AN ANECDOTE

Since I have nothing serious to write about before Tuesday’s Council meeting this little bit of nonsense will have to do.

Monday when in the market I noticed in the refrigerated cases packages of Crab Cakes and Lobster Cakes.  Respectively the front of the package read “made with real crabmeat, or made with real Lobster meat.

The innocent shopper would believe that the cakes were 100% crab or lobster plus fillers. Yet if one read the ingredients you would note something like this: “Lobster meat, fish (Pollock,     or-)”.

Since the percentages are not specified, I would question the exact amount of Lobster (or Crab) in the cake. But the gov’t does not believe that we need to know or have honesty in advertising.

This reminded me of a funny ethnic story in my youth. To understand the joke you have to know that –believe it or not- in the 20s and 30s chicken was an expensive meat. The cost was so great that stores and restaurants selling “Chicken Salad” were found to be making it with the much cheaper veal.

Jewish markets sold a type of salami known as Chicken Salami, the inference being that even though being mostly Beef, it was made with (contained) chicken meat.

One enterprising vendor advertised that his Chicken Salami was 50% chicken.

When questioned about the honesty of his claim; he indignantly responded “I use one chicken to one cow”. (Or perhaps G*d forbid it was a horse).

Yes one to one should be 50%. There may be no moral to this story unless one could relate it to some of the reasoning that goes into the Council’s actions.