A half million eggs have been recalled because of salmonella and everyone is atwitter about it. Before I launch into a dismissive ramble I’ll acknowledge that salmonella is bad shit. Someone close to me got it once and it was like that famous scene from Aliens. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. (Well actually I would, but only because I’m a vengeful bastard.)
Salmonella is no laughing matter.
Since it’s all about tainted eggs I’m totally above the fray. Why? Because we raise our own chickens. I haven’t bought eggs at a store in years. I feel so damn smug you can see my ego from space.
Also the whole thing illustrates one of my patented Curmudgonly Gems of Insight. You might want to get a pencil and write this down:
Don’t eat shit!
The tainted eggs were traced to a couple of farm/factories in Iowa. Neither farms nor factories have to suck but you know damned well these were hell on earth. Nasty places can result in nasty accidents. Deep in your heart you know the food in a supermarket is largely concocted by mad scientists employed by companies with loose morals who are right now trying to devise a snack product made of asbestos and paint chips. Since our society makes food with the same approach they’d use to make industrial solvents, errors like this month’s salmonella outbreak are inevitable.
An alternative is to eat non-shit food from non-shitty environments. Mankind did not evolve to eat HotPockets nuked in a microwave. Nor did chickens evolve to live on a diet of antibiotics while locked in tiny cubes stacked six high. Since I can’t know what shenanigans went on behind closed doors I try to get food that’s as unprocessed possible. One of the advantages to eating local foods is that I can find the farmer and kick him in the balls if the food turns out to be gross. In a society that thinks Doritos are food, my opinion puts me on the fringe. It also gives me something in common with eco-vegan-zealots and that’s unnerving. On the other hand, salmonella running rampant in the streets is a good pitch for seeking better quality food.
So what to do? Everyone and their dog has a theory on this.
New York Times suggested that the solution was more government intervention. How novel. Is there any event that won’t cause the New York Times to demand more government intervention? It also implies that eggs are somehow unregulated. I’ve tried to wade through egg selling regulations. It’s like Kafka took acid and wrote the manual to a steamshovel’s transmission backwards in Urdu. Particle physics seems straightforward by comparison. A thousand new egg regulations wouldn’t change things. The Times only knows one tool, government, and applies it to all situations.
I even found an off kilter theory claiming Omaba’s minions deliberately planted salmonella in a vaguely defined secret evil plan to rule the universe. I love the internet! Curmudgeon Rating: 8 Tinfoil Hats out of 10. (Meaning it’s slightly more realistic than claiming aliens probed my sphincter and put Jimmi Hoffa there last night.)
My theory is the simplest; chill out and then cut down on the shit. Chilling out is a numbers game. More people will be killed by Buicks than Salmonella this year so mellow out. The second step is to reduce one’s shit consumption index. Eggs from an actual farm can and do taste better and are less likely to cause this sort of thing. They also cost more. It’s not unwise to pay a bit more for good food and only eat the tasteless golfballs excreted by massive food service industries if you absolutely need to.
