How Now, Brown Cow?

For my new job, I am required to take a food safety sanitation course. Mind you, I have no experience with food sanitation and I certainly did not get my masters of science degree in art therapy so I could go do something requiring food sanitation certification and I had no idea that my new job would require such a talent, so this is all news to me. After careful consideration, I decided that since I love food and since I go out to eat all the time and as my new job does indeed include assigned staff doling out food products, I am all good with this.

It's a two-day class, eight hours each day. One class was today; the second class is next week. While it was hard to sit there for so long (we started at 7:45 AM and didn't get lunch until after 1 PM), it was very interesting and all news to me.....but, by the time we got to the end of today.....

...Let me be the first to say I may NEVER go out to eat again,
I will NEVER eat in anything called a "family restaurant" again,
I will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS remain a vegetarian,
I will relish drinking out of water-spotted glasses,
I don't know how ANY of us is still alive after hearing all this food safety dribble, and
I might ACTUALLY invest in a nail brush.

I learned to check the armpit of a raw chicken for a visual hint to see if it is going "bad" (in case I ever come upon an unsuspecting raw chicken who is waiting to be rescued/cooked/tossed/eaten), I was educated on the possible problems with drinking apple cider (do NOT offer me a glass of that) and I gathered info on how to wash a raspberry (try putting it in Club Soda, then rinse).

Who the hell rinses a raspberry? Don't you just pop it into your mouth and call it a day?

All the facts and details and rules and regulations were a bit much but I grasp the importance of it all, so that really wasn't that difficult to pay attention. Actually, a lot of it was fascinating in a nerdy way.

And, there was A LOT of talk of poop, so you know I loved that.

No, the most difficult part of the class was listening to the instructor talk about the butchering/slaughtering/killing/murdering of a cow. Dear god, I almost passed out by the time she was done.

Food Rules Grrrl starts talking about the slaughtering of cows. I don't remember exactly how this came about but suffice it to say she grew up on a farm and she sees animals for what they are-- animals. None of this "animals as part of the family" shit. She scans the room and asks if there are any animal rights activists in the room. Trust me when I say I did NOT raise my hand to point out my vegetarianism, cuz I could tell this lady was all about eating a slab of beef.

Food Rules Grrrl begins by saying that the way cows are slaughtered in America is VERY humane, that there is no pain or stress for the animal during the slaughtering process and that animals are treated well. (Obviously she hasn't been watching the PETA films of cows without working legs, but that's a story for another day.) She then, for some unknown reason, tells the tale of how a cow is slaughtered. For some reason, I sit there and listen. Why I didn't dissociate or doodle or put my iPod on or run screaming out of the room, I do not know. (Maybe it's because I have to pass the class to get my food certification so I can keep my job.) Oh no. I stayed and listened. (For the record, I do not consider myself an Animal Rights activist but I do admit my dogs are treated better than most children in the world.)

According to Food Rules Grrl (and trust me, I make no claim to getting any of this correct--I'm still having traumatic stress from all this), the unsuspecting cow is dropped off into a staging area, all alone in his new steel cell. While standing there--probably thinking "what the hell is THIS PLACE all about?" some guy slaps some hooks onto (into?) the cow's back legs. The stall door is closed, the cow is REALLY wondering what the hell is going on, the cow gets SHOT in the head with some shoot-in-the-head device (supposedly rendering the cow brain dead but very much alive), the cow is raised up by the back legs (remember those hooks? Well ol' Brown Cow is hanging by its back legs now, looking down at the floor) and the thing is pulley-ed along to the "kill floor." Alive.

Okay, is there anything even remotely soothing about something being called a "kill floor?"

It does not soothe me to hear they slaughter the cow this way--alive but brain dead--so persons who follow Jewish or other religious beliefs can eat the meat (something about bleeding and being alive at the same time--no offense to anyone's faith for my very uninformed take on this event).

Ol' Brown Cow is hanging there by its back legs and is brain dead and is in a kill room and some guy comes along and lops that old neck right open. Out pours the blood. Of course, thinking about a hanging cow bleeding from a slit neck does not make my day, but worse is when the lady goes on and on about how they use the blood. Nothing goes to waste, she notes. So, now I'm having a visual of the cow blood in my dogs' food. Great.

At this point, the room is spinning.

I remember hearing something about "blood sausage" and "blood and tongue soup" and what "meat by-products" really means but I cannot recall much beyond that. Of course, it does not end there. She goes on, in a very cavalier-I'm-from-the-farm type manner, to explain even more of the slaughtering process.

In the back recesses of my mind, I hear about how the next guy in line hacks a big slit down the belly of the cow as part of the butchering process. Hopefully, this is a really skilled guy, because if he accidentally cuts part of the bowel, poop will run down the animal and that's where problems begin. Who wants poopy meat? Not me. Not you. Hello, E.Coli!

Wait--this takes me on a tangent. I have bad news for Father Taco Juan. You know how we've been freaked about having TWO FEET of intestines removed? Well, the wife and I just remembered that Brett Favre had thirty inches of his intestines removed after a car accident when he was a college kid and thirty inches is more than 24 inches and so we are sad to say to Taco Juan that he is second on our "that's-a-lot-of-intestines-to-lose" list. (But, we are still very impressed. Besides, who actually measured to see if it really was 30 inches?)

But, back to the dead cow and food sanitation. I learned all about the various parts of the butchered cow and how this and that relates to my food sanitation way of being, but I don't remember how or why or when she stopped talking about the cow thing but I do remember she then started talking about the chicken-laying-eggs thing.

How the hell will I ever be able to eat an egg again?

Of course, what I can't see won't theoretically kill me and knowing there are eggs in ice cream is really not knowing anything because I never see the eggs in said ice cream unless I actually make my own ice cream or I read the ingredients on the carton of ice cream I am consuming...... although, what I can't see really COULD kill me, so maybe I should worry about those damn eggs and go vegan....

....but, if I didn't rinse my raspberries in Club soda, some funky fungus or bacteria or virus could be lurking there and I'd eat it and get sick and be right back to where I would have been with tainted-egg ice cream....

....so, I am going to eat the ice cream and put raspberries on top of the ice cream and then I'm going to pray to the gods of food sanitation that my odds of avoiding food poisoning are in my favor......

.....and I am not gonna wash my hands before eating that bowl of ice cream but I will be eating it at home and not at some restaurant where the cook just sneezed into his hands after scratching his head and then wiped his snot on his pants and then continued to cook my boca burger.

Maybe being a vegan wouldn't be so bad, after all.....do vegans eat ice cream?

Next week, I'm focusing on all the talk about poop. Nothing else.