What the pet food recall means for the rest of us:

[hedgehog]

A single plant produced canned and pouched pet food under several major brand labels and dozens of store brands. The product was distributed all over the place and into hundreds of homes. no one knew anything was wrong until vets started making the connexion between the food and dying animals.

Here's the warning: food for humans is processed and distributed the same way. Whether it's meat or processed food, more and more it all comes from a few giant plants. Even a lot of fresh produce comes off of giant factory farms. How long before a giant recall is set in motion by dozens of human deaths?

[devilgrrl]

1. Phew! At least we don't have to worry about those pesky Meat Inspectors anymore!!!!

:sarcasm:

Let the market decide whether or not something is safe to eat!

[unpossibles]

7. yes, exactly

I love it when folks go on about how it's not the government's duty to prevent these things...

uh, yes it is. Leave it to the businesses and they will slash the protections to save money, savings we consumers will not see at the stores. It's sometimes cheaper for them to pay a few lawsuits than to just do the right thing in the first place.

[Donnachaidh]

2. that peanut butter recall was not a tiny thing

But the MSM sure shut up about it fast, huh? :sarcasm:

Did we ever get a total tally of deaths involved there?

[verse18]

3. Did you forget about the spinach and peanut butter recalls?

Several people have already died, maybe even a relative of a DUer.

[RamboLiberal]

24. There was also a tomato recall that sickened people

and several years ago green onions caused people to get hepatitis. Several died in my area after eating at a Chi Chi's plus at least 1 I know of needed a liver transplant. This was the final nail in the coffin of the Chi Chi's chain.

[nashville_brook]

4. Time magazine had a great article about eating "local"

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1595245,00.html

Eating Better Than Organic

Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple (which was labeled conventional, since that sounds better than "sprayed with pesticides that might kill you"). It shouldn't have been a tough choice--who wants to eat pesticide residue?--but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I've been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support--the one who rejected pesticides in California or the one who was, in some romantic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn't the apple's taste suffer after the fruit was crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?

In the end I bought both apples. (They were both good, although the California one had a mealy bit, possibly from its journey.) It's only recently that I had noticed more locally grown products in the supermarket, but when I got home I discovered that the organic-vs.-local debate has become one of the liveliest in the food world. Last year Wal-Mart began offering more organic products--those grown without pesticides, antibiotics, irradiation and so on--and the big company's expansion into a once alternative food culture has been a source of deep concern, and predictable backlash, among early organic adopters.

Nearly a quarter of American shoppers now buy organic products once a week, up from 17% in 2000. But for food purists, "local" is the new "organic," the new ideal that promises healthier bodies and a healthier planet. Many chefs, food writers and politically minded eaters are outraged that "Big Organic" firms now use the same industrial-size farming and long-distance-shipping methods as conventional agribusiness. "Should I assume that I have a God-given right to access the entire earth's bounty, however far away some of its produce is grown?" asks ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2002 memoir, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Nabhan predicted my apple problem when he vacillated over some organic pumpkin canned hundreds of miles from his Arizona home. "If you send it halfway around the world before it is eaten," he mused, "an organic food still may be 'good' for the consumer, but is it 'good' for the food system?"

I had never really thought about how my food purchases might affect "the food system." Even now I don't share the pessimism and asceticism of the local-eating set. In her 2001 memoir, This Organic Life, Columbia University nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow writes that her commitment to eating locally "is probably driven by three things. The first is the taste of live food; the second is my relation to frugality; the third is my deep concern about the state of the planet." I don't have much relation to frugality, and, perhaps foolishly, I'm more optimistic than Gussow about our ability to develop alternative energy sources.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. You mean like the spinach recall...

after several people were killed?

[bdamomma]

6. exactly, regulations for food safety is hitting a low, if our pets

food supplies are being threatened what about human food consumption through these relaxed regulations? The FDA is on very thin ice.

[hedgehog]

9. I worked in a Ralston Purina cereal plant back around 1980.

The company instituted a policy in which the bacteriologist took samples all over the plant to ensure there was no salmonella even though the common wisdom back then was the cereal products didn't support salmonella. The testing program had begun with pet food plants packaging meat and meat by-products, then all pet food plants, then the human food plants. It was a voluntary program, though.

[bklyncowgirl]

11. Sounds like a responsible company--wonder if they're still doing it. nt

[hedgehog]

13. I don't know. The management was pretty much insane back then,

IMO. We were all given a copy of William Danforth's little red book; "I Dare You!" Now the company is owned by Nestle, the people who brought
third world mothers the opportunity to feed their infants formula watered down with contaminated water.

[global1]

12. The FDA Under * Is Just A Tool For The Big Corporations.......

big Pharma, big Agra, etc. Not protecting the interests of the American people like they should - but protecting the financial interests of the corporations. And it is getting worse everyday.

[leveymg]

8. This is the kind of thing that used to happen in Russia. Only they kept it secret.

What in the hell is going on in this country?

[Warpy]

10. Monopolization means single companies get powerful enough

that nobody dares inconvenience them by regulating them. That's why we have antitrust regulations on the books, regulations the GOP studiously ignores.

We've seen a decrease in medication safety, in food safety, in air safety, in water safety. We've seen corporations riding roughshod over the civil rights of their employees.

And it will get worse.

Conservatives in both parties are the problem. They can never be any part of the solution.

[MorningGlow]

14. Even my apolitical 81-YO mother tweaked to this

She commented on it this weekend--the pet food, the peanut butter, the lettuce--and was worried about what's next. And there WILL be a "what's next" with this. I told her it was all Emperor Weenieboy's fault--relaxed regulations in this administration means we're right back to turn-of-the-century Upton Sinclair-land.

Side note: One of my best friends had to put her oldest cat down last Friday. She was doing fair-to-middling for her age, but went downhill quite quickly last week, unable to keep anything down for days. She was the only cat in the household eating soft food. I wonder...I know it could have been just "her time", but...I wonder...

[thethinker]

16. I had to take my cat to the vet

She started getting sick late last week. We were at the vets 8:00 a.m. Saturday after I read the news articles on Friday. She is a very finicky eater so I was feeding a big variety of canned cat food plus dry food. She doesn't really like anything but tuna canned for people which isn't good for her.

She is doing better but probably because she is only about 2.5 years old. This is the first time she has ever been sick.

The manufacturer is saying they changed wheat gluten suppliers and they think that was the problem. I am wondering if that wheat was GM wheat.

I think our pets are canaries in the coal mine. They are smaller and bad food hits them harder and faster.

I was astounded at the fact that all the different brands were all made at the same place. With all the mergers we really don't have a variety of anything. I was also surprised at the fact that Peter Pan peanut butter and the Walmart house brand was the same except for the label. I had a jar of the Peter Pan with the right numbers. I hadn't opened it yet.

I am trying to cook for the cat with out very good results yet. She just doesn't like my cooking.

[MorningGlow]

17. Our cats are doing all right, thank goodness

We were terrified--we had just bought them some Eukanuba canned stuff. But they're not exceptionally old either--all around 10, 11, so they probably would have been all right with just a trip to the vet.

We also dodged the Peter Pan bullet--I had just opened one of the jars in question and MG Jr. (toddler) had had some, but not a lot.

I was shocked at how all the name-brand and generic stuff come from the same big pot. HUMPH! I feel hornswoggled. Actually maybe that's a good thing to come from this--we'll start tweaking to the many and varied ways the food industry separates us from more of our money.

[fed-up]

15. buy seasonal, local, organically grown fruits veggies-it's YOUR life nt

[prolesunited]

19. Good suggestion

if you're living in the south or California, but what are Northerners supposed to do? It's not like there's a lot available. And you can't subsist solely on fruits and veggies. (I'm a vegetarian, so don't even go there.) Short of living on a farm and having enough free time to grind your own flour, make your own butter and yogurt, and cheese, etc. -- or knowing someone who does -- the advice is impractical for most of us.

We really need an increased focus on food safety and government oversight. Individual responsibility can only go so far in many cases.

[lpbk2713]

18. A lesson on a greater scale .....

Big Business will attempt to pull off whatever they think they can get away with until they get caught. It's all factored in to the long term equation. Just lookat Big Oil, the telcos, and the credit card leeches.

[Morgana LaFey]

20. Yet another reason to

buy local, supporting your local CSA (Communty Supported Agriculture) program. If the food isn't organic, it's probably darned close. It's also better for you, fresher, sustainable, energy-saving and community-building.

FIND ONE NEAR YOU. Here's one link: http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml#find

Here's another (looks better to me): http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

[CheshireCat]

21. Link to list of contaminated cat foods???

Someone please post a link to the list. I don't take any chances with my felines!

[spooky3]

22. here you go...

www.menufoods.com/recall

See also more info in this thread in the Pets group:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=243x24245#24266

[Shallah Kali]

23. AP Feb 2007 | Despite Food Scares, FDA Cuts Inspections, Frm. W Offical Among Critics

Despite Food Scares, FDA Cuts Inspections
Former Bush Official Among Critics Who Charge Cuts Threaten Public
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/26/health/main2518201.shtml

That's not all that's dropping at the FDA in terms of food safety. The analysis also shows:

# There are 12 percent fewer FDA employees in field offices who concentrate on food issues.

# Safety tests for U.S.-produced food have dropped nearly 75 percent, from 9,748 in 2003 to 2,455 last year, according to the agency's own statistics.

# After the Sept. 11 attacks, the FDA, at the urging of Congress, increased the number of food inspectors and inspections amid fears that the nation's food system was vulnerable to terrorists. Inspectors and inspections spiked in 2003, but now both have fallen enough to erase the gains.

"The only difference is now it's worse, because there are more inspections to do — more facilities — and more food coming into America, which requires more inspections," said Tommy Thompson, who as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services pushed to increase the numbers. He's now part of a coalition lobbying to turn around several years of stagnant spending.
I wonder if anything short of lots of people dying causing massive public outcry will force the bush administration to change this.