Real-World Food Hygiene/Ethics

[Chris Amirault]

Thanksgiving, 1972.

For several hours, ny aunt Anita has been preparing dinner for her massive brood of about twenty, including baby Gary, 1 1/2. She's now putting the finishing touches on the meal, and the sixteen pound turkey's out of the oven, resting on the table.

In the midst of all the prep, Baby Gary lets it be known that he needs a diaper change. Anita is charged not only with cooking but child care responsibilities, so she puts Gary down on the table and begins changing him.

While she's holding him with one hand and reaching for a clean diaper, his penis, feeling the warm kitchen air, reacts with a salty yellow arc that bastes, with mathematical precision, the entire bird.

What would you do? I'll tell you what she did (it's what I would have done) in a bit.

[Chris Cognac]

Thanksgiving, 1972.

For several hours, ny aunt Anita has been preparing dinner for her massive brood of about twenty, including baby Gary, 1 1/2. She's now putting the finishing touches on the meal, and the sixteen pound turkey's out of the oven, resting on the table.

In the midst of all the prep, Baby Gary lets it be known that he needs a diaper change. Anita is charged not only with cooking but child care responsibilities, so she puts Gary down on the table and begins changing him.

While she's holding him with one hand and reaching for a clean diaper, his penis, feeling the warm kitchen air, reacts with a salty yellow arc that bastes, with mathematical precision, the entire bird.

What would you do? I'll tell you what she did (it's what I would have done) in a bit.

←

Gone out for Chinese food!

[petite tête de chou]

Well, hm.

Pee, especially from a wee one is harmless.

Not the basting we could have hoped for.

I assume no one saw "it" happen.

I don't think <I> could eat the bird, tho'.

Would not have served it to my guests. EWWWW.

Edited to add proper punctuation. I hope.

Edited September 12, 2004 by petite tête de chou (log)

[NulloModo]

Well, urine is technically sterile....

[Malawry]

This leads into other food ethics questions:

1. If you drop it on the ground or the floor, do you pick it up and eat it anyway? Do you serve it to others?

2. Do you tell people what your ingredients are?

I do eat things off the floor, but I do not feed them to others. And I always, always disclose ingredients if asked. But that's just me.

[Chris Amirault]

This leads into other food ethics questions:

1. If you drop it on the ground or the floor, do you pick it up and eat it anyway? Do you serve it to others?

2. Do you tell people what your ingredients are?

←

On 1, I definitely go by my mother's maxim, which she often offered when scooping a bit of food off the floor and serving it: "You gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die." Not for guests, though... I don't know why exactly.

As for 2, I feel like that's a requirement, not only for safety reasons concerning allergies, but also for letting people know about how a dish is composed.

And couldn't you always tell if there were, say, onions in your meatloaf?

[Malawry]

Chrisamiraut, that reminds me of a fib my mom once told me. I always claimed to hate the onions in her spaghetti sauce when I was a child, and I'd always ask her to leave them out. Once she told me, "I left them out once and you and your brother both hated the sauce." For some reason, I believed her, and I never bothered her about the onions again!

I'm now well over any onion issues from my childhood, FWIW.

[maggiethecat]

OK, it's Thanksgiving, people are hungry, and the baby hasn't picked up horrid amoebal infections while travelling up the Limpopo.

Wash off the turkey. Smell it. Run it under the broiler. Pray.

No one will know.

[Chris Amirault]

Wash off the turkey. Smell it.

←

Remember how much it cost you to make this meal. Listen to the hungry masses in the living room.

Run it under the broiler. Pray.

←

And serve!

Then, ten years later, when everyone is sufficiently liquored up at a family reunion, tell the story to great hilarity.

We have a winner!

[misgabi]

This leads into other food ethics questions:

1. If you drop it on the ground or the floor, do you pick it up and eat it anyway? Do you serve it to others?

2. Do you tell people what your ingredients are?

I do eat things off the floor, but I do not feed them to others. And I always, always disclose ingredients if asked. But that's just me.

←

Maybe it's an Australian thing (from BBQ's) but nearly everyone we knows follows the "10 second rule". If you pick it up off the ground before 10 seconds is up you can throw it back on the barbie!! Of course being a BBQ everyone is usually outside watching the cooking and knows it has happened.

I will usually pick things up off the floor (as long as it is clean of course) and just carry on - it's not as if its landed in anything disgusting and my house is usually clean!!

I personally would have done similar to maggiethecat's suggestion - I would have wiped the bird over, rebasted the bird and thrown it back in the oven for a few minute then re-rest.

[Fernwood]

Only the idea of it would cause the diners any harm; the urine itself is more sterile than the cook's hands and non-toxic. Unless the child is markedly ill and dehydrated, the pee-pee is almost certainly too dilute to leave a detectable odor, so there is essentially no chance that anyone would guess. I, knowing there is no health risk, would feel it entirely ethical to clean up and serve the bird without comment. Of course, feeling confident about risk is key here. It would not be ethical to do the same if the basting liquid is sewage with possible fecal contamination, or if the cook doesn't know the urine is harmless. And even though I would not hesitate to eat it myself, I know that many diners would not be able to set aside their squeamishness, even if I made an authoritative presentation of the facts. So the difficult question for me would be whether to ever fess up, even decades later.....

[Carolyn Tillie]

I guess I'm in the Chinese Food camp -- the whole thing sort of turns my stomach (as I was sitting and reading this while eating breakfast, I've lost my appetite).

I would have confessed to the guests and dined on everything BUT the turkey, regardless of how "sterile" urine is.

[Jinmyo]

I know that some people claim that urine has medicinal properties and consume their own. Others urinate on their feet in the shower to kill fungi.

I have no doubt that the infant's urine was harmless.

In fact, I personally loathe turkey and would rather eat feathers.

So with that out of the way, I would probably toss it.

After all, it's turkey.

The infant on the other hand was, what, how many pounds?

.....

/kidding, dear

[bloviatrix]

Maybe it's an Australian thing (from BBQ's) but nearly everyone we knows follows the "10 second rule".  If you pick it up off the ground before 10 seconds is up you can throw it back on the barbie!!   

←

Wow, you guys are generous. In the States it's the "5 second rule"

[sparrowgrass]

I don't think I would eat dinner in a place where a baby was changed on the kitchen table. I have pretty relaxed standards when it comes to sanitation, but that is a bit over the top.

[intraining]

hmmmm, changing a baby near a hot turkey? either one can wait the 1 minute it takes to change a baby, surely?????

the answer is.....you serve it only if you personally know all of your guests, for the tanked up later joke, otherwise you don't serve it.

[ronnie_suburban]

After all, it's turkey.

The infant on the other hand was, what, how many pounds?

←

LMAO!

=R=

[Tracy K.]

I was once in a bakery in a tony north-shore suburb of Chicago where I saw exactly that--a woman changing a baby's diaper on the wrapping table, which was clearly visible from the shop. The poor thing's hiney was so close to the saw which cuts the cellophane (call OSHA), and who knows what evil lurked in the rest of the place. The hardest thing was trying to find the health department official, as this town did not have it's own...it 'shared' the official with another town. Several phone calls (even the town's police department didn't know who to call) and voicemail messages later I was able to track down the person. She said that she went right out and inspected...oh they couldn't get a baby sitter, etc. etc. No, I did not buy anything and told everyone I knew about the incident. (Yup, I'm a narc.)

Well, the place closed, but re-opened with a new name in the other town shared by the health inspector. Won't go there either.

I also once called a health inspector in a larger suburb about a cockroach in a popular bakery. The inspector was very happy that I called.

The moral to my story...unless you know who is doing the cooking, eat kosher.

As for your home...well, I'll just beware of turkey this Thanksgiving.... Hey, wait, I'm cooking this Thanksgiving. Memo to self, keep infant son out of kitchen at crucial moments....