Food detectives probe gross claims
When a woman claimed to have found a human finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili, Denny Lynch was the point man for the giant fast-food chain.“This was grotesque, gruesome,” Lynch said. An expert at damage control for decades, Lynch went to work. With the help of the local restaurant’s staff and a carefully chronicled record of deliveries from suppliers along the food chain, he was able to prove that the woman was a liar.
Something similar happened when Jim Taylor went after a woman’s claim that she found a mouse drowned in her soup at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store restaurant.
Borrowing a page from what could be a “CSI: Rodents” script, Taylor found scientists who could prove the mouse was dead before it landed in the soup. Clues: No soup in the lungs and a telltale broken skull.
Major fast-food chains have established rapid-response teams that are dispatched at the first hint of such claims. And the chains say they are becoming much more aggressive. more…
