I Got the Almighty Tongue - Chapter 196



Only Krnovel

196 Feeding Gate

Knock knock.

The door to the hospital room opens and a doctor comes in. Kevin instinctively gets up and looks at the doctor.

“The test results are back.”

“How is it? Is Elise okay?”

“Salmonella and listeria spread throughout the body via the bloodstream, causing inflammation of the vascular endothelial cells. Broad-spectrum antibiotics were administered and steroids were used to reduce the inflammatory response.”

“So… Is it getting better now?”

“We can’t guarantee anything yet. But at least we can prevent cases from worsening into myocardial infarction.

The rest depends on Elise’s recovery, but even if she does, she will need more thorough management than before.”

After the doctor finishes his explanation, he moves on to see the next patient.

I see my daughter lying down with a bloodless face.

Elise was a special child. Her parents divorced and she lived apart from her mother, but she did not go astray like other children from divorced families.

Although he must have been busy studying, he was always willing to help with housework and was a warm child who knew how to prepare meals around his work hours.

When she was diagnosed with a heart valve defect, it felt like the sky was falling. Despite this, Elise studied hard and was accepted into a prestigious school in New York.

Sigh.

His brain was starving for oxygen. Kevin took a deep breath.

My daughter’s treatment required a lot of money.

Kevin didn’t really care who was going to eat the nuggets he made at work. In fact, he may have instinctively avoided them to protect himself.

But the truth he had kept hidden forces him to turn away no longer, at the cost of his daughter’s sacrifice.

Is karma real?

If her daughter’s suffering is the price of her own evil deeds, then perhaps she can be saved through good deeds?

Kevin clutched the USB memory stick in his pocket.

* * *

“Who are you looking for?”

A man entered a massive 66-story glass building on West 47th Street in New York. It was the headquarters of ABC News, known as ‘Black Rock.’

“I would like to meet Jeffrey Gower.”

Many people wanted to meet Jeffrey, who had won two Pulitzer Prizes for reporting.

Working at a broadcasting station, you often come across people with delusions who claim to have a scoop, spread conspiracy theories, or tip off the real assassin of President Kennedy.

Dan, the guard, looked at Kevin with a suspicious eye, but then remembered Jeffrey’s warning not to judge the reports he received.

“Please wait here for a moment.”

A few minutes later, a middle-aged man with a sharp expression, like the one I had seen on TV, came down to the waiting room.

And an hour later, shocking news that shook not only New York but the entire nation was reported through Jeffrey.

* * *

“Yuna! You have to eat.”

Dori dori.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

Joo-hee scoops up baby food with a spoon and places it in front of the baby’s mouth, but Yu-na stubbornly keeps her mouth closed and shakes her head.

“I’m going to eat what Dad made.”

Yuna, who had become more expressive after 24 months, had become a picky eater.

“Did dad make this? Wow! It’s delicious.”

Joohee puts a spoon in her mouth and eats it with relish. Then she scoops up some baby food and offers it to Yuna.

“Really?”

“Of course. Here, try it!”

Yuna opens her mouth wide and eats.

“That’s not it! Mom lied!”

Joohee covers her mouth and laughs because Yuna is cute when she cries.

Jehee taught Juhee a few recipes for baby food. However, even when they made the same dish, Yuna would know who made it like a ghost and would only eat the food her father made.

“How on earth does she know this? She seems to have a keen sense of taste, just like my brother.”

Joohee asks Jehee as she watches him feed Noah. Noah was a child who ate anything well.

Yum yum.

Joohee was amazed at the mystery of life as she watched Noah eating baby food with a happy expression.

“It’s amazing how children who came out on the same day and at the same time can be so different.”

“Isn’t it that one of us resembles the other? If Yuna isn’t going to eat, she’ll clean up the food?”

Yuna, who thought that her father would not make food for her even if she threw a tantrum, finally reluctantly accepts the baby food.

Jieeeeing.

A text message came to Jehee’s phone. It was Quinton.

-Turn on ABC News now.

Jehee puts Noah down after he finishes eating and picks up the remote control to turn on the TV.

[Breaking News]

“This is a food processing plant near New York. It mainly produces chicken nuggets, one of the most consumed snacks in America. The shocking reality has been revealed by an employee who works as a quality control manager.”

(video)

[Chicken feet and heads go into the grinder. The old meat looks so bad that it’s hard to believe it’s meant for human consumption. They’re mixed with a lot of additives and spices and ground to a pulp that it’s beyond recognition. A worker picks up the fallen material and throws it into the mixer. And the nuggets are fried in oil that looks like used car oil.]

“Hello, this is Jeffrey from ABC News.

We welcome Kevin Malone into the studio today with this shocking news.”

“Hello. My name is Kevin Malone, and I used to work as a quality controller at Ecofoods.”

“Whistleblowing is not an easy task. Why did you decide to report it?”

“Some of you may have seen the news reports about the recent mass food poisoning outbreak at a high school in New York.

“It was my daughter’s school. She is still unconscious from complications of food poisoning. The doctor said my daughter could be in critical condition.”

“Oh, that… . So… .”

“That’s right. The food I made made my daughter sick. I never dreamed that my daughter would eat those nuggets. If I had known, I would have stopped production at all costs.

Even now, those nuggets are being consumed here and there, and they may harm your loved ones. You can call it hypocrisy now, right?”

“Is it common to use ingredients like that in the manufacturing process of nuggets?”

“According to FDA and USDA regulations, poultry byproducts are only permitted as livestock feed. Chicken heads and feet are prone to retaining foreign substances such as residual blood or fur, and if improperly processed, they can become contaminated with pathogenic bacteria.”

“So you’re saying it’s illegal?”

“Yes, but in reality this is not strictly observed. If you grind it anyway, there will be no evidence left.

“The same is true for cattle and pigs, as well as poultry. Unslaughtered animals must be disposed of, and it is common for dead animals to be ground up and used as patties or feed.”

“This is a terrible reality. Why hasn’t this been known until now?”

“I don’t know. However, I understand that the recent mass food poisoning incident at Srent High School was also due to the audit results showing that the cafeteria staff was not good at cooking.

“I don’t think this is a normal process.”

“Employees of food companies must also have children, so I can’t understand how they would supply this kind of food to schools.”

“I can be sure of that.

“Major food service executives and employees with access to the food manufacturing process would never feed their children food. You can check it out.”

“I, Jeffrey, will take responsibility for this matter and report it to the end.

We’re going to investigate and uncover why the factory was producing these nuggets, why these garbage nuggets ended up on children’s plates, and why no one was properly punished for causing mass food poisoning. Jeffrey, ABC News.”

The news is over, but silence falls over the house. Joo-hee looks at me with a surprised expression.

“Our company doesn’t do that. We can feed it to Yuna and Noah too.”

“Didn’t something similar happen in Korea?”

“Garbage dumplings?”

“Yeah! That. Back then, the country was turned upside down, so America wouldn’t be that easy either, right?”

“It won’t be that bad. There are a lot of people who are looking at the catering industry.”

If Michelle lets this go, she won’t be able to push forward any policies in the future. But I wasn’t too worried. She didn’t seem to have the aptitude for dirty work, but she wouldn’t be so foolish as to not take advantage of the opportunity that came her way.

‘Did something like this happen in my past life?’

I thought about it carefully, but it was an incident I didn’t remember. It seems that the butterfly effect of me jumping into the food service industry has had an effect here. It would be right to assume that the food service companies’ financial situation worsened due to excessive rebates, so they carried out unreasonable cost reductions.

I was curious about the public’s reaction. When I went to the portal, the front page was already plastered with related articles.

[Trash nuggets in our children’s school lunches?]

[Chicken Feet, Chicken Heads, Chemical Additives. An Insider’s Report on the Company That Produced Nuggets That Even Pigs Wouldn’t Eat]

[Why Didn’t Trash Nuggets Get the Spotlight Even During Mass Food Poisoning?]

[A dark shadow over the catering industry, children’s health is at risk.]

└My child cried while watching the news while eating chicken nuggets. What on earth is the government doing?

└I threw out all the frozen nuggets in the fridge. Damn it! I was eating these every day.

└Calm down. I work for a chicken nugget company and there’s really nothing wrong with our products. That company is trash, not the entire industry.

└My kid got food poisoning last week from eating that. They said it was because the cooking was poor, but these damn bastards. I’m on my way to that company with a shotgun right now.

└For those who get arrested later, feed those nuggets to them. I’m serious.

└I’m done. My stock portfolio is mostly frozen food companies.

There’s a ton of articles and comments coming in. Twitter and Google Trends are also dominated by ‘Trash nuggets’.

As the day went by and morning came, the problem became more serious. At school, the children started refusing to eat their lunch.

Parents woke up early in the morning with anxious hearts, packed lunch boxes for their children, and sent them out. In families where things weren’t so great, they gave their children money to buy fast food.

Massive rallies and marches by angry citizens were even planned in New York’s Times Square and Central Park.

Both parties passed resolutions to appoint a special counsel with unprecedented speed, and the attorney general nominated Stan Mueller, the former FBI director who led the Wall Street investigation into subprime mortgage lending, to be the special counsel.

The Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.

Dozens of reporters were there to cover Prosecutor Fried Mueller as he came out after receiving his letter of appointment.

“Come out!”

Click.

Click.

“You have been appointed as a special prosecutor. How do you plan to proceed with the investigation?”

“Where do you plan to start?”

“Do your children also eat lunch at school?”

Reporters swarm him, peppering him with questions. Stan frowns at them, then quickly regains control of his expression.

“I would like to take this opportunity to root out the absurdity and collusion practices that are rampant in the food industry. I hope this will serve as an opportunity to establish a new system to protect food safety.

As a parent, I cannot help but feel heartbroken that even the school lunches that children eat are not safe. I will definitely uncover the whole story and punish all those responsible.

We fully understand the feelings of the citizens who came out to protest, but we ask that you trust us and return to work.

We will not yield to any political or power pressure, as the health and trust of countless citizens and children are at stake.

“I will pursue only the truth. Thank you.”

Stan leaves with a stern expression, expressing his thoughts. And as each day passes, the investigation situation is updated.

[The three major food service companies that rule New York. Not only their children, but also their grandchildren have never applied for food service.]

[Collusion between New York City Food Commission and corporations discovered. Related individuals summoned.]

[For every meal sold, 5 cents goes into the principal’s pocket? How rotten is it?]

[The horror of pink slime, what are the sausages we eat made of?]

[Patties made from cow intestines and prostate, the endless barrage of food industry corruption.]

[There were also collaborators in the House and Senate of both parties. There were also concerns that the investigation would escalate into a political dispute.]

[First Lady Michelle Obama emphasizes the need for healthy and balanced meals in her Central Park speech, a different reaction than before. Applause from the citizens.]

The garbage nugget incident went beyond a simple investigation and became a black hole that consumed all the topics, called “school meal gate.” And the commercial food company that provided the nuggets in question as school meals was preemptively ordered to suspend business before the investigation and trial.

A third of New York City schools are experiencing a lunch gap.

And their first priority was Dosirak.