Strict new laws are about to come into force to tighten up hygiene in the food industry. Factories where food is produced are already obliged to ensure that personal jewellery is not worn, hair is tied back and nails are kept short and clean. Bosses can also demand that potential new employees undergo a medical and supply them with blood and stool samples. However, from early next year the new law will permit employers to go one stage further and take hostages. Victims will be selected from the worker's immediate family and held in isolation for the duration of their employment. Apparently this will 'protect the food preparation areas from possible contamination'. When asked how, exactly, the taking of hostages could prevent the spread of diseases like botulism or salmonella, an unnamed spokesman replied in a low mutter, "it's a deterrent."
There is growing concern over the dwindling numbers of veterinary surgeons currently practising in the UK. Many vets are leaving the profession to take up better paid positions as hairdressers or butchers. At the same time, there is less and less new blood coming into the field, a fact which is blamed on the many years of training and the unnecessarily stringent examinations needed to obtain a veterinary licence. The final exam requires students to assemble a fully functional cat from a variety of spare parts, and candidates can often fail on the simplest of things, such as getting a spleen in the wrong place.
However, a radical new rethink is set to encourage more people to become vets. To make the profession more accessible the test will be made much easier. In future, students will be required to draw a picture of a dog with a felt-tipped pen, and we understand that even those that only display a passing resemblance will pass.
Phillips has developed a new tallscreen television, which has a screen almost twice the height of normal sets. A spokesman claimed that the new TV will be ideal for watching programmes about trees and people who wear big hats.
Aubrey Felch has invented a machine that can turn grass into milk. The Cow 4000 is compact, easy to use and can run off a car cigarette lighter. Felch admits that the prototype cannot yet produce milk in any useful quantity, but he hopes to increase the yield with the MKII version. "The Cow 4000 will be ideal for picnics and trips to the seaside," Felch claims. "And I'm currently working on a milkshake attachment."
The picturesque English county of Cornwall is currently on loan to the United States. In what proved to be a remarkable feat of landscape engineering, it was cut adrift last week and towed across the Atlantic. It is currently anchored in Boston harbour, where it will remain for the next six months before moving on to New York, the Florida coast and then a brief tour of the Caribbean. In return, the United Kingdom will be playing host to Baltimore, which will be dropped by parachute in a series of small crates, and then reassembled in a field outside Stratford.