MYSTERY MEAT

One crucial difference between meat and, say, fruits and vegetables, is that meat is easier to adulterate. Case in point: Hindus and Jews in England who were eating what they thought was just chicken found out to their dismay that it had been spiked with beef and pork proteins. Now there's plenty of outrage over this, but seemingly more over the discovery that some of the "chicken" was mostly added water. It's not as though the UK is the only place adulterated meat slips by: It turns out the USDA "jeopardized the safety of the U.S. food supply by letting in 823,632 pounds of meat from foreign plants that might not have been approved, department auditors say." What's in that meat? Illegal steroids? Mad Cow? Who knows? It's not like you can just look at it, like produce, and get an idea. Plus, this agency has a track record of missing the boat on tainted meat. But the punchline is that now the USDA is making a big show of clamping down on security in order to - yes! - safeguard the nation's food supply! Note this sentence: "After Sept. 11, the agency hired 20 more inspectors to check imported meat for contamination." Great! So what were these bozos doing all day as the 823,632 pounds slipped by?


UPDATE 3/19: ...and if you can't get behind the Hindus and the Jews and all their bizarre prohibitons on different animals, would you care if there was HUMAN FLESH mixed into it? Mmmmmm... soylent.