Pendleton said he found the head, the size of the end of his thumb, while eating Sunday at the T.G.I. Friday’s in Clifton Park. The chain restaurant said it regrets the appetite-killing error. Pendleton said he has no plans to sue.

Pendleton said he ordered vegetables instead of fries with his chicken sandwich. When he started to eat his broccoli, he saw something gray on the plate he at first thought was a mushroom. “I start to turn it over. I see this gray-green patch,” he said.

Next he saw a V-shape that turned out to be the mouth of a snake. “I could see these black, rotted eye sockets on the top,” he said. The severed head also had bits of tendon and part of the spine attached, he said.

“I stopped eating. I told my girlfriend, ‘I think this is a head,’” he said.

Pendleton snapped a photo with his cellphone camera, then summoned the waiter. He covered the dish with his hand and described his find.

“He thought I was joking until I took my hand away,” Pendleton said. The waiter grabbed the plate and took it back to the kitchen, the diner said.

“The manager came over white as a sheet,” said Pendleton, 28, of Ballston Lake, a senior art director for a textbook company in Clifton Park. “He explained in five years he’d never run into anything like this.”

Amy Freshwater, a spokeswoman for the chain, said in an e-mailed statement the company is trying to determine what happened.

“We are taking this situation very seriously,” she said. “We immediately pulled the broccoli from this restaurant and began an extensive investigation. As a precautionary measure, we pulled broccoli from all restaurants that received product from this supplier. We have since isolated the specific lot date of the broccoli in question and have now reintroduced the product in all restaurants not included in the product hold.”

The supplier has been contacted to begin its own investigation, she said. “We are sending the object to an independent laboratory for testing,” Freshwater said in the statement. “We have very strict and thorough safety and sanitation procedures and regret that this situation occurred in one of our restaurants.”

The couple were given their meals without charge and offered the name of a regional manager, which Pendleton said he declined. He said he advised the manager he should check the kitchen to make sure the rest of the snake wasn’t in someone else’s meal. He also told the manager the head should have been found when the vegetables were harvested or, if it crawled into a box, before it made it into his meal.

Pendleton said he filed a complaint through the restaurant’s Web site but has no plans to sue. He tried to contact the Saratoga County Health Department, he said, but he could not find contact information on its Web site. His story also was posted on the Web site the Consumerist, under the headline “Snakes on a Plate.”

He and his girlfriend had planned to attend a carnival after their meals, he said, but as he pulled into the lot he decided he didn’t have the stomach to go on the rides.

 

I’m doing some research on pig castration and came across this impressively honest entry from a pig farmer in Georgia:

This week, I castrated my first pig.  It was one of the two survivors from Dottie’s first litter, which Liz has been nursing along for the past four weeks, as she discussed in this post.  His name is Brutus.

Pig castration is a topic that Liz and I have discussed frequently, and we’re torn on the issue.  Some farmers have been successful in essentially developing lines that are free of boar taint.  However, most people believe that you must castrate males if you plan to sell them, and certainly this would be required for the retail/restaurant sector.  Our struggle has more to do with how do we best emulate nature and maintain a natural environment.   The two Berkshire pigs we processed earlier this year were castrated, and both were outstanding.  The two Ossabaw pigs we processed last month were not castrated.  They too were outstanding, but I could definitely detect some boar taint when cooking. Liz, who is normally more sensitive to such things, could detect nothing after eating two different cuts.

We debate the issue of whether we should or shouldn’t castrate and, if there is any boar taint, adjust our taste to suit what nature, and the animal, gives us. Hunters have long known that does can taste different than bucks, especially during the autumn rut.  Does that make it bad?   And our hunter forefathers certainly could not count on hunting an already castrated bison, caribou or moose.  Castration does not occur naturally.  On the other hand, we’re in the business of producing safe, humanely raised and DELICIOUS food for ourselves and our customers.  So, for now, we’re castrating most males, although we may raise some intact in a control group for comparison.

The process for cattle (steers) is actually much less invasive, if you use banders.  Somehow, that makes it seem better.  For pigs, there are no bands. They’re not built that way. You have to separate them from the sow (be careful), hold them by the hind legs and flip them over between your legs. They’ll squeal like crazy, but this has nothing to do with pain or discomfort.  They just get scared and squeal loudly. That’s why you want them AWAY from mom…a tough trick when you’re raising them naturally without barns or barricades.  Once you flip them over, you have to work quickly, moving the testicles into the scrotum and making a slit over the scrotum with a sharp razor.  Push the testicle through the slit and pull the blood vessel out until it snaps off.   Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it.

As with most things, it’s one thing to describe it academically. It’s another to do it. Castrating cows was easy. But castrating a little, squealing piglet just for your eating pleasure, well, it gives you pause.  I do have to say that the piglet exhibited no signs of pain or discomfort, and was running around quickly afterwards.  There was actually more squealing before I made the first incision.  So it’s not the pain or discomfort that I’m questioning.  In any event, I suppose we’ll continue to castrate so that we can produce a predictable meat quality, but perhaps we’ll all learn to just appreciate what nature gives us, as is.

Here’s this from the Environmental Working Group:  

We don’t think babies should be gulping down a rocket fuel ingredient – do you? But in some areas of your state, when you mix infant formula contaminated with perchlorate – a rocket fuel ingredient than can interfere with infant brain development – with water that’s also contaminated with perchlorate, you put rocket fuel on baby’s menu. Twice.

We have long said that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which regulates the nation’s water quality, should set a permanent and stringent limit on perchlorate pollution in drinking water.

Although it’s not mentioned in the missive, perchlorate is more than ”a rocket fuel” ingredient. It’s also a natural chemical found in Chilean nitrate, an approved organic fertilizer. Check out this from the Perchlorate Information Bureau:

Q: Is perchlorate also found naturally in fertilizer?

A: Yes, since the early 20th century Chilean nitrate fertilizer containing naturally-occurring perchlorate has been widely used in American agriculture. Current amounts of Chilean nitrate fertilizer products being shipped and used in the United States are substantial. According to the Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Census Bureau, the amounts of sodium nitrate imported from Chile into U.S. ports in 2001 was 88,150 metric tons. Specific to California, Chilean nitrate fertilizer containing perchlorate has been widely used since 1923 and between 1923-1998, the reported usage of sodium nitrate in California was 477,061 metric tons. Though the quantities used today are smaller than the amounts applied earlier in the century, the use of Chilean nitrate fertilizer in California remains substantial. Most recent data (2000 U.S. Department of Census) indicates more than 6,600 tons of Chilean nitrate fertilizer were imported to California that year.

I’m pleased with the EWG’s vigilance, but I hope the investigation extends to all areas of the agricultural economy, including the organic industry.