Recipe for disaster

Banquet food usually isn't all that great, but this is ridiculous:

Some 170 wedding banquet guests were rushed to hospital in north China when powdered rust remover was added to the pot instead of salt after they all decided it needed added flavor, Chinese media said.

In a bizarre coincidence, 61 wedding guests were taken to hospital with similar symptoms a day earlier after a duck-and-donkey-meat banquet in northwest China.

In the rust remover case, the bride's proud father invited 170 friends and relatives to the wedding banquet at a village in northern Hebei province on Friday, the night before the nuptials, the Beijing News said.

"All food was stewed in a big pot but after dinner started, all of them felt the taste was too bland," the newspaper said.

Someone added what he or she thought was salt -- several times. An hour later, the guests were being rushed to hospital.

"When I arrived at the hospital, the observation room was packed with people vomiting, with stomach pains and with diarrhea," a doctor was quoted as saying.

The symptoms were short-lived and all the victims were released by the next day.

Now, they're going to have to figure out who the genius was that essentially put poison that looked like salt in the kitchen. Good job!

I don't know what the legal system is like in China, but if something like that happened here, a lot of lawyers would be making a lot of money. And the victims might even get a few bucks, too.