Jason Rantz

Dogs are the least of our worries in grocery stores

KIRO Radio's Jason Ratnz says there's way more sources for germs in a grocery store than little dogs. (AP)

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of The Jason Rantz Show.

As I normally do, I’m in my office on Tuesday. I’ve got the radio on in the background and Dori Monson is on, he’s one of my favorite hosts on the station, and he said something that caught my ear.

He was talking about folks who bring dogs or pets into grocery stores and he went on this epic rant against those folks. And I had an immediate reaction to it.

Dori Monson:

“It somehow has become acceptable to bring dogs into grocery stores. I’ve seen it five times in the last couple of months. It’s not sanitary. I do not want a Pekingese hovering over the apples. We shouldn’t be bringing the doggies into the grocery store.” Read Dori’s rant

I’m almost yelling at my radio because if anyone is familiar with what happens in grocery stores and the types of germs that are brought into the grocery stores, there’s not much a dog has on their body in the way of germs or bacteria that can’t be washed off.

I guarantee you there’s more dangerous stuff on that vegetable than what the dog brought in.

Remember, some folks don’t wash their hands before checking out some of the fruits and vegetables. You see them picking up the apples, looking around, trying to see if there’s any bruise on it, and if there is something that doesn’t quite look right, they put it back.

You’re picking that apple up and you’re going to eat it at home, so whatever was on that person’s hand is now in your digestive system.

And anyone out there who is still disgusted like Dori, about bringing in dogs, here is some information that is really going to freak you out.

Researchers from the University of Arizona swabbed shopping cart handles in four states looking for how contaminated they were. Of the 85 carts that they looked at, 72 percent of them had fecal bacteria on the shopping cart handles. Then they looked at 36 carts in that group of 85 a little more closely and found 50 percent had E.coli on them. So you are screwed. Seventy percent fecal bacteria, 50 percent E.coli.

Then when you go home with your fruit with the dog drool on top of it, then you go into the kitchen and you start washing off the dog drool and everything else that’s on that apple, just realize you’re washing it in a kitchen sink which is dirtier than most bathrooms. There’s typically more than 500,000 bacteria per square inch in the drain alone. Plus the faucet handles, crawling with bacteria.

Producer Mac says it’s time to just be OK with the fact that on the way to our mouths there is tons of opportunity for our food to pick up germs.

“I’ve come to grips with this and I think the world needs to. There are germs everywhere,” says Mac, “just deal with it.”

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of The Jason Rantz Show.