Golden Corral video raises more questions than it answers

Over the holiday weekend, a Golden Corral employee posted a revolting video of raw meat sitting outside near the dumpsters behind a Golden Corral restaurant in Florida. The raw meat is buzzing with flies and glistening in the Florida sun.

In the video, the man claims that the meat has been set outside in order to hide it during a restaurant inspection. And that once the inspection is over, the meat will be brought back inside and served to the customers.

Golden Corral says that the meat was destroyed an hour later, and that the man who made the video actually participated in its destruction. Golden Corral claims that the meat was never served to customers, and would never be.

But of course, they would claim that, wouldn't they?!

Frankly, I'm torn. On the "hoax" side, putting raw meat out behind the restaurant is a pretty lousy way to hide it from the inspectors. I have worked at restaurants that underwent health inspections, and hello, the health inspectors look outside, too. You can't just set a hundred pounds of raw meat out in the parking lot behind the restaurant and expect the health inspectors not to notice.

But then again, why put all that meat behind the restaurant in the first place? We see pre-formed hamburger patties, baby back ribs, and more. It's stuff that should be perfectly good as long as it's refrigerated. If the meat was (as Golden Corral claims) on the "destroy" list, why?

The only reason I can think of to destroy that much raw meat is if a cooler unit broke down, and the meat went bad before anyone realized the refrigerator had gone out. But if that was the case, then why doesn't Golden Corral just say so?

Instead, they have taken the step of firing the manager at that particular store for unsafe food handling practices. Which makes me think that the meat WAS intended to be served to customers, someone just caught them at it before it could happen.

Image courtesy Flickr/apalapala