Rivercard
Too much good stuff
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...ced-pig-rectum_n_2482063.html?utm_hp_ref=food
A popular radio show's Jan. 11 episode focuses on doppelgangers -- people and things that appear extremely similar on the surface but are actually totally different. Among the doppelgangers? Calamari's modest cousin, "imitation calamari."
Though it has a shape and texture similar to the real thing, its component parts are decidedly different. While calamari comes from squid, the replica is supposedly made of hog rectum, otherwise known as "bung."
The irony is not lost on Ben Calhoun, one of the show's producers, and ring-leader of the segment, who notes:
In restaurants everywhere, right this second, people are squeezing lemon wedges over crispy, golden, rings, dipping the rings into marinara sauce, and they're eating hog rectum. Now they're chewing -- satisfied and deeply clueless. It's payback for our blissful ignorance about where our food comes from and how it gets to us.
Mark Wheeler, a spokesman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) -- the department tasked with ensuring the correct labeling and packaging of our nation's meat products -- told The Huffington Post he wasn't aware of any products specifically labeled as "imitation calamari." If it does exist, and is derived from a hog's rectum, he said it would have to be clearly identified as such.
So is hog rectum getting passed off as calamari at restaurants across the United States? It's possible (and illegal), but there really isn't any proof one way or another. However, a disconcerting report from Oceana, an ocean conservation watchdog, notes that seafood fraud occurs at shocking levels in major metropolitan areas, including Boston (48 percent), Los Angeles (55 percent), Miami (31 percent), and New York City (39 percent).
The group concluded that seafood fraud can happen at any step of a product's supply chain -- the restaurant, the distributor, or the processing and packaging phase.
