A certain amount of food contamination is permitted by law: so many rat hairs per 100g of chocolate, so many pieces of insects per 100g of coffee, so many mouse droppings per 100g of peanut butter, etc. Any food maker whose contamination levels are under those of its competitors is at a clear economic disadvantage. After all, if the legal amount of freely produced mouse poo is not in the peanut butter you're selling, the missing portion must be - valuable peanut butter. Meanwhile, your competitors are padding their product with the legal mouse poo maximum.
My idea is to introduce a manufacturing process which would measure the food's contamination level, then add as many rat hairs, weevils, or what have you, as are needed. This would stretch out the commodities involved, perhaps even resulting in savings passed along to us consumers.
[Am posting this in the Food:Packaging section because the contamination would be performed during packaging; sorry, jutta, if this is the wrong place for this idea.]-- cheeselikesubstance, Jul 22 2001 Extraneous Matter Analysis for Pet Food http://www.centralh...ab.com/petfood.html [cheeselikesubstance, Jul 22 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004] The Smoking Gun http://www.thesmoki...ive/foodfilth1.htmlFDA Food Filth Limits. Yum! [Rant93, Jul 22 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004] Yikes! My Sarcasmometer just went off-scale!-- Dog Ed, Jul 22 2001 I wonder how much coffee is allowed per 100g of insect parts.-- nick_n_uit, Jul 23 2001 Good God Almighty! I'm on hunger-strike as from now.-- Sean Egative, Jun 20 2003 mmmmmm...... 3 ants and a cocroach foot.. just how i like my PB&J sandwich-- half-n-half, Mar 09 2004 You first.-- spacecadet, Mar 09 2004 random, halfbakery