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Jewish World Review July 25, 2005 / 18 Tammuz, 5765 Hot Diggity Dog! By Tom Purcell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It's July and we know what that means: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are grossing us out about hot dogs.
July is National Hot Dog month, you see, a glorious month when the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council tells us about the history of the dog, shares new recipes and explains why Americans chomp down more than seven billion dogs every summer.
I had two hot dogs for lunch yesterday and enjoyed them immensely. I enjoyed them because, 1) They were dang tasty and, 2) It drives the PETA folks hog wild. That's why they try to gross us out about dogs.
"Every third-grade boy knows what nasty things lurk in hot dogs, from ears to eyelids," writes Paula Moore on PETA's Web site. "A U.S. Department of Agriculture official confirmed that hot dogs contain skeletal muscles, along with parts of pork stomach, snout, intestines, spleens, edible fat, and, yes, lips."
That sounds like a Harry Potter recipe. It also sounds mighty tasty, so long as it's ground up, stuffed into a sausage casing, grilled to perfection, smattered with mustard and washed down with an ice-cold beer.
Moore next focuses on a Wall Street Journal investigation that details hot dog complaints consumers sent to the federal government.
"They found several unsavory surprises, including a three-inch rubber band, something described as a greenish blue glob, pieces of glass, and even screws and other metal objects."
Hey, Paula, that may be true, but I'll bet a CAT scan of Howard Dean's brain would locate the same items, and I don't hear PETA complaining about him.
Moore then tries to frighten us about additional risks of eating hot dogs: that dogs are frequently contaminated by listeria, a deadly bacteria that can cause everything from flu-like symptoms to death to the desire to watch Fear Factor reruns.
But she forgets to point out that vegetables, one of the few foods PETA will allow us to eat, can also contain listeria, or that listeria can be easily killed in a dog by grilling it to perfection before you wash it down with an ice-cold beer.
No attack on the American hot dog would be complete without telling us how much fat and salt are in every one. Moore says that even chicken and turkey dogs are loaded with the stuff. But not only are we aware of the fat and salt in dogs, this is why we eat them. Fat and salt are tasty, especially when it is washed down with an ice-cold beer.
Moore goes on to call attention to the way animals are treated at some farms. She cites examples of pigs forced to live in unpleasant circumstances and of some of the cruel means used to kill them before they are sent off to the butcher.
I agree with the wit who said that if G-d didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them taste so good? It is, in fact, our duty to eat them. Isn't it our way of honoring so many ancestors who fought their way to the top of the food chain?
That's why, despite PETA's attempt to gross us out and scare us away from eating dogs, I'm going to keep eating them. I can't wait to fire up the grill tonight. I'll let the dogs sizzle until the skin burns with a touch of charcoal.
Then I'll set them gently into a couple of bleach-processed buns and smatter them with mustard and fresh onions. I'll wash my great gastronomic blessing down with a couple of ice-cold beers, and mist up as I pay homage to the ancestors who made it all possible.
Then I'll hope like heck there is no listeria in the onions.
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© 2005, Tom Purcell |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
