![Can you make sure my new kitchen doesn't have any poop in it?](http://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/fy2013_wk09_ikea_hpb_kitchen_offer.jpg?w=470)
ikea.comCan you make sure my new kitchen doesn’t have any poop in it?
IKEA is so easy to make fun of, what with the weird Swedish names of everything and the cartoon instructions and those anemic little “tools.” It’s a good thing for them they just make piles and piles of money selling crap to us and don’t have any real reason to give much of a rat’s ass what we think. Because, right on the heels of the “horse meat in IKEA meatballs” story, we’ve now found that in December (December??? Did they send the news via Pony Express, and did the first pony die and end up in a Swedish meatball?), Chinese officials destroyed 1,800 pounds of IKEA almond cakes, when tests demonstrated the product had “excessive levels” of coliform bacteria. What is coliform bacteria, you ask? What a wonderful question! It is something often found in the feces of a mammal. In this case, probably a mouse. Better than a human, not better than a cake with no shit in it.
The offending shitcakes, which originated in Sweden, had found their way to 23 countries around the world but not to the United States. (Gawker’s piece makes a lot of funny jokes about this which I will not try to outdo but merely point out.) IKEA — and really, who would expect anything less from a company that has successfully passed off particleboard, which is merely the poop of wood, as an entire and indeed desirable lifestyle — tried to point out that coliform bacteria wasn’t bad for you, and also, that there was no E. coli present, either. Well, that’s awesome! I think to celebrate I am going to assemble a Billy shelf and then display upon it a photograph of myself eating one of these cakes and smiling because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it except it is laden with bacteria from animal poo.
![](https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/screen-shot-2012-11-13-at-5-03-25-pm.png?quality=75&strip=all&w=148)