A full two months after its first test animal died from eating melamine tainted pet food, Menu Foods expands its recall yet again. Back on March 16, Menu Foods President and CEO Paul K. Henderson wrote:
“We take these complaints very seriously and, while we are still looking for a specific cause, we are acting to err on the side of caution. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure that our products maintain the very highest quality standards.”
On March 30:
“Our products are safe. We continue to engage in the highest levels of monitoring and testing in the pet food industry.”
Menu Foods has expanded its recall five times since making that statement. And you wonder why I no longer accept reassurances from industry and regulators as to the safety of our food supply?
Gosh, Goldy, do you expect competence, or something, from people who have positions of responsibility?
How 20th Century.
I’m not a big fan of Free Trade — I lived for years in Detroit and Free Trade was the final nail in the coffin for Detroit. But we CANNOT treat imported food like we treat food coming from our local farmer. There has to be a fundamental change made in how FDA and USDA inspect food coming in from other countries. They also absolutely need to have the power to issue recalls and be held harmless for publicizing critical information we need for our health. It’s dangerous and irresponsible (or at a minimum embarrassing) for the FDA to admit that they know tainted grain went to several companies but can’t tell us who or force them to do a recall.
This latest food scandal looks like it was caused by greed and cheating — getting a better price by pretending the gluten is higher in protein than it really is — but we just let every terrorist know where we are most vulnerable. I can’t get on a plane to go from Seattle to Spokane without taking off my shoes and jacket and be inspected. It doesn’t make any sense that strawberries grown in human waste or grain ‘juiced’ with a plastic can come in from a 3rd world country and poison us without inspection or disclosure.
Congress needs to recognize where the risks really are and enhance and empower the FDA and USDA to effectively do their mission of protecting us.
Congress won’t be able to get an executive like GWB to do anything to improve the FDA or the USDA.
These entities should be made much more independent, as with the Federal Reserve Chairman. Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to decide what our food can contain, or what drugs are safe. The same case can be made for the EPA.
A woman who was presenting information on fetal developement at a college to present another viewpoint from pro-abortion people has been threatened to have acid thrown in her face, threatened with rape, threats that people would be waiting for her after class to attack her. etc.
Come on, people—THIS IS TOLERANCE??? Your side is so insecure about its own view on abortion that they must resort to threats of terrorism against those who peacefully present how developed and human-looking even a 12-week old baby is??
@ 4- those who made the threats are just a bit less evil than those who killed doctors and nurses.
Small compliment
Nice excuse K
Nice excuse.
Woohoo @4,
So you come to my blog and try to hijack a thread with some outrageous anecdote, and you don’t even bother citing it.
Asshole.
Let’s move this thread back to the topic at hand. If you don’t mind I’ll repost a comment I posted elsewhere. It’s questionable blog ettiquette too, I know, but nonetheless….
I’m rather shocked some people are dismissing the introduction of melamine into our food supply as if it is nothing to be concerned about. I agree melamine does not appear to be as toxic as many other poisons. It’s not like we’ve been ingesting dioxin. But I took some time to research the expert opinion on melamine toxicity, and it does not look good.
The Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford University in England identifies the following risks of melamine exposure:
Harmful if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Chronic exposure may cause cancer or reproductive damage. Eye, skin and respiratory irritant.
See the report yourself by following this link: the Oxford University Department of Chemistry report on melamine toxicology.
Melamine has no rightful place in our food supply. We should take measures to prevent it from being there, and we should punish the corporate cheats who put it there — strongly. We should also take a close look to make sure no other such substances are being introduced into the food supply for selfish corporate profit at the expense of the health of all of us. It is, or it should definitely be, criminal.
It is not just the health risks I’m concerned with. I am furious at the apparent lack of ethics displayed by the greedy corporations responsible. And I am dismayed our government has such a laissez-faire approach to corporate regulation they seem unwilling to do much of anything to prevent it.
I am no fan of bureaucracy. But our government must play an important role in balancing the interests of the whole of our population against the amoral drive of corporations toward ever-increasing profit. Without adequate regulation and oversight, the corporate profit incentive leads to the exploitation and abuse of the rest of us.
Maybe the situation was not so dire years ago. Maybe we could place a more trust in corporations to regulate themselves when we were dealing with a national economy — when the companies who fed and supplied us were within our own borders. I’m not even convinced of that. But one thing I know for sure is now that we have entered a vast global economy, there are few assurances about the quality of the products that make it to our store shelves, and there is little we know about the conditions under which they were manufactured.
Unsafe and unsanitary manufacturing processes are much more common in many places overseas than they are here. Our labor laws and quality standards have no bearing outside our borders. And whatever our standards of corporate ethics and responsibility may be in the U.S. (and they are certainly not always without reproach), companies operate under different standards overseas. And in this global marketplace, it is too often the companies who manufacture the cheapest products who are rewarded with shelfspace at Walmart or the contract at Menu Foods, and elsewhere — regardless as to any serious ethical concerns. This is a downward spiral that cannot continue to exist without continued problems like what we have been seeing.
We can not turn the clock back now and withdraw from the global economy — nor do I think we should. But thoughtful government oversight and regulation is an essential component in this system for the global marketplace to work. Without it we will suffer further detriment to our society and standard of living.
This has been just my two yuan. Thanks for hearing me out if you got this far. Hehe — maybe I should start my own blog instead of ranting at such length here.
P.S., Goldy, The above was comment #72 on an earlier thread from a few days ago. I hope you don’t mind I just did that — and apologies if you do. I thought it would see a little more light here, and bring the thread back where it belongs.
I recently discovered your blog via your article on melamine at the Huffington Post. Complements on your great work. Count me in as a new reader.
BTW, I know a Goldstein from Seattle now in DC, formerly in Hell’s Kitchen. Any relation?
Menu is now blaming this little err on cross-contamination which sounds better than not cleaning their fucking equipment after finding the melanine in the first place. However Menu’s cfo made out just fine when he dumped half his stock just prior to the first recall. Pets dead and sick and this asshole doing some insider trading.Then we have American Nutrition, another major pet food maker, putting rice gluten in the cans with no mention of rice gluten on the label. The only thing these assholes understand is their bottom line, I will never buy anything made by either company again. Where was the FDA when this story broke?
Maybe Woohooo is a troll for Menu and trying to hijack the thread. Woohoo would fit right in at Menu Pet Foods.
So what was Menu Foods supposed to be making that should have had melamine in it? They’re not also in the plastics business, are they?
As to how long this might have been going on…our neighbor’s cat’s kidneys crapped out a couple of years ago. Except for the occasional roof rat, his diet consisted of I/AMS…one of the brands under which, as it turns out, Menu Foods’ product is sold.
In the long run, the matter of unsavory imports may somewhat solves itself as the cost of transportation makes our “shrinking world” seem bigger again. Eventually it’ll start being more economical to manufacture stuff domestically than to pay for the fuel to ship it here from the other side of the world, no matter how much lower the factory labor costs.
In the meantime, we sure as hell need to keep a better watch on this stuff. The offshore suppliers will probably try even more desperate measures to stay competitive as the trend I’ve described above puts the squeeze on them.
I suppose a capitalist approach COULD work here. Let people choose to pay more for safer foods and use the $$ to increase the surveillance. Would you like the Big Mac from cows fed human shot, bird shit, or range grown grass? Add extra for bred baked from virus free wheat!
That way, China can continue to use mealmine AND get population control all at the same time!
Why are they feeding that shit to “test animals”? I guarantee you won’t have this problem very long if we make the board of directors eat what their company sells.
If someone doesn’t figure out what’s killing the honeybees, you humans will be living on bread and water. http://tinyurl.com/22s7ba
@4 Sounds like another wingnut internet myth to me. Everything that comes from wingnuts is lies.
@10 Insider trading is illegal, but don’t look for this administration to prosecute business executives who steal from small shareholders.
@10 (continued) They’re too busy making sure the staff attorneys working for U.S. Attorneys are polically reliable. (That’s illegal, too.)
“WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating whether its former White House liaison used political affiliations in deciding whom to hire as entry-level prosecutors in some U.S. attorney offices around the country, The Associated Press has learned.
“Such consideration would be a violation of federal law.
“The inquiry involving Monica Goodling, a conservative Republican who recently quit as counsel and White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, raises new concerns that politics have cast a shadow over the independence of trial prosecutors who enforce U.S. laws.
“Justice spokesman Dean Boyd confirmed Wednesday that the department’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility have been investigating … Goodling’s role in hiring career attorneys – an unusual responsibility for her to have had. … Three government officials with knowledge of the investigation said Goodling appears to have sought information about party affiliation while vetting applicants for assistant U.S. attorneys’ jobs. …
“Asked if he had ever heard of the agency’s White House liaison getting involved in hiring of career prosecutors, Dennis Boyd, the executive director of the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, said: ‘No, never.’ …
“The investigation of Goodling appears to focus on her role in reviewing applications for trial prosecutors for offices headed by temporary or acting U.S. attorneys who had not been confirmed by the Senate. That responsibility is usually handled by the Justice Department’s executive office of U.S. attorneys. …
“An official using political affiliation in choosing such applicants would clearly violate traditional Justice Department policy and practice, said Joe diGenova, who was the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia during the Reagan administration. ‘There is no justification for it,’ diGenova said. ‘Politics should play no role in the decision-making process of career prosecutors. And if it does, that’s clearly improper, and clearly a violation of all of the traditional policies in the Justice Department.’ Federal law also bars discrimination against employees or job applicants on the basis of political affiliation.”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://tinyurl.com/2peups
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Cripes these Bushies are a lawless bunch — every fucking one of them belongs in prison.
Iraqi insurgents learn fast — they’re adopting our capitalist ways:
“BAGHDAD – Criminals in Baghdad are stealing corpses from the scenes of car bombings and killings in order to extract ransoms from grieving relatives … the gangs pose as medics collecting bodies to be taken back to the city’s overflowing morgues. Instead, they take the corpses to secret places and demand payments of up to $5,000 to release each body to relatives for burial.”
http://tinyurl.com/2trb9e
Roger Rabbit @ 19
Maybe that explains why Reagan Dunn (WSBA # 28753, admitted to Bar on 01/11/1999) was given such a high-level position in the U.S. Department of Justice (as “Senior Counsel”) with only two years experience at practicing law:
http://www.metrokc.gov/council.....graphy.htm
@21 No doubt, Richard. Here’s what happens when you hire fucking incompetents: The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego let the world’s most wanted drug trafficker slip through their fingers. http://tinyurl.com/36hkdy
Another miserable failure by the hopelessly inept Bush regime.
Finding out that most of the vitamins and amino acids are also made in China kinda ruined my appetite. They were making soy sauce from human hair; what are they using to defraud America in those?
Ads by Google
Melamine
Feed
Food
Pet Dog Food
Animal
…
lol
The fact that rich people smoke Cuban cigars in the U.S. says all we need to know about the rule of law in this country and about the “priviliges” of wealth in the U.S.
The message to the rest of us is: “Don’t be a sucker, and, above all, don’t get caught. You’ll end up in jail — like Martha Stewart — who earned her money. She didn’t inherit it.
RR the radical extremist
Roger Rabbit says:
“@21 No doubt, Richard. Here’s what happens when you hire fucking incompetents: The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego let the world’s most wanted drug trafficker slip through their fingers. http://tinyurl.com/36hkdy
Another miserable failure by the hopelessly inept Bush regime. ”
Your hero Bill Clinton let Osama right thru his fingers….
26
Another right-wing lie, and it ignores the fact that Bush absolutely let Osama get away. He even called off our special forces.
Dear lord, how do these threads get derailed so fast? Goldy, here’s a link to pet foods that do not contain Chinese imported grain. This is useful information for pet owners, though it of course doesn’t address the bigger problem. However, if capitalism is to work here at all, people need this information; otherwise the market can’t react and people can’t avoid tainted products.
LINK
A cow was found in Canada to have BSE a couple years ago and we banned all beef from that country. Why are we still playing kissy-face with the countries where this melamine came from?