Tuesday, July 05, 2011

DINERS AND COURTS TAKING LEAVE OF THEIR SENSES

Whenever I eat hamburgers I don’t give a damn whether the ground beef came exclusively from California cows or if it came from a mixture of California cows, Texas cows and cows from other states. And I sure as hell would not pay more for eating a steak in order to find out the cow’s DNA – I just want the steak to be tender and taste good.

And if I accepted a bridge maintenance worker’s job, I would expect to be working at hair-raising heights. So, if suffered from a fear of working at those heights, I shouldn’t have applied for the job in the first place.

T-MOO-L!: UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT
By Chuck Shepherd

Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird
July 4, 2011

Somehow, upscale restaurateurs believe that diners will soon willingly pay more for a beef dish if it comes with disclosure of the DNA of the actual cow being eaten, according to a May Associated Press report.

"People want to know where their food is coming from," said one excited chef, lauding the knowledge to be gleaned from a calf's upbringing.

(A more practical beef-supply executive added that DNA can help identify the "multiple animals" whose parts were used in hunks of ground beef -- a 10-pound package of which may include contributions from "hundreds" of different cows.) [Iowa City Press-Citizen-AP, 5-26-2011]
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In May, a federal appeals court reinstated the Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit filed in 2007 by Darrell Miller after he was fired as a bridge maintenance worker by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Miller had been medically diagnosed with a fear of heights, and could not work on many projects, but a lower court dismissed his lawsuit, concluding that working at heights was an unavoidable condition of bridge maintenance.

(The appeals court said that a jury "might" find that bridge maintenance could be done in "teams" with one worker always on the ground.) [WorkersCompInsider.com, citing Miller v. IDOT, 5-10-2011]

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