So, who's up for some delicious Chinese food? Yeah, might want to hold off on that for a second.
Brooklyn, NY-based Chinese food supplier New Yung Wah Trading Co. was apparently cited by the FDA during an October 15-30 inspection for...well, basically every rodent or bird-related violation you can think of, as well as a spirited run at the health code violation-density world record. Whoo boy. Strap in for this one, because this list is a bit of a doozy:
Among the findings in the inspection of the company's McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, warehouse:
- A rodent's nest with multiple rodents in a plastic-lined box in a cooler that had thawing rib meat on top of melons.
- Four dead rodents.
- Birds flying throughout the warehouse.
- A pallet of pineapples in boxes gnawed on by rodents, an apparent nest they made and rodent feces.
- Rodent feces in a cooler.
- A path of rodent feces leading to a hole in a bag of flour.
- Rodent feces, urine and nests in and around bags of monosodium glutamate.
- Workers smoking while handling food being prepared for distribution.
The FDA also found issues such as a floor drain that would not actually drain (causing puddles of tasty standing water), and heavy use of rodent poison with no precautions to keep it from contaminating food. Fun times!
New Yung Wah, by the way, distributes to numerous Chinese restaurants throughout the East Coast and Midwest, with distribution centers in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. It's unclear which restaurants in particular New Yung Wah has been servicing, as their website is "currently under construction," but, you know, no big. It's just potentially any Chinese restaurant anywhere in the Northeast-to-Rust-Belt-to-Midwest-to-Mid-Atlantic* regions. Not a cause for concern at all.
This isn't the first time New Yung Wah have been in trouble with the FDA: back in August, Pennsylvania police intercepted a truck filled with 150 pounds of spoiled food bound for Ohio. The various meats in that truck had been stored at unsafe temperatures and lumped together in such a way as to make cross-contamination all but a certainty.
The full text of the FDA's letter to New Yung Wah, which reads as the longest-form "are you guys fucking serious with this shit" I've ever seen, can be read here. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go be terrified of Chinese food for the rest of my life.
* Yes, British readers, I know you have some weird alternate definition for the term "Mid-Atlantic." No one cares.
Image via svry/Shutterstock.