Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

My husband was grousing at me the other day because, when he brought home some unfamiliar canned dog food for my precious Jack Russells, I promptly looked the brands up on a recall list-he said I was a “Conspiracy Theorist”. Nope-just very aware of the kind of things we’re allowing to be imported without any checks and balances these days.

Dog food is only one of my worries: I figure I’m lucky to be alive after as many Chinese Take-Out meals as I’ve eaten in the last twenty years. My local lunch diner didn’t know me as “The Three Egg-roll Lady” for nothing. I never even got sick-maybe that says more for my Mid-Western constitution than from any food safety standards that have ever been in place. And, apparently, the FDA DOES attempt to keep track of some of it. On today’s recall list, I found two items of great interest: “Goldensmell (no, that’s what its called) brand Dried Fungus” and “Grove Grow Notes Dried Bamboo Fungus Veiled Lady”. I don’t know what either of these things are but you can be sure I’m not going to be picking any of these up at my local grocery to add to the stir-fry in the near future.. Of course, the same FDA recall list had a recall for some kind of hemorrhoid suppositories for excess mold and fungus-was it Goldensmell Fungus? Who knows? Is there an ‘acceptable level’ of fungus in hemorrhoid suppositories?

What got me going on the Chinese food worries was the article in my local paper about the NY Health Dept shutting down a China King restaurant in Hamburg because they arrived on a complaint call only to find employees butchering a dead deer in the kitchen. Nobody seems to know if the deer was shot or hit by a vehicle-or what China King intended to do with the meat. Talk about mystery meat! What WAS in that egg roll? Anyway, they’re out of business, at least temporarily. But, one thing leads to another. . .

Unrefrigerated Reefers

Landline sent out a news item a week or so ago about a box truck for Nara Foods out of Chicago being stopped for overweight at the Ionia Michigan scales. An inspection showed the rental 24ft truck was unrefrigerated-and contained thawing, uninspected meat, banned imported frozen yogurt under recall for melamine, seafood, dairy and other items destined for food markets in Grand Rapids, Lansing and Detroit. The driver also lacked a CDL, log book or medical card. The van didn’t have a DOT number-nor did the company doing the shipping.

This caught my eye as the Grass Lake scale over by me reported a situation of two instances of “same truck and same driver” transporting fresh (???) meats in a box truck with the refer shut off in the last year. The second time, Bright Boy at least tried to circumvent the scales. The descriptions at the time were quite graphic as they described dead plucked chickens lying in a heap on the dirty floor of the trailer. Those products were heading to chain Chinese restaurants in the Ann Arbor and Detroit markets. This was NOT the same company or driver as the previous incident near Ionia, by the way. Since inquiring minds want to know, I did an internet search and found six more reports of unrefrigerated box trucks being stopped in the process of delivering thawed and rotting perishable products to Chinese restaurants in Michigan in 2006 and 2007. Since this was only those reported under the Michigan Dept of Agriculture, we have no way of knowing how many more truckloads of unsafe foods have been stopped heading for local restaurants, much less how many have actually made delivery.

I have very little experience running reefer but it only takes an initial training session to understand the requirements. I also know that the regs for taking delivery require temperature readings before the pallet is even pulled off the truck-this is the responsibility of the receiver. I have a great deal of respect for the drivers who deal with this on a daily basis-they work hard for their money and protect the consumer by following strict regulations. They are underpaid for putting up with that noisy reefer and watching the temp readings the entire trip. A few weeks were enough for me to decide it wasn’t my favorite kind of trucking job. Yet, we have these guys who are just piling a bunch of potentially hazardous food products together in an unrefrigerated rental truck and traipsing off a couple of states, hoping the smell doesn’t become overwhelming before they offload the rotten product. Apparently, nobody at the receiving end gives a damn either, but then, they may be more worried about getting the dead deer off the prep counter before the truck gets there. This kind of complete disregard for safety in restaurant foods scares me no end. I find it hard to believe that they cant stop these idiots who are out to poison every customer in these places. Where’s Homeland Security on this issue? It sounds like terrorism to me! How did the melamine-tainted frozen yogurt get through customs? And where did the USDA uninspected meat come from?

Note that these are all box trucks, usually seen as local delivery when encountered on the highway. It’s apparent there needs to be a serious crackdown on these straight trucks, then-and maybe they need to leave us big trucks alone long enough to do it.