If babies eating Gerber’s got sick from a contaminant in the food, what party is “responsible” would depend on how the contaminant got into the food, and whether there was a reasonable way for Gerber to have detected it before it was shipped out to stores. If a domestic or foreign terrorist stealthily contaminates an ingredient that is shipped to Gerber, with a contaminant that is difficult to detect and unlikely to specifically looked for, the “responsibility” would lie with the perpetrator of the act. If an employee on the canning machinery, with no history of trouble that Gerber’s could know about, decided one day to stealthily start putting a few drops of a strong poison into jars of an already tested batch of food, right before the lids go on, the employee would be at fault.
The trouble with the home-cooking route is that few pet owners are both knowledgeable and dedicated enough to supplement these foods so that they’re nutritionally complete. Not to mention that there have been problems from time to time with basic human food items (like the bagged spinach last year) and with supplements packaged for humans, so home-cooking is not a guarantee of safety.
The American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine is recommending that pet owners continue to feed their pets commercially prepared pet foods, and just avoid the specifically recalled items. I don’t think they’re stupid, and I don’t think any of them are taking up home-cooking for their pets’ food.
How do you think people successfully feed their families on a day-to-day basis? How did they feed pets before there was dog food? How did they feed babies before Gerber? It’s not brain surgery, manufacturers would have everyone think it is, but it is not.
The foundation that funds the American Veterinary Medical Association lists these companies as big donors
Benefactor - $100,000 or above
Merial
$25,000 and above
Chicago Veterinary Medical Association
The Cleveland Foundation
New York State Veterinary Medical Society
$10,000 and above
Idexx Corporation
Steven Leuthold Family Foundation
Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation
Pennsylvania Veterinary Foundation
VCA Antech, Inc.
Diamond - $5,000 - $9,999
Dr. & Mrs. Roger Mahr
Dr. & Mrs. Richard Coon
Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc.
MWI Veterinary Supply
Louis & Celia Nussman Fund
Rathmann Family Foundation
L.E.A.W. Family Foundation, Inc.
It’s called Quality Control. I worked in a tiny little mom-and-pop strawberry packing plant, and even that tiny plant had their own QC lab tech who sampled and tested the product all day long every day for quality and standards.
You make some good arguments about a contaminant that is difficult to detect and unlikely to be specifically looked for. No arguments there.
But if you look at the timeline here, Menu Foods knew there were problems with the food already on the market back in January (at least) when customers were reporting illness and deaths. Subsequent to that, they conducted their own taste tests and 17% of those animals died and another (~35%) had kidney failure but survived (at least initially)... yet they STILL didn’t recall the food. It took them at least 3 more weeks before they recalled the food.
So the jury is still out on whether they dropped the ball on testing their own product, on Quality Control, etc. But it is VERY clear that they did not act in a timely manner after KNOWING the had shipped 60 MILLION units of potentially contaminated food.
You nailed it on the home cooking issue: The vast majority will not educate themselves sufficiently to cook appropriately for their pets. So the reality is that for the vast majority of people/pets, the best commercial food they can afford, from a safe/trustworthy company, is probably their best option.
However, as for the ACVIM being stupid or not... just remember they are not nutritionists. Vets receive 2 weeks of nutritional instruction during Vet school. MOST Vets don’t know much about nutrition, and even fewer know anything about pet food. And the truth is, the FDA doesn’t know where all the contaminated wheat gluten went or whether they have identified all the contaminated food yet. So I caution everyone regarding feeding commercial foods that are not (at this time) on the recall list: If you are feeding any of the nationally-branded commercial foods, wet or dry, on or off the recall list, monitor your pets closely for symptoms related to the recall issue. If any change in your pet is observed, especially any of the noted symptoms, stop feeding that food immediately and get your pet to the Vet for exam and any appropriate diagnostic tests.