Posted on 12/01/2006 2:33:53 PM PST by shrinkermd
When a food safety inspector walked into a market in Queens, he noticed the store had an interesting special posted on its front window: 12 beefy armadillos. In Brooklyn, inspectors found 15 pounds of iguana meat at a West Indian market and 200 pounds of cow lungs for sale at another market. At a West African grocery in Manhattan, the store was selling smoked rodent meat from a refrigerated display case. An inspector quickly seized a couple pounds of it.
All of it was headed for the dinner table. All of it was also illegal.
Authorities say the discoveries are part of a larger trend in which markets across New York are buying meat and other foods from unregulated sources and selling them to an immigrant population accustomed to more exotic fare.
State regulators have responded by stepping up enforcement, confiscating 65 percent more food through September than they did in all of 2005.
The seizures also cast a spotlight on the eating habits of this ethnically diverse city, where everything from turtles and fish paste to frogs and duck feet make their way onto people's plates.
"At one time or another, we've probably seen about everything," said Joseph Corby, director of the state's Division of Food Safety and Inspection.
In an attempt to stamp out the activity, Corby's agency has ramped up efforts, working with the Food and Drug Administration, to prevent this illicit food from reaching store shelves.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Versus legal mystery meat?
It all tastes like chicken anyway.
Lovely. Another element in our transformation into a Third World country thanks to unfettered immigration.
Now watch how the dogs and cats start disappearing in those neighborhoods.
"We Celebrate Diversity"
Yeah, what used to show up on Wednesdays in the ol' high school cafeteria.......
Um-Um good old beefy armadillo meat and smoke rodents! Sounds like a feast to me!
Eating mystery meat that most Americans wont. Thats why we need them!
I don't get it. Why is anyone complaining?
Perhaps if we required immigrants to learn English, we might be able to teach them our law, too.
Except I don't think a single American can reasonably understand every single law that's out there.
But hey, folks asked for diversity; now they are getting diversity.
</snicker>
P.S.
Nasher bought the chickens from a poultry market in Brooklyn, and said he didn't know he was violating state law.
"In Bangladesh, you didn't have all these rules," he said.
Nasher, you're not in Bangladesh any more.
Yeah. I have mixed feelings about it, however; at one time, markets in Spain used to have to sell skinned rabbits with the ears on - because otherwise, there was no way of telling them from skinned cats. Dar gato por liebre (offering cat as rabbit), in fact, is a Spanish saying.
So I wouldn't say I'm totally opposed to food inspection, but on the other hand, of course these people are going to have to get their rodents, armadillos, etc. outside of the normal meat suppliers. Silly interference.
GROSS
Don't y'all love multiculturalism now. s/
Uh-ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can see it now. Charges of "eating while ethnic". Lawyers all over the place. The Council on Gastronomic-American Relations (pronounced see-gar) getting all wiggy.
Great green gobs of greasy grimey gopher guts,
Mutilated monkey meat,
Itsy bitsy birdie feet,
French fried eye-balls,
Rolling down a muddy street,
And I forgot my spoon!
Mmmmmmm... Armadillo and Fish Paste! For those refugees from Texas.
OTOH, isn't this racial profiling?
These places should be dealt with harshly and rapidly IMHO.
I catch my own rats. No big deal.
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