And no matter what we want, we want to be loved

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

“Aurene” 1329 AE, Tarir

- Prepared foods sitting out on display are a breeding ground for bacteria. This can be minimized by keeping them above or below a certain temperature range, but it's just how things work.

- Food accessible to customers is doubly at risk of contamination. People touch the food, cross-contaminate utensils, sneeze, cough... Someone once dropped their whole ass phone in our mac'n'cheese.

- Food directly handled by a customer has to be assumed contaminated. Even if they only picked up the sample for a second. Even if they definitely used the little tongs. You don't have control over them or a guarantee that they're following food safe handling procedures, you can't give that item to someone else.

- It went out of date, out of temp, etc. It might still look fine and maybe you'd still eat it if it was in your fridge, but when you're operating on a business-sized scale it's better to be safe than to risk one person getting badly sick.

- It was mistakenly prepared wrong. Recipes tend to be strict in commercial kitchens because if you tell someone specific ingredients are in a dish and then sell them something else, that's an allergen risk.

Bad stupid reasons food gets thrown out that you should absolutely be mad about:

- Some companies expect you to over-produce to guarantee a certain amount of product gets thrown out, because it guarantees that no potential sale was lost on a sold-out product, and the cost of ingredients and labor for the amount being discarded is less than the profit made on whatever sold. I promise everyone in the kitchen thinks it's as infuriating as you do.