Returning sanity to public's view of food supply

A prudish gentleman seated in a neighborhood diner inquired about the daily special.

"Beef tongue," he was informed.

"Oh, I could never eat something that had been in an animal's mouth!" he replied. "Give me a couple of scrambled eggs instead!"

Trying to figure out what makes one food delicious and another disgusting has been a puzzle since God forbade snacking on apples and Moses outlawed boiling a kid in its own mother's milk.

Just as frustrating was the hysteria over "lean, finely textured beef" that was banished from store shelves, throwing hundreds of people out of work in the factories that produced it.

The company is suing ABC News for popularizing the term "pink slime" which touched off the controversy, but the network's story was probably more about ratings than a deliberate attempt to run the company out of business.

Thanks to a recent South Dakota Supreme Court ruling, that lawsuit is proceeding, perhaps, to a settlement, with no admission of wrongdoing. Or, perhaps, to a highly-publicized trial and soul-searching by, and condemnation of, media outlets.

Ironically, a photograph that often accompanied the story was actually of processed chicken on its way into fast-food nuggets rather than beef used to extend hamburger. And, little mention was made of the fact the process used in salvaging healthy, otherwise wasted beef was vetted and approved by federal regulators.

Thanks to the Texas drought and other factors, "lean, finely textured beef" is making a comeback, albeit with more specific labeling and more references to treatment with citric acid instead of ammonia.

Meanwhile, people will happily gulp down millions of hot-dogs and stadium sausages which would be hard to distinguish from "pink slime" in the manufacturing process, not to mention creepy-crustaceans pulled at great expense from the bottom of oceans or waterways, fungi that sprout in filthy forest conditions or the boiled and fried product of the Avarian reproductive cycle.

Let's hope sanity, perspective and reality return to consumer expectations when it comes to our food supply.