Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/26/ohio-supreme-court-rules-that-boneless-chicken-can-contain-bones.html
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Exactly. And this shit is about to get worse. Way, way worse. The overturning of Chevron deference is about to throw a metric fuck ton of legitimate, as well as petty and pedantic, disagreements over the meanings of various aspects of laws and regulations to the courts to decide, since SCOTUS decided we can’t trust experts. Expect more of this in the coming years. A lot more.
By the way, one of the most commonly studied cases in law school involved a dispute over what ‘chicken’ is. In Frigaliment v. BNS, the opening line of the opinion is “The issue is, what is chicken?” The case is so universally studied in law school, that “What is chicken?” has achieved meme status among law school students.
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THIS is why the rest of the world doesn’t want to buy food from the USA: ginger ale with no ginger, chocolate products with homeopathic micro doses of cocoa, pumpkin pie filling with zero pumpkin, boneless wings that are allowed to be wingless bones. When words are allowed to mean nothing at all, and the sole justification is “everyone knows words mean nothing,” what are laws but transparent tools of class warfare?
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Hopefully President Harris can do something about that.
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What if you swallowed a whole boneless chicken and you didn’t have any digestive fluids?
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There’s a certain type of smug pedant that should never be allowed to become a lawyer. Unfortunately, smug pedants are attracted to the law profession like almost no other. Except maybe engineering.
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Remember back when farmers dumped a bunch of broccoli at the WH after Bush said he didn’t like broccoli?
I’d like to see a similar action for this judge, but with bones.
What an asshole.
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Food scientist and ex-meat packer here. Admittedly, I haven’t read the ruling but one thing from my experience that may be at play here- if the chicken product (nuggets, boneless wings) are made from ground chicken there is a certain amount of bone that you’re never going to completely eradicate. Industrial grinders have a bone elimination unit that removes any particulate bigger than a few millimeters. Some smaller bits get through - think of when you eat a hamburger and there might be a tiny hard piece of bone, it’s the same thing. Not sure if that’s what is being referred to in this ruling.
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Oh, but see, you aren’t aware of something. Law school literally teaches you to be a smug pedant.
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From the linked article:
a doctor discovered a long, thin bone that had torn his esophagus and caused an infection.
So, no, not the same issue at all.
@ficuswhisperer 
but are they also gluten free?
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I haven’t read the ruling yet, either, but since the bone apparently was big enough to cause injury, I’m guessing it’s not like a tiny piece of bone like you can come across in a hamburger. If I find time today, I’ll read the ruling.
ETA: @ClutchLinkey
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Ok, what’s in the opinion doesn’t make sense to me, unless there’s a typo:
In the following days, Berkheimer had a fever and was unable to keep food down. Three days after eating the boneless wings, Berkheimer went to an emergency room. In response to his wife’s concern that he might have something stuck in his throat, a doctor examined Berkheimer’s throat and discovered a thin chicken bone lodged in his esophagus. Medical records referred to the object as a “5cm-long chicken bone.” According to Berkheimer, the bone tore his esophagus, causing a bacterial infection in his thoracic cavity and resulting in ongoing medical issues.
During his deposition, Sam Platt, a cook for Wings on Brookwood, described the process for preparing boneless wings. Platt explained that the boneless wings were made from pre-butterflied, boneless, skinless chicken breasts that were supplied to REKM by Gordon Food Service, Inc. (“GFS”). When cutting a chicken breast into individual “wings,” he made roughly the same cuts every time, resulting in approximately 20 boneless, one-inch chunks. Platt estimated that he physically touched about 90 percent of the boneless wings before they were served to customers.
5 cm is about 2 inches long. If they make the “wings” by cutting a breast into one inch pieces, and if the customer cut that “wing” into three pieces before eating, how the hell was there a 2 inch long piece of bone in there? I wonder if that’s supposed to say “0.5 cm”. That would make more sense.
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i demand a confusing high-level “legal” discussion of the use of (double)quotes on packaging! that being: it is “legal” to put anything on a label, belying everything therein if it’s enclosed in double quotes, “yes”? (“organic!” “nutritious!” “vitamin rich!” “pre-washed!” “edible!” “not forty-seven percent sawdust!”) (“Corporations are people!” --as shouted in the soylent green ad)
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The judge could have easily ruled that “boneless” means free of any bones larger than (size grinders can remove). Pretty sure we have similar definitions/standards for other kinds of foods.
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.5cm would make more sense. Unless the plaintiff ate by swallowing pieces whole like a snake, they’d notice a two inch bone.
The metric system is hard! /s
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I guess he tossed a standard wing in by mistake and lied about it. That the outcome is “actually, tossing a standard wing was not a problem” is a great example of systemic bias gazing back into us.
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Ah! I’m in the other camp: I went into engineering because making a career out of being a smug pedant seemed like a pretty fun time.
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What most of my software engineering team’s weekly meetings turn into.
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