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- WORLD, Page 49World NotesSOVIET UNIONFlunking a Taste Test
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- The spirit of glasnost is infusing the Soviet press, and
- its new, muckraking style of journalism already has some
- officials up a tree. When the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta
- published a report last year that meat producers were breaking
- the law by putting protein additives and other impurities in
- their sausage, the paper was promptly sued by a group of Moscow
- meatpackers, who demanded a retraction.
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- LitGaz not only stood by the story but also took its case
- directly to a jury of sausage savants at the Fauna Cat Lovers
- Club in Dzerzhinsky, where the editors conducted a random taste
- test with some finicky felines. Last week, in an article titled
- "May the Cats Judge Us," the paper reported the results of its
- poll: out of 30 cats, only a two-month-old kitten named Mura
- would deign to dine on the suspect sausage. Asked the Gazeta:
- "All kitties, like Mura, must loyally love sausage. That's the
- way it's always been since man thought up sausage. But why, the
- devil take them, won't they eat it? And why do we continue to
- eat it?"
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