Posted on 04/27/2007 6:50:19 PM PDT by mom4kittys
WASHINGTON - Federal agents searched facilities of a dog and cat food manufacturer and one of its suppliers as part of an investigation into the widening recall of pet products, the companies disclosed Friday.
Food and Drug Administration officials searched an Emporia, Kan., pet food plant operated by Menu Foods and the Las Vegas offices of ChemNutra Inc., according to the companies.
Menu Foods made many of the more than 100 brands of pet food recalled since March 16 because of contamination by the chemical melamine. ChemNutra supplied the manufacturer with wheat gluten, one of the two ingredients tainted by melamine used in recalled pet products. Both companies said they were cooperating with the investigation.
Menu Foods also said the U.S. Attorney's offices in Kansas and the western district of Missouri have targeted the company as part of misdemeanor investigations into whether it violated the federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. The sale of adulterated food is a misdemeanor.
The FDA also is looking at all other ingredients imported by ChemNutra, and trying to reconcile what it imported with what it supplied to customers, said agency spokeswoman Julie Zawisza.
Import records obtained by The Associated Press show that since May 2006 alone ChemNutra also imported 440,000 pounds of the second suspect pet food ingredient, rice protein concentrate, from the same Chinese trading agent that handled exports of the tainted wheat gluten.
It's unknown if ChemNutra's rice protein concentrate was contaminated. Limited testing suggests it wasn't. However, another company's imports of that same ingredient, albeit from a different source, have been found to be tainted.
Ten of the 11 containers of rice protein concentrate imported by ChemNutra over the last year went to undisclosed pet food companies, spokesman Steve Stern said. The 11th is under quarantine and being tested. But just one of the other 10 is known to have been tested; results from those tests, done last week, showed it was not contaminated, Stern said.
The origin within China of the wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate remains murky. For example, ChemNutra's source for the two vegetable proteins, Suzhou Textile Import and Export Co., told The AP that food ingredients aren't part of its business — but that employees often take on side deals. Stern said ChemNutra dealt with the company's president.
The FDA has blocked wheat gluten imports from a second Chinese company, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. That company has told AP it bought the ingredient from other undisclosed firms and then sold it to Suzhou Textile.
Meanwhile, rice protein concentrate imported by the second company, Wilbur-Ellis Co., has tested positive for melamine. It came from a different Chinese source, Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd.
Last week, the FDA blocked rice protein concentrates from that source. And on Friday, American Nutrition Inc. became the final of five pet food companies that Wilbur-Ellis supplied with the tainted ingredient to recall a variety of products.
An unknown number of dogs and cats have been sickened or died after eating chemical-laced pet food.
Menu Foods said it faces more than 50 lawsuits. It in turn has sued ChemNutra.
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Associated Press writer Christopher Bodeen in Shanghai, China, contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Food and Drug Administration on pet food recall: http://tinyurl.com/2bjasu
You do realize that none of Durbin's grandstanding verbosity includes any suggestion of limiting Chinese agricultural trade, and thereby forcing China to clean up its act? His solution is to throw more money at a federal agency which can't possibly inspect every Chinese food shipment, even if the inspectors were tripled.
Anderson Cooper? Internationalist CNN? Hah!
Not to worry though, when Durbin announces that the problem's $olved, and CNN gets bored of blaming it all on Bush (he's certainly not guiltless, but it's quite a bit more involved than that), then everyone can rest easy and go back to buying all that cheap food from countries unknown.
Hey, humans survive e-coli, salmonella and other toxic poisoning every day, without ever knowing they've been poisoned, and when this little problem with dead pets has been forgotten by the short-attention-span public, we may start hearing about a sharp increase in chronic disease among Americans -- while OTC and prescription drug sales have skyrocketed -- but no one will want to make the connection to the mystery food we consume daily.
“free trade” is why. It’s clearly stated in all our “free trade” agreements that to block food imports from countries with lower food safety standards than ours is a “barrier to trade”. So its not allowed, in the minds of our sold out corrupt policiticians. It might affect their investments, Sen. Feinstein, in countries like China, if they put America first.
Yes indeed it would.
It is just not the problem with the dead pets, we can see how it has gone into the human food chain, the pigs and the chickens.
They keep saying that only 16 pets have died, well, click on my name and see my dead pet, and my son lost his dog a week after mine, so there are only 14 more?
You laugh at Durbin and say he is grandstanding but he has been only one of the few to get the ball rolling, call it grandstanding if you will, but where are the Repuppies?
I have called my Senator numerous times, but to no avail, he is also a veterinarian, you would think he would be on this. But, no. What ever anyone can do to call attention to this problem is good, be it CNN or whoever.
I am doing this not only for my lost pet but for hundreds of others who have lost their pets or pets that have been sickened, whether they are Democratic dogs and cats or Republican dogs and cats. I see no difference.
I know that people are people and have feelings whatever they political choice is and I support anyone who does anything about it.
But, mostly I am doing this to call attention to the fact that it is in the human food chain now and how easily this was done.
It has to stop because of my grandkids, I do not want them eating the garbage that is being brought into this country.
I am sure that whether being a Dem or a Republican, we ALL have to do something, because we all have family that we love and care for.
We all have to quit this bi partisan crap and work together for a better nation.
Wake up America, there is too much apathy in this country. browardchad, may I ask? What are you doing about this problem?
Any suggestions......... God Bless America and God Bless and protect our troops, who are both Democrats and Republicans and who give me the right to go out and March today and voice my opinion.
This is the issue that will prove to be dynamite for irrational free trade.
Thus far, the argument has always been that whoever opposes free trade is a unionist, socialist, anti-capitalist luddite. But people love their pets, and losing a beloved pet to a trade policy - which is PRECISELY what has happened here - is enough to actually cause people to change their votes.
Nobody wants to vote for anyone in favor of killing peoples pets.
The ChiComs over reached this time.
L
Yet while we welcome all this unregulated free trade we have no problem with regulating our own companies out of business with countless agencies breathing down their necks with more regulations than you can count.
Which business can compete better? The one who has all the regulations or the one that can just dump their industrial waste in the creek that is used to water the export crops? Free trade, as it exists, is just an unbalanced playing field.
If an American company encountered a Prebbles Meadow Mouse, they will be shut down to provide habitat. The Chinese Prebbles Meadow Mouse? Well, you can put just about anything in an eggroll.
Have you noticed how hard it is getting to find a good cut of beef? I am noticing that more and more grocers are not even displaying the better cuts. Perhaps, considering the price, their insurers won't let them display tenderloin or porterhouse without armed guards.
“Now our pets are dead because we bought crappy Chinese food
But it was cheaper!”
___________________________________________________
Excuse me, my pet is dead because I bought him more expensive food, that didn’t say China anywhere on the package.
We know there is a lot of greed in this world, but what bothers us is that Menu foods was making food for all these pet companies.....the old saying you get what you pay for is not true here because no matter what we paid, it was basically the same food with different labels.
We demand better labelling, better inspections and we want what we pay for.
We want the government agencies to do the job they are supposed to be doing.
This will not change my vote in any way...
Hopefully I can add even a small voice to help help change a lot of policies of how things are supposed to be done.
It was not on the label, that’s right. And it was expensive food, and you thought you were doing the right thing by buying it.
And THIS IS WHY REGULATION BY GOVERNMENT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
Everybody on the right is screaming all the time that if we would just deregulate, everything would be better. Well, there was a time when we didn’t regulate. And we had cholera, and food poisoning from tuna all the time. Pet food is not regulated like human food, and guess what, the same basic human greed that made it such that unregulated human food was deadly, makes unregulated pet food deadly. Men are greedy. Men in business, a certain number of them, will do whatever they can to make more money. Buy crap from China and put it into food, and sell it at a high price? They will if they can. The only way to STOP them is to have GOVERMENT REGULATORS watching over them, monitoring them and setting rules.
GOVERNMENT REGULATION IS VITAL TO PROTECTING HUMAN LIFE.
But you will get 400 people on this site screaming that government regulation is the ENEMY, and if we just let businesses alone, that we would compete better and have more problem. No. If we deregulate food, we will have more dead people. We need to regulate pet food MORE, that means MORE GOVERNMENT, MORE RULES, MORE of those things that business screams about. Because if they DON’T have regulators breathing down their necks, a certain number of private businesses will absolutely, with 100% certainty, cut corners, put cheap Chinese products into their foods, and kill our pets.
That’s the way it is. You can have food safety and heavy government regulation, or you can have light government regulation and more dead people, just like we did before we had regulation. It is a fantasy that we can have safe food without a large government agency constantly inspecting, putting regulations on food producers and breathing down their necks.
Basically, I have one butcher that I know (at a major chain). I walk in, and ask, “what’s good today?” He brings something from in-the-back and slaps in on the counter. Most times, it is a day or so “old” and he gives me a break on the price. He and I both know about “aged” beef. Sometimes he just shrugs his shoulders and I go buy some frozen pizzas. It works for me.
Then logically, imported food must have equal regulation to be safe. China will not even approve visas for FDA to rubber stamp--I mean inspect Xuzhou et al. If the products are to be imported, FDA needs to be there, EPA needs to be there, OSHA and the rest need to be there from the rice paddy to the processing plant. Xuzhou/Futian should pay for this service. While we're at it, they should have to pay Algore for carbon credits too since it looks like that will be the latest new tax to afflict American business.
Savings and loans had no regulations?
Sweetiepiezer, the implications of these recalls are enormous, not only for the pet food companies, but for the multi-national, publicly traded food conglomerates. There is, as vicompte has pointed out, billions of dollars in profits at stake in both the importation of cheap ingredients and the processing of US goods in a country which can undercut the competition by virtue of non-existent environmental regulations, cheap labor and the typical wide-spread corruption of a communist regime.
I am not ridiculing the actions of people protesting, but rather the futility of expecting Durbin, or anyone else in Congress or the Executive to actually take a tough stand on the issue. Think lobbyists, campaign contributions and the possible affect on both the stock market and the economy in general. As for CNN, they have made in clear that they consider themselves a multinational corporation with no obligation to support the goals of the US in the war on terror, or anything else, for that matter. Do you actually think any publicity they give to this issue will not be agenda-driven, or uninfluenced by their advertising revenues both here and around the world?
I can relate to the loss of your dog, since my cat of 16 years died two weeks ago of kidney failure. Whether it was related to food contamination, I don't know, since the kibble she ate was not on the recall list. I won't be trying to find out either, since I'd rather spend my energy keeping my small dog alive by not feeding her any processed dog food, cooking her food instead. I also try to the best of my ability not to buy any food product for my family that is not grown or processed in the US. That's what I'm doing, and I believe if more people would bite the bullet, spend more money for domestically-grown food and more time in the kitchen -- and believe me, it is more expensive to buy, and more time-consuming to cook from scratch -- it would have a far greater affect than any publicity campaign. I'm not optimistic, given the nature of response I've seen both here and on petconnection.com, where people are more interested in "what other brand" they can buy, along with venting their anger and frustration, than in researching how to cook for their particular pet, and thus hit the pet food industry where it actually hurts -- in the wallet.
If you read enough of the news reports, and the insane damage control statements of the FDA (such as only "16 pet deaths," and that the government, not the suppliers of the contaminated additives, will pay for the disposal of the hogs), it's painfully obvious that the industry on the whole lacks accountability, and the FDA is not about to rock any boats. To continue to support the pet food industry by buying their products only reaffirms their strangle-hold on consumers, and will change nothing.
BTW, thank you for letting us know how you evil people think.
Not cut at all.
My capital gains are taxed less than your wages. My dividends are taxed less than your wages.
Most people are in the 15% bracket, so your dividends are taxed at the same rate, your long term capital gains at the same rate. Don't forget, people who own stock in their 401Ks also benefit from these lower rates.
My WAGES are probably taxed less than your wages, percentage-wise (because, see, I stop paying Social Security tax after $97,000, so you’re paying a nearly 6% flat tax on ALL your wages, but I’m paying a 6% flat tax on only a portion of mine.
So your tax rate over $97,000 is less than the rate most people pay? Right. Nice try. Sounds like something Hillary or Obama would say.
Well, all of accumulated wealth gets to pass tax free to my daughter, and my grandkids or greatgrandkids will simply be born into the relative ease of life that wealth lets you have.
Kill the greedy kulaks, eh comrade?
The Estate Tax would put a crimp on that inherited wealth and power,
Except for people who pay a lawyer to shelter their money.
and there is NO TAX CUT for which the GOP has fought harder and more tenaciously than to keep that estate tax gone.
Because the government deserves my money more than my kids? That's funny.
The GOP will allow for an income tax increase (which hits you), if that’s the price of making sure that the capital class can pass their millions intact.
Now you're just lying. Are you sure you're on the correct site?
“Most people are in the 15% bracket, so your dividends are taxed at the same rate, your long term capital gains at the same rate. Don’t forget, people who own stock in their 401Ks also benefit from these lower rates.”
Yes, but you are being simplistic, perhaps purposefully so, perhaps by oversight. I said taxes. I did not say income taxes. You moved, by sleight of hand, to income taxes.
So, my dividends are hit with a 15% tax, and most peoples’ wages are hit with a 15% federal income tax. But then they also get hit with a 6.85% federal social security tax and medicare tax. My dividends don’t get hit with that, and stay at 15%, but your wages do get hit with that, raising the tax on the same dollar of WAGE income to 21.85%, which is over 25% higher than the tax on my dividends. Wages are taxed much more heavily than dividends and capital gains, because they get hit with a zero-deduction flat tax. If I have offsets to my dividends, I can deduct them and my dividends will escape taxation completely. There are no offsets or deductions from the flat gross WAGE revenues tax that is Social Security.
We can talk about your other points later. But that “most people” you refer to pay 25% more tax on their wages than I pay on my dividends, even though both are just hit by the INCOME tax, ALONE, at 15%. When I say tax, I mean TAX. I do not play the game of pretending that the income tax is the only tax. The income tax IS the only tax on my dividends, but it is by no mean the only tax on your wages. And that is why I say, quite truthfully, that the capital class pays lower taxes on its dividends than the working class pay on their wages. Not lower income taxes. Lower taxes overall.
China/Las Vegas. Now there’s a red flag.
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