Recalls

Recalls

Working in the business that I do, we've had a fun year with the recalls. Fun being a euphemism, mind you. I'm not quite sure what it's a euphemism for, but in this particular case, fun does most definitely not mean "fun."

Peanut Butter, dog food, more dog food, pot pies, pizzas, beef....you get the call, and the town goes apeshit.

It's not to sound like I'm insensitive. That dog food recall tore me up, to tell the truth--I tend to like dogs more than I like people.

And I don't want to get a case of bloody diarrhea from anything I eat, either. So, I sympathize.

I just don't feel that our food supply is more or less safe than it was five or ten or twenty years ago. I just feel like we've wandered a couple decades down the Path of Eternal Litigation. It's simply more cost effective nowadays for a company to put eight or nine digits worth of money down for recall, disposal and sanitation than it would be just to leave the product out there on the market.

Good thing/Bad Thing? Don't know. I don't want anybody contracting the Salmonella poisoning, and I definitely don't want peoples' pets dying because some polymer's made it into the food supply. And I definitely don't want to ingest metal shavings out of the very same cashews that I've been snacking on at work for the past week. Granted, those cashews are in Washington state. Who's to say that some nameless villain hasn't shipped a case to East Tennessee just to mess with your old pal Tommy?

And I suppose it's not a bad thing that we have guards in place, in the case some nutjob group with some vendetta against some nameless group, decides to put cyanide into the nation's supply of Raisin Bran Crunch.

But still. Makes you wonder how we've made it through the past several decades.

Of course, we did it the old fashioned way.

It is here and now that I announce my desire for a Food Taster.

It is not that I have much to fear from assassins. Much. It is a concern, though.

It is not that I am concerned so much with spoilage. The bulk of my food supply, here lately, consists of Peanut Butter Crackers, Cans of Cashews and boxes of Sunmaid Raisins, and Sam Adams Cherry Wheat so the bulk of what I eat has a pretty decent shelf life, or won't stick around nearly so long as to spoil.

I would like to warn that there are still flaws to the plans.

First, I think the job is better described as "Foot Tester" instead of "Food Taster." I'm not sure I'd much care to have my food chewed for me. I have nothing even partially funny to say about that. That just seems gross. I think you'd have to take a representative sample of my food, rather than testing each piece.

I would also have to re-train myself. That's another obstacle. I'm not entirely keen on the thought of sharing my food, so such a person taking this job would need to either devise a strategy of distraction, to keep me from noticing that you're eating my food, or you would have to be skilled enough to fend me off when I inevitably attack.

I should mention that though not entirely skilled in the mixed martial arts, I do employ an attack I like to call "Avalanche of Pain," most easily fended off with a Greco Roman Poke to the Eye.

I am also vulnerable at my outer occipital protuberance, perhaps with a hammer. Remember that.

Anyway. Need a Food Tester. Don't like metal shavings in my cashews.