An Arizona restaurant that tried to promote business by serving Lion meat (mixed with beef) burgers has fired up controversy instead. The restaurant believed it was sourcing meat from a respectable source, but did no investigation on its own. You probably can guess what happened next.

A reporter for CNN traced the meat to a company owner convicted for illegal sources as well as product misrepresention:

Czimer’s exotic-meat dealings have landed him in hot water before. Back in 2003, Chicago newspapers covered his conviction and six-month prison sentence for selling meat from federally protected tigers and leopards. Czimer admitted to purchasing the carcasses of 16 tigers, four lions, two mountain lions and one liger — a tiger-lion hybrid — which were skinned, butchered and sold as “lion meat,” for a profit of more than $38,000.

Czimer’s defense is the best part of the story. He tells the reporter to turn a blind eye, just like he normally would for other food.

He’s willing to take a hands-off approach: “Do you question where chickens come from when you go to Brown’s Chicken or Boston Market?” he asked.

Exactly. There is a long tail (pun not intended) of trust implied with food prepared and supplied by restaurants. Trust also is involved when sourcing meat from ranchers.

With this in mind, note that Czimer’s website claims they sell game meat to avoid “harmful residue” and as an alternative to “domestic meats”.

Since the late l950’s the Czimer family pursued in expanding the choices of game meats, game birds and sea foods to the environmentally sensitive patients.

Oh, how things have changed! Czimer is now the one telling you to turn a blind eye. They will sell you meat, just don’t asked where it is from or how it was produced.

I hope that someone ordering lion would care about authenticity and value, per Czimer’s original sales pitch. Likewise customers should be able to verify that they are not purchasing illegally obtained meat from federally protected animals.

Just the other day I was in an airport and noticed a Pete’s store with a sign for natural fruit smoothies. I asked to see the ingredients. After a brief moment of digging through the cabinets and drawers the staff presented me with a greasy-looking bottle that listed artificial colors and chemical sweeteners. That definitely was not what I was expecting and I valued it far below the price they were asking. The staff seemed genuinely interested to find out the ingredients themselves for the first time and they smiled when I said “no thank you”.

Bottled water in America is big business. Two years ago a quarter of the world’s bottled water was sold in the US for over $12 billion. Some might say that two years is all water can last, judging by the expiration date printed on the bottle.

Sadly, the expiration date was printed on water bottles for reasons unknown. Several sites say the date was to comply with a poorly written law in New Jersey that has since changed. That seems hard to believe and I have found no evidence that it existed. In any case (pun not intended) an expiration date certainly does not relate to safety or health of the water.

Here is the FDA statement on the subject:

Bottled water is considered to have an indefinite safety shelf life if it is produced in accordance with CGMP and quality standard regulations and is stored in an unopened, properly sealed container. Therefore, FDA does not require an expiration date for bottled water.

Those paying 1000 times the price of water from the tap perhaps would be first in line to want an indefinite life. The DHS and American Red Cross have a different recommendation:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the American Red Cross both encourage the public to change their bottled water every six months.

I suspect the DHS and Red Cross really want to ensure people actually have water, or to help them remember where their water is stored. They say the six months is targeted at people who bottle their own water, to ensure that bacterium does not form. This makes bottled water seem like the less-risky option again because of the process, but the bottles themselves are another matter.

The PET (#1 or polyethylene terephthalate) used for hand-held containers and HDPE (#2 or high-density polyethylene) for big containers is said to break down from chemicals, heat and UV as well as absorb materials around it. Coca-Cola has found their Dasani bottles introduce flavor to the water over time:

Susan McDermott, says the company has done research on its own Dasani brand showing that the taste of its bottled water changes after its one-year expiration date. But, she adds: “It is probably not something the average person will notice.”

Perhaps Coca-Cola could start to market Dasani water as better with age? Instead of an expiration date, they should print the date it is bottled like a fine wine. Imagine a Dasani bottle of water from 2006 that has been stored in an oak barrel…

I can not wait to hear comedians comment on the news from Italy about suspicious cheese.

A batch of about 70,000 mozzarella balls which turned blue upon opening has been confiscated by food authorities in Italy, officials say.

Blue cheese? Apparently the Police are called in Italy when cheese goes blue. I would wager the cheese would get a completely difference reaction in England or France. Maybe the cheese was just shipped to the wrong market.

Some interesting facts in this incident:

• 60% of Italians regularly eat mozzarella
• The cheese in question was produced in Germany for “discount supermarkets”
• The blue was by bacterium, not toxicity

Bacterium is essential to making cheese flavorful. The blue thus could be a good thing, or it could be bad. Control of bacterium is an interesting and ancient security issue, as an article from 1897 explains.

The food value of cheese is dependent upon the casein which is present. The market price, however, is controlled entirely by the flavour, and this flavour is a product of bacterial growth. Upon the action of bacteria, then, the cheese maker is absolutely dependent; and when our bacteriologists are able in the future to investigate this matter further, it seems to be at least possible that they may obtain some means of enabling the cheese maker to control the ripening accurately.

Italians outsource mozzarella to Germany? Engines and suspension, I can believe, but food? What were they thinking? Also notable that the police responded without any illness reported, just suspicion based on color.

The BBC says the risk of a young girl being put to death at birth is high in parts of India.

In Bihar, payment of dowry by the bride’s family is a common practice. The price tag of the bridegroom often depends on his caste, social status and job profile.

The state is also infamous for the maximum number of dowry deaths in the country.

The risk to a girls’ life is therefore a financial issue. The model has been changed in one town by a simple financial management plan. The parents invest in a set of fruit trees for every girl born. The fruit generates income as the girl is raised and the set of trees help offset the cost of marriage.

“This is our way of meeting the challenges of dowry, global warming and female foeticide. There has not been a single incident yet of female foeticide or dowry death in our village,” [villager Shyam Sunder Singh] says.

His cousin, Shankar Singh, planted 30 trees at the time of his daughter Sneha Surabhi’s birth.

The practice is not new. The article says the village now has nearly 100,000 mango and lychee trees for just 7,000 residents and has become far more lush with shade and hospitable compared to other villages in the area.

Now if only the Basel II accords, which require a capital investment/offset for financial and operational risk, could make banks less shady…