. That is so good now i still cant get over the fact that possibly the cleanest and arguably the best shrimp in the world may come from the middle of indiana. So, i brought you guys some. Mmm. Yes in the tank it looks a little gross i get that, but its chemistry in there. Its really good. The end result is. Really good. Theres a global problem with using a lot of antibiotics in farming. The more antibiotics used, the more were going to start seeing antibiotic resistant superbugs. It happens in agribusiness here in the u. S. , it happens overseas, it even happens in medical practice. You know a lot of people ask why we should care if theres some superbug that can infect shrimp, how does that affect us . But what theyve found is that bacteria can actually swap genes, so potentially if the bacteria that infects shrimp becomes resistant it could swap that gene into a bacteria that infects us, and so that resistance can be passed on and the amount of, you know, millions of pounds of antibiotics are being used around the world, not just in shrimp but in cattle and poultry as well. That is going to catch up to us when it hits our healthcare system. Yeah, its called a spillover event, its a zoonotic infection. Its an infection that happens in an animal species and then snaps finger , just like that a human can get infected too. And its been the source of most deadly diseases that medicine cant keep up with. And thats where you look at the numbers okay, we have a billion pounds getting imported here, only about 2 get inspected. What about the 98 . Its important to have confidence in the system moving forward if were going to keep eating shrimp. And the inspection process was so random. I mean, the amount of shipment that came in versus what actually made it into a lab was tiny. Well guys i think were going to finish up the shrimp here as we take a break, but cara what do you have coming up for us next . Yeah really interesting story. Now imagine that you are one of the first pioneers to take a trip to mars. But also imagine that youre not allowed to come home its a one way trip. Would you guys do it . Well after the break were going to meet somebody whos already signed up. These are babies in prison. Were back here on techknow with an intriguing question. Would you take a trip to mars . Would you . This mission is still in its planning stages but some people out there say that theyre for real, they are planning to go to mars but they are prepared to not come back. Would you guys want to take it . I met a woman whos already signed up and shes raring to go. For decades, humanity has been fascinated with a manned expedition to mars. This is the definition of pioneering. That doesnt scare you . Thats what makes it exciting. Robotic pioneers like the mars curiosity rover have been crawling around the cratered landscape, uncovering clues about whether this distant planet can sustain life as we know it. Do you have the right stuff . I have that right stuff. Jaymee del rosario is a 27 year old entrepreneur and ceo of International Metal source, a Raw Materials company that supplies metals to Aerospace Companies like spacex and lockheed martin. She is one of 100 candidates that has been selected by mars one, a private company that wants to colonize the red planet. The catch . Theres no return flight home. What do you say to people when they say, jaymee this is a Suicide Mission why are you doing it . Call it a Suicide Mission but its something that i chose. Im creating my own destiny for myself. And if its a destiny that would help humanity, im all for it. According to mars one, one of the main goals of the project is to establish an interplanetary species to preserve the human race. Jaymee made it to top 100the third round of a Selection Process mars one says started with 200,000 online applicants. Ultimately, 24 crew members will be chosen. Do you think anybody with enough training could become an astronaut . I believe that if you have the motivation and determination of wanting to do it, you can. A mission to mars is obviously no simple matter. Pasadena, california is home to the mars program at nasas jet propulsion laboratory. Nasa has taken man to the moon and back. But theyve approached this journey with a much more deliberate and rigorous training program. Im now on the base on mars and i will give you a little tour. In 2015, six volunteer scientists walked out of a dome on the side of a hawaiian volcano after being locked away by nasa for eight months. This was a simulated experiment of what life on mars would be like. Coexisting is one challenge. Getting there and surviving is an entirely different endeavor. Landing on mars is still a pretty, well sometimes it can be quite a terrifying thing. Dr. Richard zurek is the chief scientist for the mars program at nasas jet propulsion laboratory. A lot of things have to happen right. Right now we fly into the atmosphere, we have a heat shield that protects us, but were also trying to slow down so we can land softly. Were talking about a very different scale of endeavor. Were landing a metric ton down on the planet today, we think for Human Missions to get stuff down on the surface that they can use, that they can be there for a long period of time, that means forty, fifty metric tons. Thats a lot of material. Today, we dont know how to land that. Mars one has come under much critical fire for their project. Primarily due to funding issues and for reports of recording the mission for a reality show. In march 2015, ceo bas lansdorp took to youtube to respond. They are currently selling the documentary series to an international broadcaster. Theres no deal in place yet but its looking very promising, theres a lot of interest. At mars one we really value a good criticism about our mission because it helps us to improve our mission. Lasdorp also tells techknow there are less serious critics who are only interested to sabotage our mission. By lying. But even if this nonprofits Mission Never launches, nasa is laying the ground work today. Nasa is very much in the mode of there are going to be humans on mars. Were in the first stages to try to understand what it takes to actually be able to explore with humans on the surface of the planet. Weve made a good start on that with our robotic programs. First, its get down there, see what the planet is like, get those first explorers out there on the surface, and then we can see what the future holds. Not in a million years would i want to go and colonize mars i mean theres so many risks its so frightening to me, what is it about you thats different from me and probably most of the people on this planet who are afraid to go . Some people just have different goals and missions. I want to do something that will change the world or help the world. So if you are selected to go to mars, do you foresee yourself getting married on mars, having children once youre there . Why not . Yeah. Its going to be interesting because. It will happen. Do you think thats going to be a part of your training . I would think so, thats not something we cannot shine away from because we are the new frontiers of colonizing another planet in the solar system. Are you scared . Leaving earth behind, i will miss it. Everybody is trying to get to mars, and i think what stands out with mars one is the permanent settlement. And i think this is the time now. So im really interested guys, would you sign up for a one way mission to mars. I wouldnt. You wouldnt . No. What about you . You know. I would possibly but i dont think i would sign up for this one way mission to mars. I mean, if you look throughout history so many pioneers and explorers were, to be fair, a little bit crazy, and sometimes they succeeded but other times they didnt but it would always push progress forward just a little bit. Its true. You know, i think the merit of this project is the fact that the goal is to try to be able to achieve living on mars. And the result of having a goal like that which is extremely ambitious is the amount of technology thats going to be developed. You know, just crazy inventions and innovations that are going to come out of quite a kind of pie in the sky objective. Its true. You know i think weve talked sustaining life on other planets versus sustaining life here on earth, really interesting topics today guys so thank you for them. Well have a lot more of these stories next time here on techknow, well see you then. Dive deep into these stories and go behind the scenes at aljazeera. Com techknow. Follow our expert contributors on twitter, facebook, instagram, google and more. Ill have two or three puffs and ill already have a nicotine buzz. A popular smoking alternative. We have to learn have to learn more about electronic cigarettes. But could vaping be just as dangerous . What are you really taking in . We dont know what chemicals are in these things. Techknows team of experts show you how the miracles of science. Im standing in a tropical windstorm. Can affect and surprise us. Wow, some of these are amazing. Techknow where Technology Meets humanity. This is al jazeera america, live from new york city im tony harris. Day one of normalized relations between the United States and cuba. The u. N. Security council endorsing the new iran nuclear deal. Congress now has 60 days to consider the agreement. And Sandra Blands family says new dash cam video builds a case for an independent investigation