A very old way of how the US
government checks meat. They would use rods to poke the meat and sniff the rod to see if the meat had bacteria. If the meat smelled bad, then it would be "
dirty" and wouldn't pass inspection. This was a pretty bad way to check, cause the inspectors wouldn't wash the rods. That spreads bacteria from the bad meat to the good meat faster than covid ever
will. This method was used until around the 1990s.