This is a strange story about the global meat market and its use of labels:

Hundreds of tonnes of meat seized during a Food Standards Agency investigation in County Fermanagh must be destroyed, a court has ordered.

Some of the meat was decomposing, foul smelling and green coloured.

The court heard some meat seized at Euro Freeze Ireland (Ltd) in Lisnaskea had bogus health markings and an expiry date of October 2000.

The smell and color were giveaways. What happens when food is engineered not to smell or change color when it decomposes? The information we see on labels will only increase in value as other forms of identification, and therefore trust, disappear.

This brings me back to my concern over cherries made red, almost in a parody of themselves, while the labels to tell you how they are made red are found too alarming to be publically consumed.

I hate to say it but, speaking of rotten meat and things syrupy sweet, this story suddenly reminded me of the poem called “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?