There’s grocer samples. And then there’s grosser samples.
As some Albuquerque, New Mexico shoppers found out when they sampled the red-light special on aisle four at a Sunflower Market.
A store employee had added his own special sauce, a secret ingredient, to the yogurt samples he was distributing last winter: his own precious body fluids. (Source: AP article seen on Boston.com)
The taste rang a bell with one sampler who found that the flavor was quite reminiscent of semen. The police tested a sample, determined it was tainted, and DNA-matched it to one Anthony Garcia, who was just indicted by a federal grand jury
…on charges of adulterating food and making false statements to federal investigators. He was arrested Wednesday afternoon and is scheduled to appear in court Thursday morning.
This is no ha-ha, laugh it off as a dirty joke type of situation, by the way:
If convicted on the adulteration charge, Garcia faces three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a year of supervised release. The other charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. (Source: KOAT.com)
Gulp!
On second thought, don’t gulp.
U.S. Attorney Kenneth Gonzalez has let it be known that he doesn’t care what Garcia’s intent may have been. His office intends to:
“…vigorously pursue those who deliberately adulterate foods for the purpose of causing harming to innocent consumers, or as malicious pranks, or for deviant sexual gratification.”
That must have been a stomach-churning and/or smirk-a-lot grand jury to have served on, that’s for sure.
Predictably, when this incident first came to light last winter, commenters were buzzing about whether this was yet another one of those glass-in-my-salad, what’s-that-fly-doing-in-my-soup set ups that scam artists create so that they can sue. (Interesting enough, a number of those early commenters also asked ‘how would anyone know what that stuff tasted like?’ LOL. If one doesn’t actually know first hand (or first mouth), surely a consenting adult – one old enough to comment on an online article – would have the experience and/or imagination to figure out how someone might have come into possession of this information, even if they, themselves, had not. Those comments reminded me of a long-ago trip to the San Diego Zoo, during which two giant land tortoises decided that, public be damned, the time was right to get it on. There was a middle-aged couple standing near me, and I overhead that wife ask the husband ‘What are they doing?’)
Anyway, it seems to me that there are enough gross things that can happen in the food chain without scam artists making them up. And since the DNA ties the “yogurt” to Garcia, this one seems like the real deal.
I’ve had a couple of gross food things happen to me over the years. I found a pinky-sized bandaid in some cole slaw; and a finger nail in a drink. One time, I found a piece of gravel in a bowl of soup, but fortunately my tongue found it before I crunched down on it and broke a tooth. I did break a tooth once on a stoned-wheat cracker, and my first thought was that what I had in my mouth was a pebble. I started to put it in a baggy, the better to run it back to Whole Foods with my j’accuse, when I observed that the pebble looked an awful lot like a piece of tooth. Oh, gross! Even worse than a teensy-tiny pebble, it’s a teensy-tiny piece of someone’s tooth. Then my trusty tongue made it’s way to my less trusty tooth, and I realized that that teensy-tiny bit o’ tooth was mine.
Years earlier, I’d been craving a peanut butter sandwich, so when I returned from grocery shopping I eagerly opened up the peanut butter jar. Only to find that someone had kindly pre-twirled the lid for me, and had not so kindly shoved his/her mitt into the PB and scooped out a giant wad. Peanut butter jar in hand, I ran back to the store and demanded a replacement.
But, as far as I know, I have not been subjected to someone else’s bodily fluids, precious or not, when I’ve helped myself to the grocery samples.
Meanwhile, Sunflower Markets – a small chain located throughout the West – which offers “serious food, silly prices” is not-so-strangely silent on this incident. The closest mention on their news page is the one announcing their GMO-free house-brand of tofu. (One does, of course, assume that Anthony Garcia is no longer on hand as a store employee.)
But it’s always interesting to take a look at what a company has to say about itself and hold it up to the light of some piece of disturbing news.
Sunflower kind of aw-shucks thinks of themselves as:
…just hard-working folks who get a real kick out of negotiating the best possible deal anywhere.
There’s no doubt that Garcia got a kick out of his personal foray into organics; and I’ll bet that his lawyer is, just about now, trying to negotiate “the best possible deal anywhere.”
Our customers and suppliers tell us that they find our way of doing business to be a refreshing change.
Change, assuredly. Refreshing? Maybe not.
As for me, I’ll be saying a quick ‘no thanks’ to any grocery sample that’s in liquid-ish form.
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Pink Slip has been on the adulterated food story before. See Ratatouille to read about someone who found a mouse in her canned green beans.
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