Thanks to Terri Oak for barking in this CNN article.
Terri Oak wrote:
This article was on CNN Money this morning. This is very disturbing. NOW what do we feed our babies when even the food we buy to prepare ourselves may not be safe? This is beyond scary….
I’m with you, Terri! Free markets are one thing but we’re talking about FOOD here. I for one am not willing to kill my furbabies or myself so someone in power can feel good that we’re a globalized economy.
Perhaps the scariest statement is at the end of post where the FDA says it will NOW start testing for tainted food in the human supplies! NOW! What about weeks ago when the FDA food-flaks said that the human food was safe. If they didn’t know for sure because they just hadn’t bothered to look then is that technical lie? Hmmm.
Either way, our food system is horribly broken and we must call for change! Seems to me this would make a pretty good topic for the next presidential election. Safe food.
And have you noticed that the big news machines are reporting the pet food recall and now its extension into human grade foods on the MONEY pages? The MONEY pages? How about front page you-and-your-furfamily-members-may-be-eating-things-that-cause-your-body-to-go-into-shutdown section? How many people are missing these stories simply because of where the news media chooses to place them? Is that WHY these extremely important articles are buried in the pages normally filled with rate quotes and arcane business dialogues?
Chicken feed, tainted pet food linked
Government says poultry at nearly 40 farms in Indiana received feed that contained wheat gluten tied to poisoned pet food.
May 1 2007:NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Nearly 40 poultry farms in Indiana gave chickens feed contaminated with wheat gluten imported from China that has been linked to poisoned pet food, the government said Tuesday.
About 30 broiler poultry farms and eight breeder poultry farms received the contaminated feed in early February and fed it to chickens shortly thereafter, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The wheat gluten has been found to contain melamine and related compounds, a protein substitute that has been linked to animal deaths and sickness.
Though the FDA and USDA believe it unlikely that anyone who ate the chicken in question will become ill, the government will not give its seal of approval to any products derived from animals that ate the contaminated feed. It is offering to pay farmers who euthanize poultry that ate the bad feed.
Food safety net under fire at hearing
The FDA and USDA also said they will not recall any of the chicken products from the 38 farms. The agencies are following the same procedures as when they discovered recently that swine on farms in several states also ate feed found to be contaminated with wheat gluten.Breeders that were fed the contaminated product are under voluntary hold by their owners.
The FDA did not indicate which brands might be affected by the latest revelations. Leaders in the industry include Tyson Foods (Charts, Fortune 500), Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500) and Smithfield Foods (Charts, Fortune 500).
The FDA recently said it will for the first time test ingredients imported for use in the human food supply in connection with the nationwide pet food recall that has killed, by some estimates, thousands of pets.
