HorsesAss.Org

Apparently, “there is no breaking news” at the Port of Seattle today… you know… other than fact that it is closed.

Yup, all Port of Seattle container terminals are closed today due to a fatal accident that killed a longshoreman last night at Terminal 5. Docks are scheduled to re-open tonight at 6PM.

I only know this because a local freight forwarder CC’d me an angry email:

Today all of the Seattle terminals are closed due to the death of a longshore worker. Many of our customers have been asking about what the situation is at the port. I looked on the Port of Seattle website and was flabbergasted to see that nothing was written there. The SPECIAL BREAKING NEWS section said “there is no special breaking news today.” Say what?

I phoned the main number and was switched to the public affairs department. When asked if all of the terminals were closed and for how long, the woman who answered said, “I was unaware that the ports were closed today.”

Hmm. Sounds to me like this woman might have a promising career in the FDA Office of Public Affairs. But I digress. The angry email continues:

She transferred me to someone is the SEAPORTS section. This woman wasn’t sure how long the ports would be closed, put me on hold for awhile, then told me to call the individual terminals or the PMA.

How many people work in this department, and what are they supposed to be doing? I told her that I was disappointed and surprised to find that there was nothing posted on the website and that the first person didn’t even know that the ports were closed. She said she would talk to public affairs section and hung up. ALL of the Seattle SEAPORTS are CLOSED ALL DAY – and that is not important enough to put on their website????

My property taxes make me choke. I am sick that this port is unable to function without our tax support, don’t know how to run themselves profitably, and apparently have lackadaisical employees.

I’m told the longshore union normally takes off a shift whenever there is a work fatality, so the folks at the Port of Seattle, this being their supposed area of expertise, should have been fully prepared to deal with public queries.

Apparently not.

Ivan Weiss, chair of the 34th District Democrats (and my biggest fan) takes aim at “fair elections” advocates who are working with extremist right wing think tanks.

Rep. Peter DeFazio is out. He won’t challenge GOP Sen. Gordon Smith (OR), who is getting some serious love from Crosscut.

This Sunday, riding the bus will be free. Why? It’s Earth Day. (Or as George W. Bush calls it, “Sunday”) Dan Savage isn’t a fan of the free bus plan:

Earth to Ron Sims: Riding the bus sucks. Earth day, non-earth days (?), free, $1.25—the fucking bus sucks. There’s nothing celebratory about being stuck on a fucking bus.

People don’t ride public transit to be altruistic, do-gooders. They ride public transit to get from Point A to Point B. To compete with cars, Ron, public transit has to be faster, easier, and more reliable than driving. There’s a tiny number of smug, stupid assholes out there that will get on a bus because they get to say, “Hey, look at me! I’m saving the planet!” to themselves. And most of those assholes are already on the bus, content to sit in a pool of urine left on their seat by some bum that got on and off the bus in the downtown “ride free/rolling homeless shelter zone.”

Every time the Seattle Times editorial board pimps for a new Sonics arena, they should print a big, bold disclaimer across the top of the page, revealing the millions of dollars in ad revenues they stand to lose should the team leave the region and their sports section.

Most of their readers are capitalists. We understand and appreciate rational self-interest. And if the Times were upfront and honest about its financial stake in churning out basketball coverage through the dreary months of Winter, perhaps we wouldn’t find the following headline so ridiculous: “Olympia owes Bennett a Sonics/Storm vote.”

Gimme a break. Olympia doesn’t owe Bennett a vote any more than it owes Nick a pony.

We know the Times wants the team to stay. We get it. But their constant, one-sided pressure on the Legislature to approve the first deal that comes their way is not only annoying, it’s likely counterproductive. There is no way the King County Council is going to approve this tax package without putting it before voters, and there’s no way, in its current form, it wins at the polls. You want to assure the Sonics departure? This is the way to do it.

If Sonics owner Clay Bennett is serious about keeping the team in the region, then he needs a slap in the face, not sycophantic kiss on the tuchis, for if his most recent press release is any indication, the man is totally out of touch with political reality.

“This a [sic] staggering and quite likely a debilitating blow to our efforts to develop a world-class arena facility. Clearly at this time the Sonics and Storm have little hope of remaining in the Puget Sound region.

We believe we have gone to extraordinary lengths with significant time and resources to craft a proposal for a global caliber multi-purpose event facility that would be a valuable public asset for the region for years to come and have minimal impact on taxpayers.”

Yeah… Bennett went to about the same “extraordinary lengths” crafting his proposal as he did crafting a press release with a typo one word into its opening sentence.

I know the folks at the Seattle Times looked the man in the eye and found him to be straightforward and trustworthy, but how exactly is a $400 million public subsidy a serious proposal coming just weeks after 74-percent of voters rejected a taxpayer giveaway half that size? And what exactly would be the point of approving a deal that King County voters would surely reject at the polls? If they really want to keep the team in the region, the Sonics and the Legislature likely have one shot at getting this right, and, well, this proposal obviously ain’t it.

The Times attacks Rep. Ross Hunter (D-Medina) for accusing Bennett of trying to create a crisis, whining “That is not fair…”

What is Bennett supposed to do if the Legislature is not even willing to vote on the proposal?

Gee, I dunno, maybe… negotiate? You know, haggle. Bargain. Dicker. Horse trade. Compromise.

As Republican presidential frontrunner Tommy Thompson would likely tell you, if there’s one thing Jews like me understand, it’s haggling — and, well, Bennett… apparently, not so much. See the typical pattern in a negotiation such as this is for the two sides to gradually move towards each other until a deal is struck. Say, for example, you’re in the market for a new car with a sticker price of about $24,000. You’ve done your research, and so you offer $21,000 — only a few hundred dollars over invoice and incentives — and then the dealer comes back and counters with an offer of say… $48,000. That’s kinda what Bennett did.

Bennett says he’s willing “to explore every conceivable funding option,” but so far, only if that option includes about $400 million in public financing — twice what Seattle voters already overwhelmingly rejected. And he didn’t need to hire a high-priced lobbyist to tell him that in the current political climate, that dog won’t hunt.

But if Bennett is really serious about keeping the Sonics in the region, there are plenty of other options that could be explored. For example, Seattle voters might be willing to accept a Key Arena renovation proposal that included a more typical 40/60 public/private financing plan. Or maybe the City Council would consider a renegotiated lease that provides the team an additional $8 to $10 million a year in revenues.

Or, if Bennett really has his heart set on a half billion dollar hoops palace in Renton, he just might want to get the ball rolling by kicking in a couple hundred million dollars of his own. And then we can get down to the nitty-gritty of crafting a revenue package that might pass legislative and electoral muster.

My suggestion? A jock tax combined with a repeal of the sales tax exemption for newspapers would raise more than enough to pay off the bonds. And you gotta admit that it’s only fair that those who would benefit most from the new arena — professional athletes with their over-inflated salaries, and newspaper publishers with their over-inflated egos — should pick up a proportionate share of the financial burden.

And I’m sure there are many other creative ideas out there that would work for both Bennett and the region, if only the two sides could sit down at the table and negotiate in good faith. Bennett’s a successful businessman, and I’m guessing he didn’t get that way by always taking the first deal put in front of him. He shouldn’t expect the region’s taxpayers to be any less savvy.

After all, despite the Times’ insistence that the Sonics are worth keeping at any price, there is no hard deadline, and both sides have leverage. Bennett owns a couple teams we’d rather keep in the region, and Seattle owns a market three times the size of Oklahoma City.

If there’s a deal to be made, it’s time to start haggling.

Within the hour, bars and clubs all over the city will be killing the music for five minutes, exactly at midnight. They’re protesting new legislation that will regulate their business.

I live downtown. I don’t mind the nightclub patrons as much as I used to. It used to be hard to get to sleep on the weekends, but I’ve adjusted to it. More often than not I’m out there with the kids, enjoying an adult beverage or three.

So why are the nightclub owners and the Mayor’s office battling? The clubs are worried they’ll get stuck with the kind of responsibilities the cops currently have. The city is trying to standardize the way we regulate clubs in the neighborhoods. But the two sides aren’t working together.

I’m sick of club owners who seem to have little regard for the neighborhoods in which they do business. I’m sick of the broke-dick city government which is making a problem worse.

Check out this post by Erica at the Slog:

What happens when you have a hearing on nightlife in a neighborhood without any bars?

You get a hearing where all anybody wants to talk about is potholes, P-Patches, and traffic signals, as I learned tonight at the Bitter Lake Community Center, where council member Sally Clark presided (solo) over a “meeting” of her neighborhoods committee.

It gets worse. Apparently, the geezers of Bitter Lake weren’t psyched about nightclub policy.

Erica concludes:

Maybe next time they could hold a hearing on Social Security at the Venom nightclub.

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.

The contaminated corn gluten was delivered to Royal Canin by a South African third-party supplier and appears to have originated from China.

Once again the rumors prove right, and FDA denials prove wrong. On Tuesday, April 17, I informed the FDA that “the word […] is that corn gluten and rice protein concentrate are being recalled” — information they firmly denied.

What we have here is a pattern, and there is absolutely no reason to assume that it is limited to the pet food and animal feed markets. Wheat gluten, corn gluten and rice protein concentrate are all used to supplement the protein content of both animal and human food, and all three have now been found to be contaminated with melamine. Three different Chinese manufactures have now apparently been implicated.

Given the facts, it is now reasonable to assume either massive, industry-wide negligence, or intentional contamination, and that all Chinese produced high-protein food additives are now suspect. Steve Pickman, a VP at MGP Ingredients, the largest U.S. producer of wheat gluten, explores the most likely theory:

“It is my understanding, but certainly unheard of in our experience, that melamine could increase the measurable nitrogen of gluten and then be mathematically converted to protein. The effect could create the appearance or illusion of raising the gluten’s protein level. Understandably, any acts or practices such as this are barred in the U.S. How the U.S. can or cannot monitor and prevent these types of situations from occurring in other parts of the world is the overriding question.”

In grading the quality of these food additives, the protein content is usually extrapolated from measured nitrogen levels. It now seems likely that unscrupulous manufacturers, in an effort to up the grade and price of their product, are intentionally spiking nitrogen levels with melamine, an industrial chemical used in China as a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer.

One would expect the FDA to test this theory by directly measuring protein levels in melamine-contaminated samples to see if they otherwise fall below grade. One would also expect the FDA to release the names of all importers, distributors and manufacturers who are suspected of handling contaminated product. But then, one would expect a lot of things from the FDA that they have thus far failed to deliver.

The truth might be a good place to start.

UPDATE:
During a conference call today, the FDA confirmed that melamine-tainted pet food was reprocessed and fed to hogs. People eat hogs. Figure it out for yourself.

Agricultural products distributor Wilbur-Ellis has issued a nationwide recall of all lots of rice protein concentrate, after the Food and Drug Administration found additional samples testing positive for melamine. The company is now urging all pet food manufacturers using its rice protein concentrate to recall any pet food that may still be on supermarket shelves.

In an unfolding public health crisis already marked by inexplicable incompetence and willful foot-dragging, Wilbur-Ellis’ press release would border on the comic if the implications weren’t so potentially tragic:

“Last Sunday, April 15, Wilbur-Ellis notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that a single bag in a recent shipment of rice protein concentrate from its Chinese supplier, Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd., had tested positive for melamine. Unlike the other white-colored bags in that shipment, the bag in question was pink and had the word ‘melamine’ stenciled upon it.”

You’d think, just maybe, the pink bag with the word “melamine” on it might have been a bit of a giveaway, yet on Tuesday, April 17, when I asked the FDA to confirm or deny an impending recall, and specifically mentioned that my source said “the rice protein concentrate has ‘melamine’ listed on the bag,” the FDA categorically denied the rumor, insisting that the information on its website “is up to date.”

Within hours, Natural Balance recalled products due to melamine-tainted rice protein concentrate.

And now, a few days later, we learn that the “white bags” have tested positive for melamine too, establishing a broad pattern of adulteration that we must assume to be intentional until proven otherwise.

First wheat gluten was found to be contaminated with melamine, then rice protein concentrate — and despite FDA denials, I’m hearing corn gluten may be next. But why would manufacturers intentionally spike high-protein food additives with melamine, a urea-derived chemical used in plastic and slow-release nitrogen fertilizer? Steve Pickman, a VP at MGP Ingredients, the nation’s largest domestic producer of wheat gluten, explores one theory:

“It is my understanding, but certainly unheard of in our experience, that melamine could increase the measurable nitrogen of gluten and then be mathematically converted to protein. The effect could create the appearance or illusion of raising the gluten’s protein level. Understandably, any acts or practices such as this are barred in the U.S. How the U.S. can or cannot monitor and prevent these types of situations from occurring in other parts of the world is the overriding question.”

It is a question the current FDA seems unwilling or unable to answer.

The United States of America is truly one of the greatest countries on earth. A shining example is our higher education system, which doubles as the world’s greatest producer of science. The fundamental right to free speech combined with a strong culture of academic freedom have fermented into a higher education system unparalleled in both academic training and research productivity. The American research university is truly the envy of the world.

One of the profound privileges that members of university communities experience is the free exchange of ideas between scholars from all over the world. Frequently this comes about by inviting scholars from other institutions to visit and speak. On any given day at a major university campus, there will be dozens of talks on topics ranging from sub-atomic particles to comparative cross-cultural cosmologies. (For example, today I attended at seminar by Harvard’s renowned political scientist Dr. Gary King on statistical methods for measuring public opinion through blogs.)

For weeks now, I’ve been looking forward to attending a talk by Dr. Riyadh Lafta, a well-known Iraqi epidemiologist. Dr. Lafta was scheduled to give a talk at Kane Hall on Friday evening at the University of Washington campus. The talk is on the recent rise in cancer rates among Iraqi children. Things went awry something over a week ago:

“The University of Washington wanted him, but the U.S. denied his entry,” said his colleague at [Simon Frasier University (SFU)], Tim Takaro….”best they’re going to get is a video feed.”

Once in Canada, Dr. Lafta will present estimates that paint a damning portrait of the war’s ravages on children: that birth defects are on the rise since the war began, and that the number of children dying from cancers such as leukemia has risen tenfold.

Dr. Lafta had tried for six months to get a visa into Seattle to speak in Washington, and was ignored a half-dozen times, Dr. Takaro said.

Apparently, the Bush administration is willing to sacrifice academic freedom on their alter of wingnut ideology. How is it that the Bush administration even noticed Dr. Lafta? Do they really scrutinize the content of every epidemiological talk given by a foreigner? In this case it seems clear that Dr. Lafta is being targeted by the Bush administration because he is a coauthor on a couple of controversial epidemiological studies: the two “on the ground” studies that estimated the increase in all forms of mortality in Iraq since the U.S. invasion.

Okay, so the Bush administration gets to partially suppress the talk. It is now scheduled to be done by video link from Canada. Within the last day, however, the plans have changed once again.

After he couldn’t get a visa to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children, a renowned Iraqi epidemiologist has been told he can’t fly through Britain en route to give a similar talk in Canada.

Riyadh Lafta — best known for a controversial study in the respected medical journal The Lancet that estimated Iraq’s war dead at more than half a million — said in an e-mail to his U.S. research colleagues that he had two choices: Fly to England without the transit visa, or turn around and go home.

“[British consular officials] refuse to give us a transit visa just to change airplanes,” Dr. Lafta wrote from Amman to colleagues at the University of Washington, and to B.C.’s Simon Fraser University, where he planned to give a talk on Friday.

You don’t think the British government would deny a scientist a 4-hour “transit visa” just because he has co-authored a peer-reviewed scientific article? Well…maybe. I mean, the article estimates that, following the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, mortality rates increased to genocide-levels (the article was published in The Lancet, one of the most respected biomedical journals in the world).

The suppression of Dr. Lafta’s visit goes beyond an inconvenience of free exchange of ideas at a University. These actions will also impede the bread-and-butter research of Dr. Lafta and his colleagues at SFU and UW:

With Dr. Lafta are scores of documents that will help researchers from Simon Fraser, Washington and Iraq determine how badly the U.S.-led war in Iraq affects children — whether birth defects in Iraq are on the rise, and whether Iraqi children are suffering a tenfold increase in cancers such as leukemia, said Simon Fraser professor Tim Takaro.

So…I guess the “culture of life” doesn’t apply to childhood cancers and child mortality in Iraq. What a bunch of fucking hypocrites!

The pattern is clear. The Bush administration has a single guiding principle: ideology is everything! Nothing else is sacred. They have attempted to destroy everything that offers the least resistance to their ideology: our national reputation, the lives of our young people, a CIA nuclear weapons counter-proliferation program, our justice system, our national emergency response, the national coffers, and several parts of the constitution to name a few. Of course, they have launched a number of well-known assaults against science, higher education, and academic freedom as well.

In the end, the Bush administration will lose this battle. A U.S.-based coauthor on the mortality paper is prepared to step in for Dr. Lafta. That will change the focus from childhood cancers to the astonishing increase in overall mortality following the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Ultimately technology will completely circumvent the wishes of the Bush administration—video link-ups are not rocket science.

The Bush administration has charted a course back to the medieval dark ages where, as the joke goes, we are all mushrooms—kept in the dark and fed bullshit. If this attack on academic freedom pisses you off as much as it does me, please take a moment to write to your Representative and Senators (find contact information here).

(Hat tip: SeattleJew, cross-posted at HominidViews.)

Mass murderer Cho Seung-hui made a video.

In other news, 183 people were killed today in Baghdad in four separate bombings.

I don’t generally endorse Republicans, but I’m willing to give those who share my interests and agenda a fair shake. Take for example Shawn Bunney, who is running for Pierce County Executive on the GOP ticket.

According to an invitation to a fundraising event being held on his behalf by Strategies 360, Bunney is “a leader and friend to those of us who want to improve the region’s transportation systems.” The invitation urges us to “keep Shawn working for the region’s interests.”

And which region is that? Take a look at the accompanying graphic:

Hmm. Isn’t that the Aurora Bridge and a Metro bus in the downtown bus tunnel? So, if elected Pierce County Executive, Bunney will do everything he can to improve transportation and transit… in Seattle?

Now that’s a platform I can support. Too bad for Bunney that most Pierce County voters actually live in, um, Pierce County.

It looks like a lot of folks hit the bottle after Monday’s surprise announcement that the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had settled their years-long dispute over their Joint Operating Agreement, assuring that Seattle remains a two-newspaper town for at least another decade.

No doubt Times publisher Frank Blethen and his out-maneuvered lawyers were crying in their beer after agreeing to pay a net $24 million to keep the competition in business, while David Brewster, founder of Crosscut (an online “newspaper” with little news and no paper) — who had pitched investors that his new venture would mine the huge hole left in the local media landscape by the P-I’s imminent collapse — sullenly (if not soberly) opined that “Hearst is the one that blinked.” Yeah. Right. Glug-glug-glug-glug.

P-I employees had no doubt who won this battle of the old media dinosaurs, immediately breaking into a daylong, celebratory bacchanal that culminated that night with a rented limo full of drunken reporters pulling up to Fairview Fanny… and unceremoniously emptying their bladders on the Times’ front lawn.

No, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture grizzled newspaper-war veterans sottedly writing their names in the grass, but the image of a certain female reporter squatting on Frank Blethen’s lawn — marking his territory as hers — that is sure to become an oft repeated tale of local journalism lore.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Come joins us for some good beer and spicy politics. Tonight we’ll celebrate the opening of the 200th chapter of Drinking Liberally, with the arrival of the Pagosa Springs, Colorado chapter.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

Hours after a Food and Drug Administration spokesperson denied that the already massive pet food recall would be expanded to include products containing rice and corn gluten, Natural Balance has confirmed that it has found melamine in its rice gluten, and is now recommending that customers avoid all of its products containing this ingredient.

Melamine-tainted wheat gluten, imported from China, had previously been blamed for what has grown to become largest pet food recall in U.S. history, with over 39,000 dogs and cats sickened or killed. Natural Balance says that the contaminated rice gluten was produced by a U.S. company, raising further questions as to the broader safety of the food supply.

Earlier today, after receiving a tip from an industry insider that products containing tainted rice and corn gluten were about to be recalled, I contacted an FDA Public Affairs officer for confirmation, and received a quick and firm response:

From: Castro, Veronica
Sent: Tue 4/17/2007 12:37 PM
To: David Goldstein
Subject: RE: From FDA

Rice gluten and corn gluten are not being recalled. The latest information we have is on our website. It is up to date.

Then again, this was the same spokesperson who emailed me that she had no information about a previous recall… six days after it was issued. I can only conclude that the FDA is keeping its Office of Public Affairs as much in the dark as it is keeping the public.

I have received no confirmation that tainted corn gluten is also suspect, but at this point I have no reason to doubt my original source. Given this new information and past experience, I personally will not serve my pets — or my family — any product containing wheat, rice or corn gluten until the FDA and the industry have proven to me that their products are safe to eat.

Seattle’s favorite neo-conservative writes:

The dense ones, however, believe they are on the winning side of history. Time for a “mission accomplished” lap, perhaps, along with the developers and big business interests that willingly greenwash their corporate goals to co-opt labor, enviros, and progressives into supporting urban development policies that roll over the little guy.

What an unbelievable load of shit. Labor, enviros, and progressives all want more growth inside urban boundaries for different reasons. Union guys who swing hammers get construction work. Enviromentalists like the fact that denser urban development is energy effecient and allows people to walk to work. Progressives like it because, well… it’s cool. And we don’t want to move to Auburn.

Truth is, Skip’s no-growth heros (Brian Derdowski being one of them) were never for zero-growth. They just believed growth should pay for itself. And, growth should be funneled away from undeveloped areas and into cities. You know, like Seattle. So Skip’s anti-growth beliefs are really just a part of the problem.

After all, if a young couple can’t buy a townhome in Seattle, they’ll buy a house in Sammamish.

We know that these green-backed policies are making the city more unaffordable. They are helping to drive the poor out of town. They are displacing long-standing communities. They are changing the scale of a once-egalitarian city that featured few poor people, few rich people, and a lot of folks in between. This old middle class Seattle is now seen as unsophisticated, not worthy of protection, backward even.

The middle class folks who bought houses in the 50’s have sold them in their old age. Houses that went for 20 grand back in the old days are now 900k investments that have paid off. The middle class of Seattle’s yesteryear has cashed out.

Skip is against growth inside the city. He’s also against growth outside the city, as he’s favored growth management far and above the current law. Where does he want growth? Fucking North Dakota.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Who would Jesus love? Well, according to this coalition of Christian churches, apparently everybody. Even Gays.

Huh. Go figure.

On April 10, after failing to get ahold of anybody who could answer my questions by phone, I sent the following email to a number of contacts at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

Do you have any information regarding the report in the Marin Independent Journal that three varieties of Nutro Max cat food, not currently on the recall list, have tested positive for melamine by an independent lab?

http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_5630208

Is the FDA aware of this information, is further testing being performed, and do you expect the recall to expand? Does this suggest that the universe of recalled food will be expanded beyond these additional Nutro varieties?

And yesterday, April 16, I finally received the following succinct reply:

We do not have this information at this time.
**************************************
Veronica Castro
Office of Public Affairs
FDA

Um… which is curious, because only hours after I sent my query, the FDA issued a press release expanding the recall to include the Nutro Max varieties and other products. Hmm. Yet six days after recalling the products in question, the Office of Public Affairs still tells me that “we do not have this information at this time.”

Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

I once mocked former FEMA director Mike Brown for suggesting that his agency’s catastrophic failure in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was largely, well, my fault. “In the middle of trying to respond to that,” Brown complained during Congressional testimony on the massive hurricane, “FEMA’s press office became bombarded with requests to respond immediately to false statements about my resume and my background.”

As if the most critical element of any disaster relief effort comes from the press office.

But all snark aside, the press office does play an important role in crisis management, by getting accurate information out through the media and to the public — information that can save lives. And throughout this entire pet food recall the FDA and the pet food industry have repeatedly failed to adequately perform this crucial function.

It was on March 2 that Menu Foods learned that the first of its test animals had died. By March 8, Menu Foods, ChemNutra and the FDA knew that imported wheat gluten was the culprit, knew the name of the Chinese manufacturer printed on the side of the 25 kg sacks, and knew that the gluten was imported and distributed as human food grade. The initial recall wasn’t issued until March 17, and the name of the Chinese manufacturer wasn’t revealed until March 30, prompting three more pet food companies to issue recalls within hours. On April 3, 26 days after first being notified that its gluten was killing animals, ChemNutra finally issued a nationwide recall.

Throughout this unfolding crisis, consumers were consistently reassured that the remaining pet food supply was safe, even as the recall expanded day by day. So I guess it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when the FDA’s own Public Affairs Office claims to be totally unaware of a week-old recall.

This scandal will surely prompt Congressional hearings focusing on the safety of the food supply, but the FDA’s failure to provide the public with accurate, timely information is as inexcusable as its failure to adequately safeguard our food. We not only have the right to know what the FDA knows — and when they know it — we have the need. For when it comes to both our pets and ourselves, it is far better to avoid products out of unconfirmed fear, than it is to consume unsafe products out of ignorance.

The FDA and the pet food industry had an obligation to inform the public. They failed.