CPS Alerted After Foods On Child’s Plate Touch

Cases this week included ketchup on French fries that somehow touched a hot dog that already had mustard on it.

Jerusalem, June 22 – Municipal authorities opened a new file today on a family in the city following the receipt of reports that the parents had exhibited gross negligence in the form of allowing to different items at dinner to come into contact, threatening the purity and goodness of both items.

Child Protective Services representatives disclosed today that their case workers now have an eye on a family of six in Kiryat Yovel, a mixed middle- and working-class neighborhood in the city’s southwest, after an incident on Sunday during which the parents not only neglected to use sectioned dishes to prevent the catastrophic touching of meat and vegetables, but placed those foodstuffs on the dish when serving in such a manner as to guarantee contact between the substances. A CPS spokeswoman assured journalists that the child showed enough awareness not to eat anything on the now-contaminated plate.

“Unfortunately we see close calls like this all the time, and even more unfortunately, sometimes it’s too late by the time anyone alerts us,” lamented Harta Barta. “This week’s close call underscores the need for better education – not just of children, who often display more knowledge and awareness of this danger than adults do, but of course of parents, who must train themselves in the proper vigilance lest tragedy strike.”

Jerusalem CPS statistics indicate that inappropriate touching of foodstuffs on the same plate occurs several times per week in at least ten percent of the city’s households with children. “It’s a scourge,” acknowledged Barta. “Our educational efforts have met with limited success to date. Children appear to take much more seriously the threat of different foods touching one another.”

Other cases CPS have handled this week, according to Barta, included ketchup on French fries that somehow touched a hot dog that already had mustard on it; coleslaw dressing that spread on the plate, coming into contact with chicken schnitzel; and a near-cataclysmic event in which a sibling placed her leftover piece of potato on her brother’s plate, where the potato remnant then touched the brother’s fish stick, rendering the entire fish stick contaminated and dangerous to eat.

CPS literature posted online, on public transportation, and in freely-distributed brochures warn against this phenomenon and other, similar hazards, to the perils of which children tend to show more awareness: going to bed too early; turning lights out upon leaving a room; and tolerating a sibling receiving an iota more of something good than their brother or sister.

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