Warning: don't read this if you have a weak stomach.

Here's a story that makes me want to stop eating completely. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reports on sometimes-bizarre health violations.

- Nature's Oven Foods Ltd., a Kelowna bakery, was fined $10,000 after pleading guilty on June 12, 2002, to preparing food for sale under unsanitary conditions. An investigation of a consumer complaint of a rodent embryo inside the wrapper of a loaf of bread found rodent droppings and insects in the area where baked goods were being prepared.

- Lilydale Co-operative Ltd. was fined $2,500 on May 28, 2002, in Abbotsford for handling 284 turkeys at the slaughterhouse in a way that caused them avoidable distress and pain -- immersing them into a scalding tank while conscious. * 

These are only some of the violations that have been caught. How many elude the inspection process?

(shudder)

Link: Canada.com: Gruesome findings in food probes