What's floating around in your food?

By: Piotr Skrabacz

Posted: 9/24/07

It's Wednesday night, you're starving after a long day of classes and decide to make a batch of your grandma's famous casserole. You reach for a can of green beans, open it and carefully pour it out and notice what looks to be an oddly large bean at first glance.

You take a closer look and notice this bean has teeth.

No, this isn't a story out of "Tales From the Crypt." It's the subject of a lawsuit being filed by an Iowa family claiming to have found a snake head in a can of green beans they purchased from a Cub Foods grocery store.

Now I know there have been some strange things found in food, but a snake head is appalling.

It may give you the chills to know the federal government has set guidelines allowing a certain amount of foreign objects in things you eat every day. The Food and Drug Administration guidelines as of right now allow 225 insect parts in 225 grams of pasta, rodent hairs in your peanut butter and five fly eggs or one maggot per 250 milliliters in your orange juice, just to name a few.

When asked why these guidelines are so relaxed, K. Melendez of the Cuyahoga County Health Department gave this justification: "It's allowed because in the processing or harvesting of the cereal, you're going to find insect parts, larvae or eggs."

In addition, officials said, "It's because our food comes from Mother Nature, and so do bugs. Food isn't sterile, but it shouldn't harm you."

Personally, I am thankful I have yet to find a creepy crawler in my morning O.J., but knowing that it's possible, and completely legal, makes me think twice when taking that first sip.

When Amy Schneider opened the can of beans, she said the size of the snake head was about the size and shape of a golf ball. For those of you who would have rather sat at the dinner table all night instead of eating your vegetables, green beans are long and skinny, not large and round.

I completely understand it's impossible to monitor every food item that leaves the factory, but how on Earth did a snake head make its way into a can of beans without being flagged?

The part that really doesn't make any sense is the damage control, or lack thereof, concerning the situation. After complaining to the store, you would think Cub Foods would do everything possible to make the customer happy by offering complimentary groceries or a written apology, but instead the store offered Schneider coupons for other products in its store.

Although insects and snake heads may be considered delicacies in other countries, it is almost unimaginable that more is not being done to keep these foreign objects from infiltrating basic food items like a can of green beans in the U.S.

What bizarre object do Americans have to find next for the FDA to finally make some serious guideline changes? Obviously, to them, a snake head is acceptable.