What’s so crunchy in your snack?

by Eszter Hargittai on April 2, 2005

Reading up on hometown blogs I came across the unfortunate news that rat poopie was found in a warehouse holding airplane snacks at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (and you don’t have to live in Chicagoland to use that airport during your U.S. airtravel given how many transfers occur there). The article states that “inspectors discovered more than 1,000 rat droppings where pretzels, beer and other airline snacks and beverages are stored”. To this a Chicagoist reader responded with the following astute question: “who got stuck with that counting job?”.

{ 4 comments }

1

joejoejoe 04.02.05 at 1:15 pm

Fun facts from AgResearch food safety scientist Guill Le Roux and the USDA…

Rodent hairs are allowed at the rate of up to one in every 100g of peanut butter, one in every 450g of popcorn or 4.5 hairs in every 225g of macaroni or noodles.

Wheat can contain up to 9mg of rodent droppings in every 450g of grain.

“Rats get into grain silos and get processed during milling, and rat droppings get into the grain. You just can’t prevent it,” Mr Le Roux said.

“Get processed” sounds like a euphimism for ground up rat. More from the wonderful Mr. Le Roux…

Mr Le Roux blamed the media for “distorting” the dangers by giving huge attention to GM and toxic substances in food. Toxins accounted for 32 per cent of news stories about food safety in the US, but caused only 3 per cent of deaths.

He said all human beings ate “transgenic” food from other species every day, unless they were cannibals.

“There are other hazards that are more of a problem than the minor issues associated with foreign genes. I mean, people eat rats. If you put rat genes in a potato, well, people eat both of them.”

Yikes! I’ve heard of Potatoes Au Gratin, but not Potatoes Au Ratgene. Maybe you should consider flying out of Midway, Eszter.

2

Tom T. 04.02.05 at 2:11 pm

Rat droppings are counted using one of those pre-modern number systems that run, “one, two, three, more than a thousand….”

3

Mike 04.02.05 at 3:59 pm

It shouldn’t really be all that surprising that rats exist in warehouse environs. And its not like the food was in the open air – they were probably packaged up in cartons. Not that this is a good thing – but its probably not as bad as they’re making it sound.

4

bad Jim 04.03.05 at 3:33 am

Somewhat tangential:

Rats are a mixed curse. Members of my family have occasionally raised them as pets, and I can’t help myself, I find them cute. I admire their resourcefulness.

It would appear, though, that they’ve been a worse threat to humanity than any megalomaniac in memory. From a good article in the Washington Post:

Rats often came along, too, carrying fleas infected with the bacteria responsible for plague. The plague bacteria had existed for thousands of years among marmots and other rodents in central Asia, causing few problems. But when rats started hitchhiking on passing caravans, eventually reaching the Mediterranean region in the 6th century A.D., they boarded ships and initiated the Plague of Justinian, which killed an estimated 100 million people. When the plague returned in the 14th century as the Black Death, it wiped out approximately one-third of Europe’s population.

So, why did the rats decide to take these long journeys with us? Just to accompany our provisions?

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