I Should Be Making Tunafish Sandwiches

Heads up, kids, inhaling aerosolized pig brains could be hazardous to your health.

I know, I know, I sound like some geezer trying to kill your buzz, but I'm not over thirty yet. I still have a few more months of street cred left before you're not allowed to trust me anymore. Just so you know, according to Martiga Lohn of the Associated Press, "Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the [Quality Pork Processors Inc.] plant in Austin, Minn. — all of them employed at the head table — developed numbness, tingling or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.

Weird.

Who would have thought inhaling brain matter up into a brain might have caused some sort of brain problem? It's almost as though the human brain and the pig brain matter are fighting over territory, like a brain gang fight. It's along the same lines as the theory, and mind you, I'm just slightly better at science than I am at math, so most of my conjectures aren't water tight, but it is like the theory that if you have one sort of environment or what have you (in this case, the human brain) and then you introduce a foreign item into it (in this case the inhalation of pig brain bits), then one or the other is going to reject each other in some form. Now, considering that I haven't heard tell of any of the aerosolized pig brains flying out of people's nostrils at rapid speeds, I'm going to go ahead with my theory that the human brain "don't want none o' that pig brain all up in here." This just in from actual scientists: "Exposure to pig brain tissue scattered by the compressed air triggered the illnesses." Huzzah! My theory was all that and a bag of chicharonnes!

Wait, I have another theory, though. Possibly...and this is just so crazy it might work, the fine people at Quality Pork Processors Inc. might flip through some catalogs and order some protection for their employees, like say face masks, gloves, and maybe full body paper suits. I don't know, something keeps nagging at me. How the hell are they inhaling the pig brains? It seems like you would walk in on your first day of work and they would hand you your manual, your key to the bathroom, your gloves, your helmet, your giant boots, your full body coveralls and a vomit bucket. Yet it seems like they're sloppin' around like, well, a bunch of pigs on the Fourth of July down there at the Head Table, getting their hands all full of pig skull and having a good ol' time until...whoops...someone's legs starts going numb. I mean, if it sounds like a cushy job that wouldn't require protection, well, here's how it works:

"In a rapid-fire process that is noisy, smelly and bloody, severed pigs' heads are cut up at the head table at a rate of more than 1,100 an hour. Workers slice off the cheek and snout meat, then insert a nozzle in the head and blast air inside until the light pink mush that is the brain tissue squirts out from the base of the skull. Compressed air could turn some brain matter into a mist that could be inhaled by workers, said Mike Doyle, a microbiologist who heads the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety.

"The head-table workers were protected by safety glasses, helmets, gloves and belly guards, but none wore anything over their mouths or noses."

Bravo!

However..."Head-table workers are now required to wear plastic face shields and protective plastic or rubber sleeves, the Health Department said."

Oh. Good. I'm sure those people at the Head Table (by the way this just furthers my want not to have a wedding party if I ever get married. Head Table just didn't sound appealing before and now it really doesn't) who can't work or walk very well are really glad this has been put in effect. Hopefully, they will put in a wheel chair ramp as well. Someday.

As a sidenote to a friend who abhors Hormel Chili, I would like to point out this: "State health officials said there is no evidence the public is at risk — either from those afflicted or from any food leaving the plant, which supplies Hormel Foods Inc." I'm sure it won't make him like it any more than he does and in fact now he probably is grossed out even more, but hey, it's just my job to point out that there aren't any hog brains in Hormel Chili so he can just calm down.

In closing, if you're ever in a job like this or where you need to wear protective gear and it's not provided, please use your common sense before your brain gets affected and you have major medical problems. I mean, seriously. I know the company should have provided face coverage for these people but at some point, when you're blasting a hog skull out with an air hose, take a little initiative and go Norma Rae on their ass until you get face coverage. Oh, by the way. Yes, these people had a union. Good job, union. Way to take care of your people.

That's all F-f-folks!