How Much Filth Did You Eat Today

How Much Filth Did You Eat Today? By Elton Camp What can a title like this one possibly mean? Isn’t food inspected by the FDA perfectly clean? No, Food Defect Action Levels the FDA has set They only limit how high insect fragments can get There may be up to ten fly eggs in a tomato can Or else up to two maggots is the alternate plan Consumers who might eggs to maggots prefer Cannot know which of these happened to occur A hundred grams of peanut butter is able to contain Thirty insect parts or else one rodent hair may remain Popcorn may have twenty gnawed grains per pound Or else the standard is that two rodent hairs are found There’s scant comfort that mushrooms can pass exams If a tin contains up to twenty maggots per 100 grams Actually the taste of the food they won’t hurt at all, But the squeamish factor may make some folks squall Thirty fruit fly eggs in 100 grams of ketchup are okay Two maggots per hundred blueberries FDA does say None of these contamination levels should cause alarm To our health they are believed not to cause any harm Exactly what it is that we are eating it’s best to ignore If perfectly clean, the food we couldn’t afford anymore So just forget about this and enjoy as you gulp it down And hope that, in it, not a single mouse pellet was found