Do fish tire of eating seafood?

Do fish like seafood as long as it doesn’t taste too much like fish?

Do fish care if seafood is served at Sea World?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Australia thinks so, and wrote to Sea World manager Jeff Hughes asking for all fish dishes to be removed from the Main Beach marine park's menu, claiming it is akin to "serving poodle burgers at a dog show."

PETA Asia Pacific campaign co-ordinator Claire Fryer said the educational marine park was hypocritical for selling flake, calamari and shrimp at the Dockside Tavern and cod burgers at the Top Terrace Food Court.

Ms Fryer said the way in which fish were caught for fish farms and confined to "cramped, filthy tanks before being violently killed," was inhumane.

Sea World refused to comment and has not replied to PETA.

A bus driver is blaming a Brooklyn chicken joint for sending him to the hospital with piece of wire lodged in his larynx.

Lajzer Grynsztajn, 50, said he nearly choked to death on a 2-inch coil he claims was cooked in a two-piece order he bought at JFK Fried Chicken near his Sunset Park bus depot.

“The more I think about it, I get angry. I almost died for something stupid like that?” said Grynsztajn, of Bensonhurst.

In a Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit, the 11-year Metropolitan Transportation Authority veteran is seeking unspecified damages for the near-fatal food fiasco.

Grynsztajn charges that the clerk who took his order seemed more concerned about him paying for the meal than why he was choking at the counter.

“He asked for $5 before I passed out or something,” said Grynsztajn.

The father of three said the scare happened Jan. 9 when he stopped at the Fifth Ave. eatery on his way to work and ordered two chicken breasts and fries.

“I felt a sharp pain, like I was choking,” he recalled. “I thought I was choking on a bone.”

After leaving the restaurant, he started coughing blood and was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where a doctor discovered the real culprit, he said.

The wire was stuck so deep in his throat, he had to be put under anesthesia before it could to be dislodged, according to court papers.

A man who answered the phone at JFK Fried Chicken denied the bus driver’s charges.

“I think this guy is bull-------g us,” he said and hung up.

Police are investigating allegations of food contamination at a crown court in east London after judges' lunches at Snaresbrook Crown Court were allegedly spiked with urine.

The Sun newspaper said it was feared someone with a grudge against the justice system had launched a revenge campaign.

Traces of urine were believed to have been found in soups, salads and sandwiches.

A private dining room known as the advocates' lounge has been shut down until further notice, the newspaper said.

Staff working there are believed to have been suspended while the probe goes on, it said, adding that all are thought to have been supplied to the court by Eurest Services, a division of catering giant Compass.

A spokeswoman for Eurest Services said it was "aware of a suspected case of food contamination."

I was pushing a cart full of groceries to the end of the parking lot before loading up the bike trailer when a wheel suddenly locked and I stopped.

A bemused shopping cart gatherer said, “You can’t take shopping carts off the property.”

“I’m not, just loading my trailer. How did the wheel automatically lock as I left the property, some kind of invisible dog fence?”

“It’s all satellite–controlled. Shopping cart theft is a major expense.”

So while Bubbles on the Trailer-Park Boys would be thwarted in his selling-refurbished-stolen-shopping-carts-back-to-supermarkets business by the high-tech gadgetry, he’d come up with another scam.

Like Bob and Doug MacKenzie of Second City fame trying to get a free case of beer by claiming to find a dead mouse in a beer bottle (the key is to stuff a baby mouse into an empty bottle, and then feed it for a month, then fill the bottle with beer and cap it).

Or a mouse in a Mountain Dew.

Scientific American reports PepsiCo, the soft drink's parent company, defended itself against a man who claimed he found a dead mouse in a can of the citrus soda. Experts called in by PepsiCo's lawyers offered a stomach-churning explanation for why it couldn't be true: the Mountain Dew would have dissolved the mouse, turning it into a "jelly-like substance," had it been in the can of fluid from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff opened it, 15 months later.

Forget legal disputes over canned vermin. The new question has become: Is Mountain Dew really so corrosive that it can dissolve a mouse carcass? And if so, what does it do to your teeth and intestines? Is Mountain Dew's classic slogan — "It'll tickle yore innards" — the world's most sickening understatement?

Key to Pepsi's legal argument is that there's no chance a mouse's corpse could survive, intact, for 15 months swimming in Mountain Dew. While published studies have not been conducted on how rapidly Mountain Dew would dissolve a mouse, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the neon green soda can eat away teeth and bones in a matter of months, and would likely do quite a number on a rodent.

"I think it is plausible that it could dissolve a mouse in a few months," said Yan-Fang Ren of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, who has studied the effects of citric acid on bones and teeth. "But dissolving [the mouse] does not mean it will disappear, because you'll still have the collagen and the soft tissue part. It will be like rubber."

According to Ren, Mountain Dew contains citric acid, a substance naturally found in citrus fruits that exists as a powder in its purified, industrialized form. Most citrus sodas mix in the stuff to give drinks their tangy bite, while most colas, such as Coca Cola and Pepsi, incorporate phosphoric acid for the same effect. Consequently, these drinks have a low pH value around 3 (very acidic). Coca Cola, with its dark coloring and non-fruity flavor, may be the soft drink most often compared to battery acid, but in 2004, a well-known study led by dentist J. Anthony von Fraunhofer found that citrus sodas like Mountain Dew and Sprite erode tooth enamel around six times faster than colas.

Defenders of Mountain Dew sometimes argue that orange juice contains as much or more citric acid as the neon green soda. "It's basically true," Ren said. "The pH of orange juice is between 3.5 and 3.8 — also very acidic. From what our experience is, yes, the rate of decay would be the same."

However, juice presents a small tradeoff: It erodes teeth, but it also provides vitamin C. "Orange juice has a healthy aspect, so people should continue to drink it," Ren said. He suggested minimizing the contact between the juice and your teeth by taking large gulps rather than small, frequent sips, then washing your mouth out with water. Or, you could use a straw.