The Costa Rica-based booking agency BetUS that put out odds on being hit by parts of the spy satellite that NASA recently shot down collected 3,000 wagers on their first day they posted odds on what food will carry the next salmonella outbreak. Reed Richards, the top spokesman for BetUS, says they are putting out the food odds to keep America safe ? and to make a few bucks on the side.
How did you come up with these odds?
We basically factored in the rate at which salmonella spreads, the rate of transmission and the amount of each type of food consumed at the end of the day.
From the odds, tree-grown fruit ? apples, oranges, bananas, plums at 30 to 1 odds ? would seem safer than animal products or foods grown close to the ground.
We?re feeling good about the fruit. The fruits are definitely the best ones to look at, although tomatoes actually came back pretty low.
You ranked fish pretty likely to be the source of an outbreak ? 1 to 1 odds ? but usually we associate salmonella with chicken. What gives?
What are you asking?
Why did you give fish better odds than chicken?
We looked at a lot of things, including the increase in farmed fish, farmed salmon, where they are raised closer together, there?s more antibiotic resistance. We?re eating a lot of farm-raised fish.
What?s BetUS?s interest in keeping consumers safe?
We do it all the time with our pop culture operation. It?s one of the many things we do to try and pull odds right out of the headlines. We saw this on CNN and threw our analysts at it. This is what we came up with.
