If I may, I think the disconnect here between you and various Freepers re the pet food deaths and how it has been reported is this:
You appear to be an educated, intelligent, well-informed, well-connected, voracious news hound. So you (rightly) say that published reports by FDA and Menu Foods have generally said "16" is the "confirmed" number of dead animals, and eventually they said "there may be more."
I, and others, are looking at this from the perspective of Joe-Schmoe pet owner who is NONE of the things I listed about you above. The average pet owner gets their news at 5:00pm on their television set while they're busy cooking dinner or otherwise multi-tasking and hearing the news in the background. The pet food recall story on the local TV news says "16 pets have died from the recalled food." It does NOT include all the details of what the number 16 is derived from, what it means, it does NOT state that these are only the confirmed numbers and the true number may be much higher, it does NOT express the severity or urgency of this recall, and it does NOT list every single recalled product, it simply says "brands like Iams and Nutro and others are affected, for a complete list, go to MenuFoods.com"
So the average pet owner says to themselves, "I don't feed Iams or Nutro, so I'm ok." They don't realize there are 100 brands on the list. As a result, MANY pet owners continued to feed contaminated product.
This, in my opinion, is the difference between what you are arguing and what I and others are arguing. Reality isn't reality, Perception is reality. And if the media keeps reporting the "16", that is what pet owners will hear, and they will be lulled into a false sense of security about feeding these recalled foods. They will say to themselves, "16 dead out of 60 million recalled cans? I don't need to worry about it because the odds are soooo low that I would get one of the tainted cans. Here Fido - dig in!"
It’s true that TV news gives very abbreviated information, and that many people may hear the definite number (16) and pay little or no attention to the statements that the actually number is believed to be far higher (”in the thousands”, etc). I understand that many people aren’t analytically inclined. But I think it’s important to try to keep the focus on the facts, especially those facts that are being missed by a lot of people.
What annoys me about all the conspiracy theory stuff is that it distracts people from factual information that they really need to be paying more attention to in order to keep their pets safe. Nonsense about “notice how their press release says ‘Not for Release in the US’ on it”, and utterly unfounded claims that the Menu Foods CFO knew all about this when selling some company stock on the first day the company conducted tests, steers pet owners away from scrutinizing the important information that IS available, and makes them inclined to think there’s no point looking at that info in detail because it’s all just a bunch of lies put out by people who want to get rich and don’t care if they have to poison your beloved pet to do so.