Food, Food Everywhere and Not a Bite to Eat!

Until this week the pet food recall was awful, but didn't really hit that close to home. After all, it was in my mind mostly the 'cheap' foods that had been recalled. I can't believe that there are people who still give their dogs foods like Alpo and Ol' Roy, but now I wonder how much quality there really is in the 'premium' brands.

I used to feed Natural Balance Venison and Rice until suddenly Holly broke out in hives every time she ate it. My dad was feeding this food until Monday of this week. So far, both of his dogs seem ok. The final straw for me was the dishonesty of Natural Balance about their ingredients. The recalled ingredient, rice protein concentrate, was not a listed ingredient until after they were caught with their pants down this week. So can I trust the label on any bag of dogs food?

And then there are so many other issues going on with the pet food recall. Still only 16 animals reported dead! Oh please! The FDA really looks like a bunch of goons with their hands deep in the pockets of big business pet food companies. The incompetence here harkens back to the hurricane Katrina debacle. The pet food companies are so obviously only interested in covering their butts and could give a fark about the pets that have died and are dying. Then there is the issue safety in human foods. Wheat, rice and corn gluten are all used in human foods, and the FDA hasn't been able to ensure that none of the contaminated products are in the human food chain. We do know that contaminated food was fed to hogs in California, and that all of the pigs sold recently for human consumption have not been accounted for. And then we have the Chinese companies that sold the poisoned wheat, rice and corn glutens to begin with; the evidence is pointing more and more strongly to deliberate contamination with melamine because this chemical can make the protein content of the gluten concentrates look artificially higher, and thus worth more. Last I heard, the Chinese government is still blocking visas of FDA investigators.

There are so many issues going on with the pet food recall that it's hard to keep up with the facts. Several sources that I have been using, which have had information posted about various recalls long before the information was available at the FDA website are: www.petconnection.com/blog, www.itchmo.com and www.thepetfoodlist.com. All of these web sites have tirelessly kept current information available and have been invaluable to me in keeping up-to-date. I have also learned a he!! of a lot from the comments sections too!

From the comments section at The Pet Connection:

o I lost my Golden Retreiver to kidney failure Dec. 27th. He was also placed on Purina NF by my Vet in Florida. I was in the process of moving to NC and when I got him to the Vet up here, he only lasted another 3 days. He was just 8 years old. I know that I was feeding him one of the recalled foods, but who keeps grocery receipts from November? I feel so guilty……….he depended on me, I should have been able to protect him. Fortunately my Rottie was on a prescription weight control food, I could have lost them both.
Comment by Pat —

o I forgot to post this earlier today. I finally heard back from our state FDA representative today (my first call to their office was the Monday after the original recall was issued). At any rate, she told me that they were averaging around 25 pets per day being reported with almost half of those being reported as deceased. She said it had been a nightmare for their office. I had a lot of questions for her but unfortunately she didn’t have many answers.
Comment by Adrienne —

Holly and Mikey say 'Hi'.