Canadian potato saboteurs: someone is putting pins, needles and nails in potatoes

[Liberal_in_LA]

Canadian potato farmers on the hunt for saboteurs: 'These are really evil people'
A mysterious outbreak of ‘food terrorism’ – pins and nails found inside Prince Edward Island potatoes – has led authorities to offer a $500,000 reward for tips





-----

The prosperous farmers of Prince Edward Island in the gulf of St Lawrence have offered a reward of CAN$500,000 (US$400,000) for tips leading to the conviction of the person or people who have been inserting pins and nails into potatoes grown on the island. Since the sabotage began last October, tampered Prince Edward Island potatoes have been found in grocery stores in four different Canadian provinces, triggering what has been described as the most serious crisis to hit sleepy PEI since the British conquest of Acadia in 1710.


“It’s food terrorism,” said island potato farmer Alex Docherty. “The people doing this are cowards, lower than a snake wearing snowshoes. These are really evil people.”

The saboteurs are also having a major impact on the local economy, where growing and processing the tubers is a billion-dollar industry, supplemented in the summer by Japanese tourists eager to visit the island’s many shrines devoted to their cherished “red-haired Anne”.

“Farm families all over the world work so hard to produce food and to have something like this happen is really disheartening,” said Docherty, chairman of the Prince Edward Island Potato Board. “We want the cowards caught and dealt with to the full extent of the law.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/30/canada-potatoes-food-terrorism-prince-edward-island

Jim Barry of Loch Katrine, N.S. found one of the nails. He bought the bag of potatoes from the Superstore in Antigonish earlier this month.

Barry said he and his wife had gone through half the bag when they got a shock Monday while preparing food.

“[My wife] was peeling a potato and she couldn’t get the skin off because she kept hitting something,” he said.

“She cut into the potato and then she couldn’t cut through it. Then she cut through it with a larger knife and [broke] the potato and sure enough, there was a one-inch nail poking out of the potato.”
Barry described the nail as a finishing nail that was embedded all the way through the potato.
http://globalnews.ca/news/2009592/nails-found-in-store-bought-potatoes-in-nova-scotia-rcmp-investigating/

[840high]

1. Sick.

[SheilaT]

2. How bizarre.

And how very time consuming.

How exactly are people going about inserting the nails and needles into the potatoes? Who is out there purchasing vast quantities of needles to accomplish this? I'd say go to the local Michael's store and see how stocks of needles are holding up, and hang out at the check-out counter and interrogate anyone who is buying more than one packet of needles. Do you non-sewers have any clue how very long a packet of needles lasts? Decades. Unless you're exceptionally good at loosing them. They are the most economical purchase ever. And I'm speaking as someone who periodically misplaces said packet and has to go out and buy new ones.

[Retrograde]

4. I'm a quilter, and I go through a dozen or more machine needles a year

They get dull, or they break, so I replace them on the average of once a month. But then I sew an average of 4 hours a day. The average person, not so many.

Hand sewing needles do break and bend: I generally go through two or three for a hand-quilted piece.

[SheilaT]

6. But you're doing heavy-duty almost full-time quilting.

I can tell you that as an embroiderer, I will lose the sharps, but I've never broken or bent one. Quilting really is harder on the needles. Meanwhile, you're only talking a dozen, maybe twenty a year. Whoever is doing this is buying many more needles than that.

It's still completely bizarre to me.

[gvstn]

3. Just awful.

What is also strange is that no one really eats a potato out of hand. They are almost always prepared in some way. These 2 inch metal objects will almost certainly be found in virtually every case. So why do it?

PEI is famous for mussels. I never heard of their potatoes. The whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense.

Seems like the processing plant would be the best place to do the crime but they are convinced it is in the fields. I just don't know.

[Sherman A1]

5. Bizarre and

sick. One wonders what goes through people's minds.