Picture this: you’re driving through the tranquil Norfolk countryside, enjoying views of rolling fields and quaint villages. Suddenly, your pastoral reverie shatters as you spot a pile of decapitated geese carcasses dumped by the roadside. Breast meat surgically removed. String still tied around their necks like macabre holiday ribbons. Classy.

Local councils recently discovered not one, but two such poultry graveyards. First, 39 pink footed geese and a single unfortunate pigeon turned up roadside in Wisbech. Ten days later, 31 greylag geese appeared in Terrington St Clement like some kind of fowl Russian nesting doll situation. Clearly, someone’s running an underground goose operation with all the hygiene standards of a medieval plague cart.

Now, let’s address the elephant goose in the room. Who exactly is slaughtering these birds roadside with all the delicacy of a toddler finger painting? Our local councils suspect illegal hunters shooting wild geese for their breasts. Its the food equivalent of stealing car radios. Quick profit, zero oversight.

Councillor Sandra Squire delivered the warning we all desperately needed: Don’t eat random roadside goose meat, you absolute maniacs. Its not just because the slaughter conditions would make a vulture vomit, but because these birds could be carrying enough diseases to wipe out a small town.

Here’s where things get tasty. We’ve got regulations coming out our ears for licensed poultry farms. Inspections. Hygiene certificates. Traceability. But dump 70 potentially diseased geese carcasses in a ditch? Suddenly it’s the Wild West, with shotguns and unsanitary conditions replacing sheriffs and saloons.

The hypocrisy smells worse than week old poultry left in a warm garage. Supermarkets recall entire product lines if someone mislabels an ingredient. Restaurants get shutdown for a single mouse dropping. Yet here we are with potentially hundreds of contaminated goose breasts entering the black market, because apparently roadside butchery doesn’t trigger the same panic as an undercooked chicken nugget.

Human impact? Lets count the ways. First, anyone foolish enough to buy black market poultry from Joe Roadside Butcher risks everything from salmonella to avian flu. Second, communities face environmental hazards as dumped carcasses attract rats and disease. Third, legitimate poultry farmers get undercut by criminals while taxpayers foot the cleanup bill.

Heres my favorite punchline. These geniuses couldn’t even dispose of evidence properly. They left string around the birds necks like a criminal returning to the crime scene to fix the grammar in their ransom note.

Between this and the constant stream of food fraud stories, perhaps we should rebrand Britains food network as Supermarket Sweep meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Wild geese are literally falling from the sky into criminal supply chains while regulators seem about as effective as a chocolate fireguard.

The solutions are obvious. Better monitoring of wildfowl hunting. Stiffer penalties for illegal slaughterhouses. Actual enforcement of food safety laws rather than just tutting when a Waitrose cake has the wrong calorie count. Maybe even early warning systems when entire goose populations suddenly disappear from Norfolk skies.

Until then, let this serve as your seasonal reminder: If your Christmas goose comes wrapped in plastic rather than decomposing roadside, you might actually live to see New Years. Consider that the ultimate festive gift.

Next week we’ll discuss why supermarket herbs still die in 48 hours despite GMO promises. Same bat channel.