(So, parts of human fingers aren't a problem?)
From what I understand, in the food packaging business, one of the last tests a unit of food goes through is a metal detector. (Not sure how cans and other metallic containers are screened).
As for lubricants, they are probably natural/digestible. Back in the early days of steam engines, pig fat was used.
(And FWIW, I believe the first use of a steam engine in the food industry was in the early part of the nineteenth century by Joseph Fry, the big kahuna of the burgeoning chocolate industry in England. He used one to power the cacao bean grinder.)
There was a man from my home town,
His name was Don Derbeck.
He sold a lot of sausages and sauerkraut by heck.
He makes the finest sausages that you have ever seen.
Because he had invented a sausage-link machine.
Chorus:
Oh, Mister Don Derbeck,
How could you be so mean?
I told you you’d be sorry
For inventing that machine.
All the neighbors’ cats and dogs
Will never more be seen,
They’ve all been ground to sausages
In Don Derbeck’s machine.
One day a little neighbor boy came walking in the store.
He bought a pound of sausages and laid them on the floor.
The boy began to whistle and he whistled up a tune.
And all the little sausages followed him ‘round the room.
- Chorus
One day the meat inspector came a-knocking at the door,
He said, “I’ve come to check your shop, so give me money more!”
Donnie got real angry, and pushed him in the meat.
He fired up the old machine and now there’s more to eat.
- Chorus
One day there was a shortage, there was no meat to grind.
So Donnie called the city pound to see what he could find.
They said, “We’re out of business, we keep the strays no more.”
“But we’ll refer all future finds directly to your store.”
- Chorus
One day the school’s head cook, he had a brilliant thought.
He’d spend the cash in Donnie’s store for meat that he had sought.
“Seven pounds of hot DOGS,” the recipe did read.
The irony was that the taste was fabulous, indeed!
- Chorus
Have you ever wondered, when you go to camp.
The food is good and plentiful and never gives a cramp.
But early in the morning you’ll see the trucker go,
And lettered on the driver’s door is “Don Derbeck & CO.”
- Chorus
One day the machine got busted. The blamed thing wouldn’t go.
So Don Derbeck, he climbed inside to see what made it so.
His wife, she had a nightmare, and walking in her sleep,
She gave the crank a heck of a yank and Don Derbeck was meat.
- Chorus
She woke to see him leaving, ground up by the machine.
But being oh so practical, she added spice and greens.
She sold the tasty sausage, then boarded up the scene.
And that’s the last we ever heard of Don Derbeck’s machine!
- Chorus