Pet food recall news 20 April: I think I'm gonna be sick :P
The big news with both the news post and the original recall post is...well, I'm afraid it's not good news, folks.
Unless you are pretty sure your pet is only eating pet food with:
a) domestically sourced grain products *only* and have verified this with the producer
or
b) is using potato flour as a thickener,
...you want to switch pet foods. Now. Seriously.
...you may also want to drop pork from your own diet, too. :(
Reasons:
a) They finally found what may be the real poison--cyanuric acid, used most commonly as a pool chemical to stabilise and sterilise hot tubs (and used industrially as a disinfectant).
b) Not only wheat and rice, but now corn gluten has been found to be contaminated as well (meaning pretty much ALL the grains used in pet food are contaminated). If you think the recall was expanding with rice gluten being found to be contaminated (and I've already had to take Blue Buffalo off the "safe list" because they had to recall cat food with rice gluten in it), it is going to expand like a fucking supernova when the stuff about corn gluten contamination breaks. This honestly is the equivalent of a colony drop on the pet food industry, folks--the only safe thickeners *left* are soy-based and potato-based, and we import a lot of soy from China so I would NOT count ANY grains safe. This pretty much also means that all dry pet food is now unsafe unless you know for good and goddamned sure the company you are dealing with is buying from US-based growers only.
Needless to say, the "safe food list" has had to be rather considerably altered. People may seriously be better off at this point cooking home foods for puppy or kitty (despite the risks), especially if you can get grain products from a farmer's market.
c) And no, meat is not safe either--and in fact the worst case scenario everyone was scared shitless of may have happened.
There is a real likelihood at this point that contaminated food--specifically by what is termed in ecological circles "predator-prey poisoning"--may have entered the human food chain. Specifically, not only did the contaminated grain products get in dog and cat food, but also feed for livestock--they're investigating hogs right now, but if it got in hog feed it's probably gotten into Goddess only knows what else. At any rate, the FDA is presently shitting their collective adult diapers at this point over the possibility that hogs that ate the contaminated grain (to the point they had detectable melamine and other toxins in their urine) may well have entered the human food supply.
(Minor rant: I eat bacon almost every day for breakfast. Sometimes even jowl bacon. If this hadn't gotten me pissed before, this has me a red-hot bit of anger now--this goddamn "let's cut costs by buying grain from China even though they have 100 people dropping dead each month from eating meat buns made from rice that just happened to be treated with lethal pesticide and this sort of thing is considered a *typical* food safety snafu in China, but what the fuck, it's twenty cents cheaper per pound!" bullshit is now potentially endangering not just pets but people. (Not to mention the sacredness of Good Bacon.) People are *right* when they are now raising the argument that this is in fact a national security issue--dear gods, if this has gotten into food animals as well, what the hell CAN we feed puppy or kitty? Can't feed them grains, they're all contaminated (and kitty couldn't live on that alone)--what if, Gods forbid, venison or lamb or beef are the next "contaminated food" found? Hell, at that point, feeding kitty frozen mice might not be an option--for all we know, the damn lab blocks are contaminated too :P And let's pray that the veggies we're importing from there aren't full of this shit too...)
Unless you are pretty sure your pet is only eating pet food with:
a) domestically sourced grain products *only* and have verified this with the producer
or
b) is using potato flour as a thickener,
...you want to switch pet foods. Now. Seriously.
...you may also want to drop pork from your own diet, too. :(
Reasons:
a) They finally found what may be the real poison--cyanuric acid, used most commonly as a pool chemical to stabilise and sterilise hot tubs (and used industrially as a disinfectant).
b) Not only wheat and rice, but now corn gluten has been found to be contaminated as well (meaning pretty much ALL the grains used in pet food are contaminated). If you think the recall was expanding with rice gluten being found to be contaminated (and I've already had to take Blue Buffalo off the "safe list" because they had to recall cat food with rice gluten in it), it is going to expand like a fucking supernova when the stuff about corn gluten contamination breaks. This honestly is the equivalent of a colony drop on the pet food industry, folks--the only safe thickeners *left* are soy-based and potato-based, and we import a lot of soy from China so I would NOT count ANY grains safe. This pretty much also means that all dry pet food is now unsafe unless you know for good and goddamned sure the company you are dealing with is buying from US-based growers only.
Needless to say, the "safe food list" has had to be rather considerably altered. People may seriously be better off at this point cooking home foods for puppy or kitty (despite the risks), especially if you can get grain products from a farmer's market.
c) And no, meat is not safe either--and in fact the worst case scenario everyone was scared shitless of may have happened.
There is a real likelihood at this point that contaminated food--specifically by what is termed in ecological circles "predator-prey poisoning"--may have entered the human food chain. Specifically, not only did the contaminated grain products get in dog and cat food, but also feed for livestock--they're investigating hogs right now, but if it got in hog feed it's probably gotten into Goddess only knows what else. At any rate, the FDA is presently shitting their collective adult diapers at this point over the possibility that hogs that ate the contaminated grain (to the point they had detectable melamine and other toxins in their urine) may well have entered the human food supply.
(Minor rant: I eat bacon almost every day for breakfast. Sometimes even jowl bacon. If this hadn't gotten me pissed before, this has me a red-hot bit of anger now--this goddamn "let's cut costs by buying grain from China even though they have 100 people dropping dead each month from eating meat buns made from rice that just happened to be treated with lethal pesticide and this sort of thing is considered a *typical* food safety snafu in China, but what the fuck, it's twenty cents cheaper per pound!" bullshit is now potentially endangering not just pets but people. (Not to mention the sacredness of Good Bacon.) People are *right* when they are now raising the argument that this is in fact a national security issue--dear gods, if this has gotten into food animals as well, what the hell CAN we feed puppy or kitty? Can't feed them grains, they're all contaminated (and kitty couldn't live on that alone)--what if, Gods forbid, venison or lamb or beef are the next "contaminated food" found? Hell, at that point, feeding kitty frozen mice might not be an option--for all we know, the damn lab blocks are contaminated too :P And let's pray that the veggies we're importing from there aren't full of this shit too...)