U.S. agents search pet food plants

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.

Associated Press writer Christopher Bodeen in Shanghai, China, contributed to this report.

Yes, but you are being simplistic, perhaps purposefully so, perhaps by oversight. I said taxes.

Unless your income over $97,000 is in the 21.2% bracket, you're paying a higher rate than most Americans.

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.

That's not the rate they get hit with. Were you lying about working on Wall Street?

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.

Well, if you used the right rate and knew how to do math, you'd know their rate would be 51% higher than the 15% rate on dividends.

Wages are taxed much more heavily than dividends and capital gains, because they get hit with a zero-deduction flat tax.

Sure, if you ignore the income that gets taxed at 10% and the exemptions that people get.

If I have offsets to my dividends, I can deduct them and my dividends will escape taxation completely.

Why would you "offset" dividends that are taxed at 15% when your wage income is taxed at a higher rate?

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%.

But you weren't talking about your dividends, you were talking about your wages over $97,000.

When I say tax, I mean TAX. I do not play the game of pretending that the income tax is the only tax.

And when I say wages, I mean wages. I do not play the game of pretending that dividends are 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.

Everybody pays lower taxes on their dividends than on their wages, if you want to be picky about it.

Now that we've figured out that you don't work on Wall Street, what do you really do for a living?

LOL. Well said.

Follow the money. It seems to be all about money and not about public health in this country, but this is coming back to bite these corporations big time. The growth in organic food products in this country has been phenomenal. Now even Walmart is jumping onto the organic bandwagon. The only problem with this is that these so-called organic products may not have the same level of quality traditionally associated with the word “organic”. The ironic thing is, if these corps really embraced the concept of quality, purity and health in their products, their profits would go through the roof. The end result would be a win/win.

The health costs alone due to the "American diet" are astronomical. Obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, etc. Do a search on excitotoxin/s like MSG. MSG is a common "flavor enhancer" that is added to many processed foods and oftentimes is hidden in the label. Salt, MSG and similar additives are cheaper than actually making food taste good naturally with more expensive spices that are beneficial healthwise like rosemary, garlic, turmeric, etc., etc. There are recent articles out there that have talked about the dangers of salt in many of our foods, especially processed and restaurant fare. High salt intake has a direct correlation to high blood pressure and stroke.

Sorry for the long rant, but I passionately believe that food safety/health is the building block for a healthy, happy, productive life and that a healthy lifestyle should be promoted.

“How was your march?”
___________________________________________
Well it was about 100 degrees here for it, only about 20 people showed up.
But we did get good news coverage.
I have seen myself on the news here, about 6 times asking for better pet food and human food regulations. Not long segments but at least getting the word out about the food inspections.
I did say on camera that, if my pet died and so did my son’s dog a week later, then there are only 14 other pets nationwide that have died, told them it was ridiculous.
Something is being hidden and has to be investigated.
I also said on camera that I wasn’t there just for my dog, as nothing can be done for him now, but I was there to speak out for my family and grandchildren and everyones family as this has hit the human food chain, big time.
(Hate when I look fatter on tv, lol.)
I did send off postcards of my dog to Senators in Washington, as did others with the March and hopefully it will make an impact on those no good bums there.

Someone at the March had a on line pet petition to sign, here is the url.
Check it out everyone.

http://www.petpetition.org/

It looks like few people are really getting involved right now, but,

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

There is a big article on the front page of our newspaper this morning called FOOD CRISIS WIDENS, but I cannot find the link.
The paper is the Las Vegas Review Journal, if anyone can find it and post it, that would be good.

“Everybody pays lower taxes on their dividends than on their wages, if you want to be picky about it.
Now that we’ve figured out that you don’t work on Wall Street, what do you really do for a living?”

Yes, everybody who has dividends pays lower taxes on their dividends than their wages, but that’s just the thing: only the investment class has any appreciable dividends, and the differential between the tax they pay on those dividends, and what somebody else pays on wages, is unfair.

It is true that I do not work on Wall Street, technically. Technically, I work on Broad Street. New Yorkers will appreciate the distinction. If your point is that I don’t work “on Wall Street”, you’re quite mistaken.

But rather than getting drawn off on red herrings and ad hominems, why don’t we go straight to the root and directly compare two families?

For the sake of clarity, I will compare the tax burden on a family in New York City earning the median family income in 2006, which was $45,788, entirely in the form of wages, and my own 2006 income and capital gains.

You certainly cannot object to the latter, since it is direct data.

I cannot see any basis for objecting to the former either. By using median family income (as opposed to AVERAGE family income) we are picking the actual economic midpoint for families living in New York City. I live outside of the City, but because I earn my income there, I am required to pay New York income taxes.

So, sight unseen, do you agree that a direct comparison of the tax burden on the median family in NYC and my own personal 2006 income taxes is a valid basis for comparison?
You will discover that my overall true income, measured as the increase in wealth from my baseline at the end of 2005 to the end of 2006, was taxed at a lower percentage than the tax burden borne on the overall increase in wealth by the median family struggling in New York?

I can’t make a more dramatic comparison than that, and it demonstrates everything that is skewed towards the rich and unfair in our tax system.

“Why is it unfair? How high should dividends be taxed? Why? Why not lower the tax on wages?”

Lowering the total tax burden on wages such that wages were taxed, in totum, the same as all other accretions to wealth (such as capital gains, or dividends, or inheritances) would be fair. The problem with it is that if we really did lower the wage tax that much, we would open up an unbridgeable deficit. We’re already running a huge one. Yes, tax cuts have been stimulative of economic growth, but only enough to narrow the deficit, not enough to run a surplus. We are effectively running up the national credit card, and it’s not much of an answer to say that we’re just going into debt less than we were before. What we need to be doing is paying down debt, and you cannot do that with the sort of massive tax cut that cutting the total burden on wages down to the level of taxation on capital gains and dividends would entail.
The proper answer is to broaden the base to capture all accretions to wealth (including unrealized capital gains), and tax everything at a uniform flat rate. An even better answer would be to just tax accumulated wealth, period, and not just new accretions to wealth. Do THAT and you could abolish the income tax, sales taxes, and all other taxes and just run the country on a 1-2% wealth tax (there is about $660 trillion in national wealth in the United States. You’re not going to capture it all in the base, but assuming you capture half of it, 1% would bring in $3.3 trillion a year, which would be greater than the combination of all of the gimmicky and uneven and unfair tax regimes we have now. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar.
They should be taxed the same. But I digress.)

“My point is I’m surprised someone as poor at math would work on Wall Street. What area do you work in?”

It’s a snarky point and I am going to simply ignore it. Back of the envelope stuff scrawled in passing on an Internet site is not econometrics. Anyway, what irritates you is my view of policy, and you are just using a math error somewhere (I have not bothered to go back and review) as a basis to go after me and therefore not have to engage in the ideas. I’m not going to rise to the bait. I’m just going to proceed with the proposed analysis. I won’t be doing it today, during working hours, but I’ll do it tonight, if I am not exhausted or tomorrow.

The basic concept is really very simple: the cost of running government is a necessary cost, and everybody should pay, proportionally, the same for it. It is fundamentally unfair to tax wages higher than other accretions to wealth, because a dollar is a dollar, and an increased dollar of wealth is useful no matter how that increased dollar is acquired (capital gain, dividend, inheritance, lottery, wages). Right now, we tax capital gains least of all: unrealized capital gains are not taxed AT ALL (but they are mobilizable economically; that wealth is not trapped at all, so, those who can make substantial capital investments get tax-free appreciation of capital for as long as they choose to, because realization is under the control of the owner), realized capital gains and dividends are taxed at a low rate, inheritances are not taxed at all, while the estate tax on devised is dwindling and being pressed towards zero, but every penny of wages or simple bank interest - the only two vehicles for gaining wealth available to half of the population (given how close to the margins the bottom half live) - is taxed by a flat social security and medicare tax, and then taxed again by income taxes, federal state and local.

To demonstrate my point I will use the median New York City family income, (and the median New York City family expenditures), and compare them directly to my own. I had $259,000 in completely untaxed gain last year, $100,000 of which gain in fact generated for me an $8000 tax DEDUCTION. I will provide details tonight. The rules for the gain on capital are completely divorced from the rules for wages, and this is the place where the US tax system becomes very unfair, because it rewards those who already have capital, growing untaxed, but it claws away income from those who do not yet have capital and are trying to accumulate some.

Capital accumulation through work is the single most DISFAVORED part of our tax code, while passive capital-on-capital appreciation on already possessed capital is the most favored source of increase to wealth of all.

If we didn’t have to fund government, it would be best to have no taxes at all. But we do, so the question is who bears the burden. By one set of statistics, looking at absolute numbers, the “rich” do. But by a different econometric: looking at the portion of increases to wealth clawed back by government from wages versus the amount clawed back from other sources of wealth increase, one sees that wages are absolutely hammered. In other words, the rich get richer and the working poor get soaked and can’t accumulate wealth nearly as fast on a percentage basis. That’s grossly unfair.

Of course if we actually made the tax code FAIR, both parties would implode, for different reasons, so I’m not holding my breath that pointing out the truth will change anything. At the very least it will force a change in tone from “What we are doing is really GOOD for everybody!” which is not true, to “We got ours and we got the power so too bad”, which is true.

Tonight for the numbers.

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