“There I lay in the middle of the mess
Killed ‘dead as a stone’ by peanut butter.”
What a pitiful epitaph. Imagine having those lines written on one’s tombstone. Oh, the humility of it all. Although I didn’t actually die, I could have. I ate an entire jar of batch #2111 of peanut butter. It appears that certain jars were contaminated with Salmonella. People started getting sick after eating the stuff. The outbreak appears to have started in August 2006. As a result of recent testing and case control studies, the Center for Disease Control was finally able to identify certain jars of peanut butter, with lot number 2111, as the probable cause. of the illness. .
Thanks to the FDA jumping right into the problem with the speed of a turtle, we were alerted to tainted peanut butter after just 300 cases of illness in 39 states and just six months. His hasty actions were only matched by FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina. And it arrived just hours after I scraped the last bite of peanut butter out of the jar. I considered gagging like some of those skinny models do every time they lose their willpower and eat a full Tic-Tac, but I figured things had been digested by now…especially since I’d been eating from the same jar for the last month. . . Although the cap was marked with the lot number beginning with 2111, apparently I was lucky and got a jar out without contamination, or I am immune to Salmonella food poisoning.
Is it just my opinion or does it seem like the food industry is going through a bad decade? Birds got the flu, spinach got E-coli, tomatoes got ptomaine, cows went berserk, ConAgra recalled over 400,000 pounds of pasta and meatball meals that may have been under-processed, honey shipments from China contained an antibiotic potentially harmful (although according to government reports it never made it to store shelves), the peanut butter contracted Salmonella and the dish ran off with the spoon.
This does not even include all the drugs that have been withdrawn from the market in recent years due to chronic illnesses and deaths related to drug use. It almost makes one wonder if we as consumers should stop consuming anything made by someone other than ourselves.
But the proverbial last straw came and broke the camel’s back a few weeks ago when our pets started dying from contaminated pet food. The melamine found in the pet food was attributed to imported wheat gluten from a company based in China’s Jiangshu province.
Now you can poison me, but don’t mess with my dog. Wars have been started for less. I’m sure most people feel the same way. Now we are afraid to feed them anything except our leftovers. And if everyone eats like my family does, there are no leftovers after we finish a meal. So I resorted to feeding my dog the stash of venison in my freezer left over from my husband’s deer hunt last year. He (the dog) had a rare steak for breakfast and I cooked him a roast for dinner. The meat won’t last long at the rate he eats though, so eventually I’ll have to take a chance and buy him some dog food.
I am now looking to hire a dog food taster. I need someone to eat the dog food first, and if it doesn’t die, then I’ll know it’s safe to give it to my dog. I had high hopes of hiring Donald Trump for the job, but he’s totally into his reality show called “Extreme Comb Over” or… whatever. He probably would have fired himself in the first week anyway. So now I will have to go with my second option.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 76 million Americans get sick, 325,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 die each year from something they ate. (or looking at photos of Paris Hilton). According to an anonymous source, the FDA is making plans to change food packaging labels to include the following warning: Caution. This product may contain E-coli, Salmonella, rat poison or other similar ingredients. Best if served with a stomach pump.
I need to go now. I have to phone Paris Hilton and ask if she’ll be my dog food taster.