Protecting the rights of exploited deli products

We all have our own special holiday traditions. Although mine do not include processed meat sticks or deli cheese, I respect the time-honored traditions of those who annually patronize Pepperidge Farms and its counterparts.

However, times they are a-changing. What once may have seemed like a harmless summer sausage or block of gouda cheese now has shoppers watching their backs.

While listening to NPR a few days ago, I heard this alarming story.

(Warning: the following article includes disturbing descriptions of blatant misuse of deli products. If you are partial to salami or Parmesan, you may want to disregard the remainder of this post.)

Metro.co.uk headline: Two angry German shoppers were hositalized after a fight over a shopping trolley that ended with one using a salami as a club, and another wielding a slice of Parmesan cheese like a knife.

The delicatessen ruckus began in the busy supermarket in Aachen when a 74-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman both wanted a shopping trolley, leading to a wrestling match between the two. This was ended when the woman's 24-year-old brother punched the man, knocking him over.

They then took the trolley into the supermarket.

But the elderly man wasn't going to give up without a fight, and followed them inside, confronting them at the cheese counter.

He attacked the woman's brother with a salami - before the siblings' mother stepped in to fend him off with a 4lb chunk of Parmesan. The 74-year-old then pushed her against the counter's glass top, causing her to hit her head.

At this point, police arrived to break up the food fight. Two of the combatants were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

The trolley is not thought to have been harmed in the fracas."


The unasked and unanswered question is this: what became of the salami and the cheese? It makes one consider whose on the side of the victims in cases like these. Victims who cannot speak for or defend themselves.


In a global society replete with technological and scientific advances, it is shameful that our societal ethics do not include compassion for the plight of those things, however inanimate they may be, less fortunate than ourselves. Let this be a lesson to us all this holiday season.


As Martin Luther King once said, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity [and deli products]."

(Okay, so I added the part in brackets. I'm sure Martin wouldn't mind.)

Please, please, don't make the cheese (and salami) stand alone...