Archive for March, 2007

Here is a copy of a letter I sent to my senators and representative in Washington. Feel free to copy it and send it to yours.

Dear Senator,

I have watched, with horror, as the pet food industry slowly admitted, over the course of several weeks, that the food they have made using imported wheat gluten has been tainted with dangerous chemicals.
While Menu Foods and other manufacturers have said that less than 20 animals have died, veterinarians across the country are listing hundreds. A database kept by petconnection.com lists more than 2,000 dead animals, so far. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the FDA will not announce the name of the company that imported the tainted wheat gluten.
Clearly, this is a national disaster. As with other recent national disasters, the handling of it by the involved companies and the federal officials has been appalling.
There must be a complete Congressional investigation into how this event was handled, followed by a full and fully public report. Companies involved must be held accountable, not only for making the deadly rations, but for waiting so long to report it. Had this been a human food, such as peanut butter, manufacturers would be pulling product as soon as there was any inkling of a tainted ingredient.
In addition to an investigation, there must be stricter regulation of the pet food industry, which up until now, has been largely self-regulating. Here are a few of the new regulations we need to see.
1. New labeling requirements:
• Product labels should be required to list not only the company that is marketing the food, but also the company that manufactured it, including complete addresses and toll-free numbers.
• Product labels should be required to list the country of origin of the ingredients. It is clear now that this information is every bit as important to a consumer trying to make an intelligent decision as the ingredients and nutritional analysis on those labels now.
• Ingredients listed on the product labels must not be obfuscated in any way to mask true amounts. For instance, products that list meat as the first ingredient, but then list three types of wheat (flour, bran, and gluten) should be required to list wheat as the main ingredient.
2. A true national system for getting information to veterinarians and collecting information from veterinarians. This is important not only for our animals, but for ourselves. It is quite possible a problem in animals can signify a developing threat for humans. (Ever hear of bird flu?) Veterinarians are an essential link in our national security and public-health systems.
I hope that measures like those listed above will prevent a disaster like this from happening again and to improve the response if it does.
Sincerely,
margaret