Food glorious food

I've had quite a few jobs working in food production. The experience changes you.

I had two summer jobs working in a banana factory. One of the perks was that you could eat as many bananas as you fancied. I fancied a lot. I reckon I ate several pounds of bananas a day when I worked there. After I left I didn't eat another banana for about ten years.

When I moved out of London I worked for a meat products factory, initially in the production planning department. I missed the hustle and bustle of the sales office, and the pace of life in Northampton was very slow compared to London. I got bored very quickly and when a vacancy occured for a department manager in the factory I applied and was taken on.
The first change was that I had to have a haircut. I couldn't get it all in the hairnet. When you work in the food industry you take hygeine seriously. If you don't, here's what can happen.

When I was a schoolboy there was a typhoid outbreak in the UK, caused by the South American factory cooling the corned beef tins in the local river water.
About fifteen years ago there was a huge rise in food poisoning that was traced to a firm passing off condemned chicken meat as fit for human consumption. The meat found its way into meat products all over the UK.
And there are numerous outbreaks of e-coli poisoning that are traced back to bad housekeeping and hygeine.

Then there are the foreign bodies that turn up in food, like this recent instance

http://www.droitwichadvertiser.co.uk/news/local/5010493.Wire_brush_found_in_burger/
" A DROITWICH teenager got more than he bargained for when he bit into a burger - and found a wire cleaning brush inside.
The Chicken Legend burger was bought from McDonald’s in Kidderminster by Janet Stephens and taken home for her son Brett.
But when the 18-year-old tucked into the burger he made a shock discovery.
The pair say the five inch wire bottle brush was running through the chicken part of the burger. "

Hmmm. Not sure about that one. Nor the apocryphal Kentucky fried rat. But I do know of a couple that happened.

When I worked at Olympia the catering firm also had the Wimbledon tennis contract. The sandwiches and scotch eggs were made in the kitchens under Olympia and they took on student labour to do the work. After a day of making sandwich after sandwich, the temptation to be creative became too much. There was the sin of omission, making a sandwich with the smallest possible sliver of ham showing, so the unlucky customer bit into plain bread and butter. Then there was the scotch egg with a ping-pong ball filling.
Ho ho ho how they laughed at that.

When I worked at Telfers sales office there was a tale doing the rounds of a steak and kidney pie handed back to the salesman. The customer had bit into and found a piece of paper. On it were written the words "Help, I am a prisoner at Telfers meat pie factory". I like that one. very creative and destructive at the same time.

I learned the difference between a uniform and an overall. When I worked in a bread factory a few years ago I was told quite bluntly that I had to wear a clean overall every shift. (The fact that there weren't any was neither here nor there).

The reason was that overalls were to be worn not to keep one's clothes clean, but to stop the food getting dirty.

I used to drive past the hospital on the way to and from work and I'd see the staff walking around outside wearing their uniforms, including the green that signifies theatre staff. In the food factory you had to remove your overalls if you left the factory floor for a smoke or to use the toilet, and you had to wash your hands when you went into the production area. If you didn't, you got shouted at by the other workers. We took hygeine seriously. You never saw food production staff walking around the town centre shops in their overalls, but I see plenty of NHS staff in their work clothes.
It's a pity that the NHS isn't run by food industry professionals. If the NHS was regulated as tightly as the food industry it'd be shut down long ago.