KY Prison Contractor Serves Rat-Eaten Cake in Michigan

Anybody doubt that Aramark is doing this and worse here?  Anybody think inmate riots are not an appropriate response? Anybody want to try to defend privatization?

Think Progress:

Rodent saliva is on the dessert menu in Michigan’s prisons thanks to Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) decision to hand over prison food service to Aramark, one of the largest private prison food vendors in the country.

In July, 2014, an Aramark employee discovered an inmate who worked in the kitchen throwing the rodent-marred cakes into the trash. The Aramark worker instructed the inmate to stop tossing the desserts and start slicing off the parts that had visibly been “eaten or pawed at” and adding frosting to cover the cuts. “The Aramark employee allegedly ordered him to cut the sides of the cake off and serve it to the population,” reads one of the July 20, 2014 emails unearthed by a Freedom of Information Act request from the liberal group Progress Michigan. No illnesses resulted from the incident, the state spokesman told the site. In subsequent emails, staff ordered a full cleaning of the kitchen in question and sought a pest control crew.

Aramark, a food service vendor conglomerate that has described its prison contracts as a primary driver of company growth in previous correspondence with shareholders, fired the worker who had ordered the cake served on the following day, according to the emails.

The incident might like an isolated screwup by one reckless individual, but Aramark has earned a reputation for putting the company’s bottom line ahead of prisoners’ well-being in both Michigan and other states. Aramark once served rotten-smelling meatballs that had thawed in a broken freezer, though the company maintains they were not rotten. More than a hundred inmates at another Michigan prison were quarantined with a serious digestive bug that Michigan Department of Corrections officials said was probably linked to food. In Ohio last August, 1,000 incarcerated women threw their lunch trays out in protest after maggots were found on Aramark’s food serving line. The company’s operations have been accused of underfeeding inmates and been linked to prison unrest, including a 2009 riot in a Kentucky facility.

 And nibbling rats are just the tip of the disgusting iceberg, you can be sure.