The real story behind the pet food recall

[Neecy]

Read the whole story - this is shocking (and infuriating).

Nearly one month passed from the date Menu got its first report of a death to the date it issued the recall. During that time, no veterinarians were warned to be on the lookout for unusual numbers of kidney failure in their patients. No pet owners were warned to watch their pets for its symptoms. And thousands and thousands of pet owners kept buying those foods and giving them to their dogs and cats.

At that point, Menu had seen a 35 percent death rate in their test-lab cats, with another 45 percent suffering kidney damage. The overall death rate for animals in Menu's tests was around 20 percent. How many pets, eating those recalled foods, had died, become ill or suffered kidney damage in the time leading up to the recall and in the days since? The answer to that hasn't changed since the day the recall was issued: We don't know.

We at Pet Connection knew the 10-15 deaths being reported by the media did not reflect an accurate count. We wanted to get an idea of the real scope of the problem, so we started a database for people to report their dead or sick pets. On March 21, two days after opening the database, we had over 600 reported cases and more than 200 reported deaths. As of March 31, the number of deaths alone was at 2,797.

There are all kinds of problems with self-reported cases, and while we did correct for a couple of them, our numbers are not considered "confirmed." But USA Today reported on March 25 that data from Banfield, a nationwide chain of over 600 veterinary hospitals, "suggests is as high as hundreds a week during the three months the food was on the market."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/04/03/petscol.DTL

[DemReadingDU]

1. Why can't somebody name the U.S. company

that outsourced our wheat production to China?

[w4rma]

6. Because they're owned by huge Republican contributors. (It's ADM, btw.)

And those contributors need time to dump their stocks onto unsuspecting non-insiders.

Found through the process of elimination and the fact that they own wheat gluten mills in Kansas:
Is Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) the distributor of the tainted wheat gluten?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x560863

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

13. Yesterday, Lou Dobbs said it was a Las Vegas importer. See this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=569745

[PATRICK]

2. The "enormous system failure"

like 9/11 was, to me includes a big sweep of corporate media and affected government interests who create a cloud of unknowing, a suppression of safeguards as a direct corollary, a general attitude to slide away from an urgency and clarity felt by the isolated community of those being woken up directly by reality.

I think of all the food dangers and alarms that have sounded and how we went from a daily scrutiny of individual foods and "potential" harm to total laissez faire until the bodies drop. I think, how like the war, when all the thinking and rationale is clouded, even by bold lies publicly surfacing, and then the 'story' settles on small bits of dramatic tragedy separate now from the perpetrators and the issues and the possibility of even stopping future disasters. It is a sideshow of the public mind, not the news, not a public service, and more and more a visceral propaganda machine protective of business interests even if they are in Red China. And investigations? Anyone beating on the door of the vets trying to amass a network picture of the calamity? Or wondering why the government is not doing the same since food chains for humans are not treated much better?

Another little magazine and community(perhaps even pet owners except most of them rely on the "news") has woken up to the stark horror of the MSM world and its favorite regime- the hard way where immediate tragedy overwhelms the mind realizing the bigger problem is the system.

And yes, the bigger story is how vulnerable this odd globalization has made the caveat emptor everyman andf how second rate except as bothersome victims.

[SoCalDem]

3. and yet the "media" is still using " about a dozen" whenever they report

the "additions of the day ":grr:

[Neecy]

4. yep

They're giving these extremely low numbers because there's no reporting structure in place - in the article, only one state has created a pet owner database in response to the poisoned food crisis. The lack of a reporting structure noted in the article was what really made me blow my stack.

[DCKit]

5. They've cut the FDA inspections by half, so who's watching out for Mad Cow?

Psychologists?

[w4rma]

7. No one. The Republican FDA uses their resources to *stop* tests for MadCow. (nt)

[mhatrw]

8. Mad cow disease just has a bad image.

It's been sent to Madison Ave for an overhaul:

[hvn_nbr_2]

9. Don't worry. Be happy. nt

[AZBlue]

10. K&R

[tomreedtoon]

11. Real story: If it were kids no one would care.

If some company...let's say Halliburton...distributed tainted beef to America's high schools and lots of kids died, there'd be no outcry. But kill someone's pet? They'll be out in the streets with torches screaming for blood.

Having had to clean up after a lady who keeps around 40 cats in her house - her "rescue" operation is more like a place for cats to be entrapped until they die - I have had it up to here with animal lovers. They are not only brain-damaged, they are disconnected from the human race. They aren't even human any more.

If this incident has an up side, maybe it will make people think about how much they love their pets as opposed to loving their fellow man. And maybe looking up a copy of "Mondo Cane" (whose first part showed how people love dogs more than people) could be instructive.

[piesRsquare]

18. The lady you cleaned up after

is not an animal lover; she's what is called a "hoarder". And hoarders provide exactly that: "a place to be entrapped until they die". Your observations and "diagnosis" are spot-on.

Hoarders have severe psychological problems and yes, are indeed rather disconnected from both reality and "the human race". If this woman is still around, please report her to law enforcement. Hoarding is a crime. She--and the cats she is hoarding--need immediate help; the cats need to be taken away from her.

However, hoarding is rare. Please do not paint all animal lovers and pet owners with the same brush.

I can understand your sentiments, as what you have witnessed is horrible. But most people with animals--even those with several animals--are not like this lady you speak of.

[liberalla]

12. It's worth reading the entire article at link!

:kick:

[cooolandrew]

14. Well this is what I thought when the toll went so high it looked like some cover up to me.

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. K&R

[pigpickle]

16. kick

[shance]

17. kick it up

n/t