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Russian dairy plant closed after employees caught bathing in the milk

According to the LA Times, a Russian consumer oversight agency reported that Trade House Cheese, a Siberian dairy plant about 1,600 miles east of Moscow, was temporarily shuttered Friday after it was found some of the employees had bathed in the milk. (YouTube)

What do you get when you add a group of drunken guys, a cheese factory, and a commercial size vat of milk? Grounds for a lawsuit or stinky cheese, depending on how long you churn it.

According to the LA Times, a Russian consumer oversight agency reported that Trade House Cheese, a Siberian dairy plant about 1,600 miles east of Moscow, was temporarily shuttered Friday after it was found some of the employees had bathed in the milk.

The plant was closed by regional authorities for 90 days for an urgent inspection due to complaints after photos and a video of the pasteurized party were uploaded to a Russian social network.

The herd of adult males are seen ringing in the new year, undressed and relaxing in a giant container of milk. There’s also a video of the guys, again in their skivvies, making cheese. Trade House Cheese’s secret ingredient? Russian man-sweat. It gives it a very distinct flavor.

Artyom Romanov, the genius employee who posted the pictures/video commented that, “in reality our work is very boring.”

In an interview with online publication Lifenews, Marina Boyko, the deputy chief of the Omsk region’s sanitary inspection agency, said there were many other violations at the plant.

It is no shock that Trade House Cheese sales went down. After seeing the video, which appeared on NTV, many residents of Omsk refused to buy products made at that plant.

Shockingly though, these appalling conditions are quite common in Russia lately. According to Dmitry Yanin, a Russian consumer service expert, sanitary oversight in Russia has become nearly nonexistent.

“What happened in this dairy plant in Omsk is, of course, a case of sheer idiocy, but nowadays there is nothing to prevent such idiots from indulging in similar outrages or routinely violating production and sanitary conditions elsewhere in the country,” he said.

He worries that violators are given ample time to correct the problems at their plant before an inspection, and they return to malpractice after the check is completed. Keep in mind, inspections are only done once every three years. Clearly, that's not enough.

Yanin says that “the entire sphere of food production is now completely out of the state’s control, which means none of us are safe when we buy food in Russia these days.” Well, if nothing else, at least we know they’ve “got milk” and it’s safe enough to at least bathe in. Gross…