Anyone who can read this and NOT call for a ban on Chinese food products has to be seriously suicidal. The addition of melamine is not just planned; its systemic. And don’t even try to tell me its not in the human food. Anyone who would add this poison to animal food will add it to human food. Not to mention that when we eat the animals which have eaten it, we ARE eating the melamine too.

My questions now are why are we still allowing ANY food products of any type in from China and why would anyone other than a competing athlete WANT to go to an Olympics in a country where they may be poisoned by the food?

Many thanks to The New York Times for this very enlightening article.

Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

By DAVID BARBOZA and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: April 30, 2007

ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

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Looking for a way to declare that you’re mad about Menu Pet Foods and you refuse to buy any more of their potentially tainted products? Emily barked in to tell us all about a petition we can sign to let the world know how you feel, and more importantly, what you’re NOT going to buy.

Hi Joy,

Thank you so much for sharing this. We need to continue to get the word out.

When this recall started, I wrote a petition demanding a boycott of Menu Foods. I was wondering if you’d consider posting the link in your blog. I’m always surprised to learn that there are STILL people out there who haven’t learned the details of this horrible situation.

Link to petition.

Thanks,

Emily

And this is from petition:

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Itchmo Forum readers have organized a postcard blitz for this Saturday, April 28th, to bring to light the under-reporting of dogs murdered and hurt by the recent recalled foods. If you have sadly been a pet parent with pets affected, please consider participating.

My Pet Counts! Postcard Blitz

We are calling on all pet owners, parents, guardians who have lost a pet due to contaminated pet food or had a pet become ill to join us in a post card blitz to demonstrate the full scope of this pet food recall disaster.

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Isn’t it interesting how MenuPet (or should we say Procter & Gamble) wants to offload the blame and lawsuits to a supplier? MenuPet wants to blame ChemNutra (and possibly another supplier) for selling them tainted products. Oooo, puup little MenuPet. It just can’t manage to run its own tests on incoming supplies. That might take too long or add another penny to the cost of a ton of product. Poor, poor little MenuPet.

Okay you money-grubbing MenuPet (and Proctor & Gamble overseers), you made the money and now you have to suffer the consequences. Look, even drug dealers know better than to buy supples without testing. Just watch any big drug movie. The drug importers always have a scene where someone tests the products. Don’t tell me the MenuPet managers are not as smart as drug traffickers!

I’m not saying to let ChemNutra off the hook. Oh no! They probably made a lot of money selling cheap, tainted food stuffs to MenuPet and whoever else. These guys deserve just as much censure and punishment as the MenuPet toadies. How about revoking ChemNutra’s license to import food? And don’t stop at ChemNutra. Revoke the license of any other company that sold tainted food.

We’re talking about food here! Any company that knowingly, or should know, they are selling tainted food does not need to be in business! And don’t claim you didn’t know. Its YOUR job to know! You should be testing EVERY load of food coming into North America.

Our pets gave their lives in this food recall 9/11. This is a wake-up call to us all. If we don’t heed the warnings and act appropriately, their deaths and our future deaths will have been for nothing.

Thanks to USA Today for this news.

FDA raids company that imported tainted wheat gluten

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration conducted a search of the Las Vegas offices of ChemNutra, supplier of the ingredient suspected in the contamination of recalled dog and cat food, the company said Friday.

ChemNutra said it had been informed the company could be held accountable because it imported the melamine-adulterated wheat gluten used in the tainted pet food even though the company had no knowledge its supplier in China had introduced melamine into the product.

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Thanks to USAToday for this article.

China admits tainted food link
By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

BEIJING — Chinese authorities acknowledged for the first time that ingredients exported to make pet food contained a prohibited chemical, stepping up their probe of two Chinese companies’ roles in one of the USA’s largest animal-food recalls.
While pledging cooperation with U.S. authorities investigating the recall, the Chinese government in a statement Thursday also disputed that the chemical — melamine, which is used to make plastic — was responsible for harming pets.

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Here’s a recent press release from Senator Durbin’s site. He’s still fighting for our pets, and now Representative DeLauro has signed on too! If you’re in Connecticut, elt Representative DeLauro know you appreciate her involvement.

DURBIN, DELAURO MEET WITH VON ESCHENBACH; URGE CHINESE GOVERNMENT TO COOPERATE ON PET FOOD CONTAMINATION INVESTIGATION
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

[WASHINGTON, DC] – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) today met with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach in Durbin’s Capitol office to discuss the latest recall of pet food, this time caused by contaminated rice protein imported from China.

In the meeting, Durbin and DeLauro learned that the Chinese Government has blocked requests from the FDA to send personnel to China to inspect the facilities suspected of producing the contaminated products. The FDA first contacted the Chinese Government on April 4, 2007, but have not been granted permission to send food inspectors into the country. In response, Durbin and DeLauro sent a letter to the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Zhou Wenzong, urging the Chinese Government to issue visas to U.S. food inspectors as quickly as possible.

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I’m still getting requests for information on law firms handling class actions suits for pet food recalls.

Thanks to Leeann, furmom to Dahlila, Cinco, Lizzie and the rest of the Waukesha pack, for barking this in.

Pet Food Lawsuit

On Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Progressive Law Group (PLG) filed a class action lawsuit against nationwide producers and distributor of contaminated pet food linked to the deaths and severe kidney problems in numerous pets.

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Great way to work together!

Thanks to Ron at Petitionz.org for barking this in.

Canadian Pet Owner Finds Way to Help American Victims of Tainted Pet Food

April 20, 2007 (Toronto, Canada) Pet owner Karen Fraser of Toronto Ontario responded to the tainted pet food scandal by founding Petitionz.org with Ron Smith. The web site has provided a constructive way for angered and grieving pet owners to respond to the ongoing pet food crisis. People from around the world have signed the petition and voted in the polls.

While trying to keep up on the recall and reaction information that seemed to change by the hour Ms. Fraser came across articles by American media which indicated that U.S. pet owners would get little compensation if they won a law suit against Menu Foods. Few states recognize pets as anything beyond property.

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We didn’t really want to think about where that tainted pet food was going did we? Now we don’t have a choice.

Let’s do a quick recap on what it means to be at the top of the food chain (that’s us). It means that if you eat something made from another animal, you are often also consuming what THEY ate, especially if that something is not normally ingested and passed through the system. I think its pretty safe to say that melamine and other weird chemicals aren’t naturally passed through. The result is that WE get it too!

I’ve been saying this for a while that somehow the pet parents would get tainted food too and now we know how. This is NOT something I want to share with my furbabies!

Thank you corporate agribusiness for bringing us this new disaster! You’re now asking youreself, “why is she blaming corporate agribusiness?” Because family farmers are not usually stupid enough to feed known TAINTED food to their animals. Family farms can be big (check out some of the massive family dairies) but the owners CARE about what goes into their animals. They make the connection between poison in (the food) and poisonous product (milk, meat, whatever) out the other side.

Corporate farms, on the other hand are run by people looking at the bottom line (Gosh, didn’t we just see this with Menu Pet managers and suppliers?). The further away from the animals or crops, the less responsibility anyone feels for the ultimate product.

Its an old thought in management theory to reward people for what you want them to do. Corporate farms rewards their managers for making lots of money for the corporation and forget the harm caused if it can be swept under someone else’s rug. Family farmers feel pride in what they produce and how they care for their farms. Make money, sure, they have to and should make lots of money if they’re feeding the rest of us safe food.

What does this mean for the rest of us who are getting to the point of eating and feeding our dogs dandelions from the yard simply because that’s just about the ONLY things we know don’t have wierd chemicals on them (I don’t use any chemicals on the yard before someone asks)? I don’t know. I use to think people who played Russian Roulette were crazy. Now I feel like every time I feed my pack or myself I’m playing Russian Roulette.

Thanks to Boston.com for this article.

Investigators: Tainted pet food fed to hogs
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff | April 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — Hogs fed pet food rejected as unsuitable for sale ended up eating a product laced with an industrial chemical, federal authorities said yesterday, expanding a food safety investigation that had been primarily focused on cats and dogs.

It remains unclear, however, whether products made from the hogs will be considered safe for human consumption.

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Isn’t it nice to see that someone outside of the pet communtiy is paying attention to the larger ramifications of these recalls?

This accurate rant is from the Huffington Post.

Melamine-Tainted Corn Gluten Confirmed — Is Anything Safe To Eat?By David Goldstein

Melamine-tainted corn gluten, imported from China, has been confirmed in South African pet food:

“Johannesburg – Tests have confirmed that Vets Choice and Royal Canin dog and cat dry pet-food products contained corn gluten contaminated with melamine, says the manufacturer.

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