UHT/Sterilized milk
When I was doing my A-levels, I spent a long summer working for what was, at the time, a well-known milk producer whose name sounded an awful lot like 'Crazy Dairy'. They also produced milk for most of the big supermarkets as well, so nobody was safe.

The thing with sterilized and UHT milk - as well as the fact it tastes rank - is that the processing kills anything nasty in it. This single fact guided every activity in that factory. Because ANYTHING could go in that production line and come out the other end and be sold, anything did.

This batch of milk was overcooked and stinks of burnt feet? Throw it back in - nobody will notice by the time it's diluted.

This batch fell off the loading bay and is full of gravel? Ah, nobody will notice.

But what's this? A forklift collided with a pallet full of cartons? (This happened several times a day.) The pallet has been sat outside in the sun for four days? It's swarming with maggots? Chuck it all back in! Don't worry about the maggots, Olembe - we do strain it before it goes in the cartons, you know!

Me and the other student grunts used to spend days tipping punctured cartons into vats. When I say there were maggots, I mean it was like something from a horror film. After 30 minutes your boots were quite literally full of them so that you felt them squash between your toes; after 60 minutes your gloves were full too. After a week you give up caring. Not about the maggots: about life.

The really fun bit was when the supermarkets came to inspect. On those occasions we grunts, and all the foetid milk we were working with, would be locked in a small airless, windowless room where the activity couldn't be seen. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

You know that rancid bacterial stink that wafts from the back of refuse trucks when you walk nearby? Every time I smell that I'm transported right back to that factory in Oswaldtwistle.

Get your milk fresh, if at all. That's all I'm saying.

Edit: I've also worked as a waiter or kitchen worker in quite a few restaurants and contrary to many of the stories here, never saw anything untoward happening to food. The Aladdin's Cave takeaway, which used to exist in Padiham, though: that's a whole different story...
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 17:36, Reply)