After winning a meat tray by mistake, was I a selfish sausage?

I bought three tickets in a club raffle and was mistakenly given one extra. I won a meat tray with that fourth ticket. I collected my prize and have now cooked and eaten the sausages. Should I have ’fessed up and forced a redraw?
M.P., Queens Park, NSW

A: The meat tray is one of the least glamorous items in the raffle prize pool. It doesn’t have the visual allure of the fine-wine hamper or the gourmet-delicacies basket: it’s just a pile of meat on a tray, so it looks more like human remains awaiting a post-mortem examination. It doesn’t have the romantic appeal of a restaurant voucher or a hotel overnighter: it’s just a pile of meat on a tray, which I suppose could be turned into a romantic barbecue dinner, as long as that was followed by a romantic bowel-cancer screening test. It doesn’t have the long-lasting value of an iPad or piece of art: it’s just a pile of meat on a tray, sitting unrefrigerated in an overheated club-room, so by the time you’ve won you could be going home with a delicious selection of E. coli cutlets and salmonella fillets.

So you might have performed a great service by not confessing to that prize-winning ticket. Other raffle participants were probably relieved, thinking, “Well, at least I dodged potential diabetes, heart disease, bowel disorders, bacterial poisoning and a guilty conscience about animal cruelty because MEAT IS MURDER!!!! Though, those chops sure looked good …” Then again, if the raffle was a fundraiser for a worthy cause, your dishonesty might affect your enjoyment of the meat tray. In which case, you probably should’ve confessed and forced a redraw.

Personally, I find sausages flavoured with self-doubt and shame give me irritable bowel syndrome bloating the next morning.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.