Newly Unemployed: Thousands of Texas Fish Used in Banned Pedicure Practice
Worried about the potential risks of fish nibbling at customers’ tootsies, the state of Texas banned the pedicure practice yesterday.
“Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation spokeswoman Susan Stanford said the agency was concerned about salons using the same fish to clean the skin of multiple customers, leaving them open to possible infections,” reports the Associated Press, relying on earlier coverage by the Dallas Morning News.
Although Stanford says the state isn’t aware of any customer being adversely affected by the piscine pedicures, the agency decided to err on the side of caution. It was also concerned that the fishy footbaths into which customers put their feet couldn’t be properly disinfected while swimming with animal life.
However, Kate Caldwell, the co-owner of Zen Luxury Nail & Beauty Bar in Frisco, says that wasn’t an issue at her salon, the Dallas newspaper writes. Footbaths were emptied and disinfected after each customer, and “During that cleaning, she said, the fish were transferred to a ‘hospital tank,’ where they were treated with an anti-microbial agent and held for at least a day.”
In another article in the Dallas Morning News, a reporter gives an eyewitness first-person account of the pedicure procedure, in which guppy-like fish nibble away on the dead skin of customer’s feet.
