We still haven’t learned our lessons. Just as gullible and listening to experts that aren’t experts at all. Oprah was setting Dr. Marty up to satisfy pet food companies and hit the neutral zone. After she got bashed on by the cattle industry looks like she got spooked.

Helen, agreed that the food issue and politics can’t be separated out.

I just wonder where the other two shipments of wheat gluten turned up. Just like any good liar, they think if they are quiet enough it’ll go away and we’ll forget. I think companies are getting reports and trying to bury things with answers like, “It’s not on recall” or “the lot code doesn’t match” or “everything we sell is safe” when they are just looking out for money.

So disappointing, this whole thing is just so sad. Just be careful about any more pet food experts. The ones before led a lot of people down dangerous paths.

Most Republicans can dish it out (to the Dems) but they can’t take it when the heat is turned up on them .-)

If none of them will eat it I wouldn’t try to feed it to them again. Maybe they detect something in it.

That’s cute about the raccoons and the peanut butter sandwich. I have some baby possums that stop by. I call it the critter cafe.

Well, I gave it to my 2 cats and the 5 homeless cats. Nobody would eat it.

I recall you all griping lately about Wysong. But why don’t even my homeless cats eat it?

(Raccoons come by at night and clean up whatever the homelss cats don’t eat. And I usually give them a peanut-butter sandwich every night. But I kept checking, and even the raccoons only ate the Wysong after they’d eaten everything else. When even the raccoons don’t want it, something is up …) ?

“Globalization of food is here. It’s here to stay. We need to acknowledge that and make sure food coming to the United States is as safe as we can make it,” Acheson said in a telephone interview, one of the first he has conducted since taking on the new post on Tuesday.

In other words we will continue to import everything from China with minimum inspection.

I for one am transitioning my cats to home made food. We will have to be very careful about our own food, medicines, vitamins from here on out.

Ag Weekly Online posted it on 5/5/07:
FDA Knew of Problems in Plant, Farms Involved in Recent Outbreaks

By Elizabeth Williamson, The Washington Post

“The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents.”

Wow. That’s very reassuring, innit? Hold me back.

“Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply.”

Ya don’t say. Gee, what was your first clue?
Moving on…:

“Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce committee will hold a hearing into the unprecedented spate of recalls, including the more recent contamination of pet food with melamine, which has been blamed for the deaths of dozens of pets.”

It’s a step. But we definitely need a heck of alot more steps to get with the program to ensure this type if catastrophe never occurs again. Steps are one thing, but an all out precision drill team routine is in order at this juncture in the game.

“This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road,” said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.”

Re: the recent hog problem:

“FDA notified California state health officials that hogs on a farm in the state had likely eaten feed laced with melamine, an industrial chemical blamed for the deaths of dozens of pets in recent weeks.”

And finally, the article addresses the lack of enough funds for the FDA to properly do its job (why am I not surprised?):

“In next year’s budget,…[snip]…Congress has voted FDA a $10 million increase to improve food safety….The Agriculture Department, which monitors meat, poultry and eggs and keeps inspectors in every processing plant, got an increase 10 times that amount to help pay for its inspection programs. The FDA visits problem food plants about once a year, the rest far less frequently….”

Anyone else see a glaring problem here? Or am I just having another Homer moment?

Note this FDA budget increase was due to human food contamination, not pet food. Probably because the pet food recall came later, but still……wtf?! Think that budget needs to be amended if it hasn’t already?!

You can read the entire article here:
http://tinyurl.com/2g67wt

http://www.opednews.com/articl.....ning_t.htm

China IS poisoning the World……Literally

“China is giving us a firsthand look at what happens when America exports unregulated capitalism to the rest of the world. Republicans and Libertarians alike believe that capitalism can be self-regulating in the absence of government oversight. China and other developing capitalist countries prove this notion completely false.

Republicans and Libertarians want to further deregulate American industry while simultaneously dismantling oversight agencies such as the FDA and the USDA. If they can’t eliminate these agencies, they will de-fund them and staff them with corporate cronies.

It is likely that the recent revelations about tainted pet food and now tainted pharmaceuticals are just the tip of the iceberg. The diethylene glycol contamination from China has been going on since at least 1992 without being disclosed to the general public. It seems very likely that many more such incidences of food and drug contamination have gone unreported as yet.

It is also interesting to note that glycerin is a common ingredient in certain pet foods and that diethylene glycol causes kidney failure as in the case of the recent pet poisonings. It would be useful, I think, for the FDA to test tainted pet foods for the presence of this toxic solvent.

Republicans and Libertarians beware of what you wish for, you just might just reap the “benefits” of unregulated capitalism in your child’s next bottle of cough syrup.”

http://www.opednews.com/articl…..ning_t.htm

DrSteveB has written a smart, passionate story today, taking off from my story of yesterday, about our need for strong regulation. It’s a great read, as are the comments.

DrSteveB also tells a story of his work in monitoring an outbreak in Nigeria from tainted medicines.