The "Myths & Rumors" section of Coca-Cola's website makes for amazing reading, particularly if you are, like me, concerned about the prevalence of rat urine on the top of your soft drink can.
This rumor about a dirty soft drink can causing someone's death is simply not true. The Coca-Cola Company and all our bottling facilities adhere to a very rigorous quality assurance program to ensure the highest level of sanitation and to create superior quality products. We have very active and strict food inspection systems that regulate all of our plants and warehouse facilities, and rodent detection is one of the most basic things for which they inspect. In addition, governmental authorities enforce strict legal and regulatory systems that prohibit the storage of food and beverage products in warehouses that do not meet appropriate sanitation standards. Naturally if the store environment seems dirty, it is advisable to clean anything you might put in your mouth.
[Via Awl pal Edith Zimmerman, who is the Giacometti of produce.]
"...it is advisable to clean anything you might put in your mouth."
Words to live by.
FINALLY you hit on a subject for which I am qualified to speak.
I represent food warehouses for a living. Even the STRICTEST adherence to sanitation standards can't prevent the random rodent doing the random things rodents do, particularly when they get around food and drink. The depositor may be "strict," but there can only be standards, not 100% compliance. That keeps rodents like me employed.
Second: I was at an outdoor cafe once where we noticed little dishes of cola set about the periphery. We asked the waitress what those were for.
"It's Pepsi," she said. "It's for the rats. They can't pee it out. When they drink it, they explode."
We returned to eating our fish sandwiches and drinking refreshing Pepsi products. Later, I peed.
I was in Atlanta for a meeting that took place at a food production facility/warehouse and the conditions were appalling. Huge rodent bait stations everywhere and evidence of a pretty bad infestation. We took our business elsewhere and I wasn't surprised when the peanut butter thing happened. Oversight in GA is a joke.
Do you represent them at parades? I'd like to imagine you have a job that requires you to wear a sash. Representing food warehouses at parades is precisely such a job.
Most of my work requires me to wear a nylon stocking over my head.
Rat urine on Coke cans doesn't worry me in the slightest. What keeps me up at night is the Chinese who "play joke" by putting pee-pee in my Coke.
Not to mention: rat urine is sterile, so there's really no reason NOT to ingest it.
Balk, can we (I?) get an update on your deceased neighbor's apartment situation?