Do these crazy-sounding federal food regulations really exist? Can I read them for myself?
:eek:
I’d like mine with not so much rat in it.
I’ve been wondering the same thing about a “maggots per can of mushrooms” tale that I perpetuated for a while before realizing it might not be true - but can’t find evidence one way or the other.
Here is an interesting document.
“Rodent pellets: two or more rodent pellets per 1,000 grams or 9 mg or more rodent excreta pellets and/or fragments of rodent excreta pellets per 1,000 grams.”
I can’t speak for everyone, but I prefer the number of rodent pellets in my food to be “fewer than one.”
Oh, I wish I hadn’t looked again… I seem to have found the methodology for determining that the maggot level of canned mushrooms is within acceptable limits:
(And yeah, I realize that they’re not going to kill me, but the ick factor is just too much for me. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.)
Yes, it’s for real and is just an acknowledgement of the basic fact that it is really really difficult to prepare food from natural products that is entirely devoid of foreign bodies; in order to guarantee that the mushrooms were entirely free of maggots, for example, you’d have to minutely dissect them all, which would render them unsuitable for, say, adding to a pizza, so what you do is minutely dissect a representative sample and try to attain the level of contamination to a reasonable degree of confidence.
Obviously, if the standards were so picky as to totally exclude the yucky things, food would be much more expensive than it now is. Nevertheless, it is disconcerting to know that a certain number of rat turds will pass muster. With my luck, I’ll get the portion with the rodent surprise in it.