makes you appreciate cryovac!

Not to spook you Ron, but you should see the conditions in the packing house and the hands/gloves that touch all the meat right before it goes into the cryovac room.

I'd much rather it be touched by a few shoppers than by those nasty cotton gloves full of anything and everything. If there is one tainted piece of meat, then every piece after that is probably contaminated.

And don't get me started on the scrap lines. There are two conveyors that run over the top of the ham and loin processing lines. One is for edible trimmings and one is for offal (e.g. veins, abscesses, scar tissue, etc.). The offal is for pet food and the trimming is for sausages, etc. I can't tell you how many times the wrong thing is unintentionally put into the wrong conveyor line. Mistakes are easy to make when you're processing 800+ pieces of meat per hour. Let's just say our dogs eat better material than we think. You can extrapolate the other side of that equation.

While visiting son in Peace Corps in Mali Africa, ate stuff that makes this look five star! Asked one night, and was told that what I was eating was suspected to be sheep stomach, from the critter butchered three days prior. And no, there was no electricity, much less refrigeration, in this 95 degree plus locale.

Yeah, it looks pretty unsanitary, but after all the meat does get cooked at temps that should do in whatever the shoppers have on their hands. Plus, I think it's all relative. When we were in Africa, son saw to it Mom and Dad only got bottled water (and you had to look out for counterfeit refilled bottles), but he drank whatever was around, and it looked, ah, nasty. But, his system had gotten accustomed. We were there three weeks and came home pretty much as healthy as we left.

RRP: My first job as an engineer was working on wastewater plants ... at breweries. You haven't experienced full hangover effects till you walk up on a primary clarifier (bigggg tank full of beer waste settling solids out and skimming scum off top) that reeks of decaying beer waste. It'll make you give up beer. Until the next night anyway. :P

There aren't too many factories that make you feel good about what you are eating/drinking. I also work for a Big 4 and got to tour the shop floor for one of our aerospace clients. Not exactly food related, but let's just say it wasn't the Ferrari factory and I didn't exactly feel good about flying out that evening.

I also have friends that have done work with the beverage clients and not one of them will drink soda anymore.

Like a previous poster stated, I sleep comfortably knowing that th egg is going to kill whatever may have touched the food.

As for the fresh veggies...that's a whole different issue.

Oh don't worry. I'm sure things have changed in the 20 years since I worked there.

Enjoy your sausage.