The story broke in the local afrikaans press. Just in time for the season of frozen (hopefully not refrozen) turkeys. Apparently, a key supplier of chickens to fast food outlets and major supermarkets (not Pansy's beloved Woollies**) is recyling expired chickens. My liewe aarde!*** The birdies are washed out with chlorine to kill bacteria, injected with brine and then repackaged and resold with a new expiry date! Wie sou nou ooit gedink het, slaan my met 'n gevriesde hoender!°*
The supplier claims it is perfectly legal and is standard industry practice. Although another supplier claims they don't recycle chickens for human consumption. One supermarket denies they sell refrozen chickens. My magtig!° It was a disgruntled employee that spilt the beans. Apparently he is facing disciplinary action for sexual harrassment - the poitjie thickens!°°
Standard industry practice indeed. A reader on a news website asked why the supermarkets don't sell the almost-first-time-expired-frozen chickens at half price, instead of incurring extra transportation and recyling costs. Would people knowingly eat refrozen-frozen-expired chickens? Is this a global industry standard? I can't imagine that Germans, being so anti- genetically modified food, would eat refrozen-frozen-expired chicken, so I'm guessing it's not allowed in the EU. And a quick investigation of food regulations in Australia revealed that it's not allowed there. So maybe it's just allowed in some places.
One of the reasons people cite for shifting to vegetarianism and veganism is the crass commercialisation of the meat and dairy industry. Others believe that violence among humans is a result of karma: karmic reactions to the slaughter (and eating) of animals.
Speaking of karma and food, Pansy recently attended one of Karma's cooking courses at Karma Pineslopes. The great thing about this course is that the recipes are very simple, taste fantastic, and they use ingredients which are readily available at most supermarkets - no need for things like asoefetida, onion seeds, fenugreek and ghee. And yet, why do home-made curries seldom taste as great as the restaurant? Karma also gave the chefs (they each got a chef's hat to wear) several tips about making curries:
- slice your corriander pod open to optimise the flavour
- don't wait for mustard and cumin seeds to pop otherwise they burn. Leave them for 15 seconds and then add the rest of the ingredients
- when you fry the onions...oops, let me not divulge too much...
Karma does cooking courses for up to 80!!! people. Pansy was in a group of 14, they made amongst other things onion badjas, butter chicken, beef vindaloo, fish and aubergine masala, goan vegetable curry, green bean and tomato curry, lentil rice and ..........
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...........................................................................................................chilli chocolate samoosas!
Given that it is Christmas eve, (and already Christmas lunch for those in more eastern territories) ek sê°°° "Merry Christmas" or "Sorry about the 70 million slaughtered birdies" depending on whether you're a celebrator or a vegan atheist.
*Oh siss/yuck in afrikaans
**short for Woolworths, the south african equivalent of Marks and Spencer or Karstadt
***Goodness gracious in afrikaans
°*figuratively: to be taken aback - literally: who would have thought, hit me with a frozen chicken (usually it's with a 'nat vis' (wet fish)
°Good heavens/Lord almighty in afrikaans
°°poitjie is an afrikaans stew of just about anything and everything thrown together and left to simmer for really long while the chef drinks a klippies and coke (brandy and coke) and talks about rugby or cricket
°°° I say in afrikaans
p.s. Before you think Pansy's afrikaans is really good, the frozen chicken-wet fish idea was from Number One.
p.s.s. the cartoon is by Dan Piraro www.bizarro.com
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