Fast Food, and Other Horrors

The General Election.

The Volcanic Ash Cloud.

British Airways Strikes.

Greyson Michael Chance. (He is awesome, by the way).

All of these pale into insignificance when compared with the story that is yet another fantastic reason to eat healthy. Here it is in all of its Press Association glory:


KFC fined over cockroach discovery
Monday, May 10 01:51 pm


Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has been ordered to pay out almost £19,000 after a cockroach was found eating a chip in one of the busiest branches in Britain. 

The insect was seen on a food dispensing counter near takeaway boxes and tongs used to serve chicken by an environmental health officer in a restaurant in London's West End.


City of Westminster Magistrates' Court heard that, during an inspection at the Leicester Square branch, the officer also saw a mouse, flies and dried chicken blood on the floor. The Westminster City Council inspector also said there was no hand wash in dispensers in the food preparation area.


"There was no soap in the ground-floor food preparation room so, on the day of the inspection at least, it was not possible for food preparation staff to wash their hands properly," said Michael Goodwin, prosecuting.


The fast food giant admitted breaching five hygiene rules after the inspection in August 2008. Mr Goodwin said that, four months prior to the inspection, the branch received a "specific warning" from the council voicing concerns about hygiene practices. David Whiting, mitigating, said the company took the inspection "very seriously".


"KFC accepts the condition that has been described to you," he said. "They fell below their own high standards and below legal standards."


Mr Whiting said that, since the inspection, the outside contractor employed to deal with pest control problems has had its hire agreement with KFC terminated across the UK. Mr Whiting added that, on the day of inspection, an employee had simply forgotten to refill the soap in the dispensers in the preparation room and there were still places where hands could be washed.


The Coventry Street outlet, which employs 65 people and operates from 10am to 3am, has since undergone a £600,000 refurbishment.


At a hearing in April, the firm, based in Woking, Surrey, pleaded guilty to failure to keep the premises clean, not keeping the building maintained and in good repair and not having adequate procedures in place to prevent pest control. It also admitted failure to ensure that the layout, design and construction permitted good food hygiene practices and failure to ensure that materials for cleaning hands were available at hand basins.


District Judge Howard Riddle fined the food chain £11,000 for the five offences. He also ordered it to pay £7,927.80 in costs and a victim surcharge of £15.


Now the bit that cracks me up is in the first paragraph... the cockroach was 'eating a chip'. Somehow that puts a bizarre image in my mind. However, not as bizarre as this one. Some lady over in Brownsville, Texas was caught selling six Bengal tiger cubs in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Has the world gone bloody mad?!

Then, back to KFC and the vile Double Down sandwich... here's Rachael Ray ripping KFC a new one with Joy Behar...



And another disturbing story about KFC from the PETA website, May 11th....


US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today announced new regulations that are meant to curb the number of meat-eaters who are rushed to hospitals after being sickened by life-threatening foodborne illnesses. It's believed that the "improvements" will keep 39,000 Americans from being infected with campylobacter and 26,000 from being sickened by salmonella-tainted chicken and turkey flesh—a small reduction from the 3 to 4 million Americans who contract these diseases every year.


In other words, the "improvements" promise little more than a drop in a KFC bucket.


What will a meat-eater's chances of getting sick from salmonella or campylobacter be under the new regulations? Considering that the new standards allow for 7.5 percent of chicken corpses at a plant to test positive for salmonella—and that of those corpses, 10 percent can be "highly contaminated" and 46 percent can have "low levels" of contamination—we'd say still pretty good, er, bad.


In a recent analysis, Consumer Reports found that among "fresh" whole chickens bought in 22 states, two-thirds harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter.


Folks, these new "safeguards" won't do squawk squat to keep consumers safe from salmonella and campylobacter. The simple fact is that eating chickens and turkeys will sicken just about every meat-eater sooner or later. Those who care about animal welfare become sickened when they learn about the abuse of billions of birds on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. Those who don't know about this abuse will likely find themselves locked in the loo at some point, sickened by salmonella and/or campylobacter—or worse, they'll find themselves in emergency rooms thanks to heart attacks, strokes, or other conditions that are linked to meat consumption.


Oy. It's a crazy world we live in, and no mistake.