If your pet is scheduled for surgery in the near future, you might want to consider putting it off

As soon as I'd finished reading Barry Lynn's article at Alternet about how the monopolization of consumer products puts us all at risk, I found out that while the pet food melamine scandal may be behind us (and I think about that every time I pay a buck-twenty-five a can for Merrick's at Pet Goods), adulterated foods and medicines are not:

The reported death of five cats prompted Teva Animal Health to widen its recall to include all vials of ketamine hydrochloride injection last week, yet the company’s technical services department insists that the action was caused merely by “increased medical events that were kind of unfounded.”

That statement, offered by a Teva technical services representative who did not give her name, has confused some veterinarians. On Dec. 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a recall alert, instructing practitioners to stop using all 27 lots of Teva’s ketamine hydrochloride injection, USP CIII 100 mg/ml in 10 ml vials due to “serious adverse events.”

The expiration dates of the lots range from September 2009 to February 2012, the FDA says. Additionally, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) warns practitioners not to rely on the Teva brand name to determine whether their ketamine falls under the recall. Rather, the following signs offer a better indication:

    * If the lot number is six numeric digits, the product is not part of the recall.
    * If the lot number is seven numeric digits, the product should be returned.
    * If the lot number starts with 5401, regardless of the number of digits or the presence of letters in the lot code, the product should be returned.

According to the FDA, reported problems with Teva’s ketamine include lack of effect, prolonged effect and death.

In response, practitioners have contacted the VIN News Service (VNS) looking for insight into the recall, which originated last summer and, at the time, took effect only at the wholesale level.

Troubles within Teva Animal Health surfaced in late July, when the FDA shut down the company via a permanent injunction and filed a lawsuit, alleging that regulatory inspectors had uncovered adulterated animal drugs at Teva’s main facilities in St. Joseph, Mo. The generics manufacturer agreed to cease production of its drugs and its DVM Pharmaceuticals line of products following a much-publicized crackdown by the FDA on the company’s quality control practices.

At the time, Michael Chappell, the FDA’s acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, stated: “The FDA will not tolerate the manufacture and distribution of adulterated animal drugs. Veterinarians and pet owners can be assured that the FDA will investigate and take regulatory actions against companies that produce animal drugs under conditions and controls that are inadequate to assure their safety and quality.”

But Laura Alvey, deputy director of communications with the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), notes in a recent interview with the VNS that, “FDA’s evaluation was that use or exposure to these products was not likely to cause adverse health consequences.” 

To some, that assessment now appears flawed, considering veterinarians have been ordered to stop using Teva ketamine and to return it to their distributors because of the reported feline deaths.

It's time we realized that thanks to decades of Republican and corporatist Democratic governance, federal agencies that we think are supposed to protect the public, don't. There is always a balancing act with these agencies between protection of the public and the profits of industry. This is why the NTSB and the FAA are not about aviation safety, and the FDA is not about food and drug safety. Because when public safety butts heads with profit, profit always wins.

Even if your pet is not scheduled for surgery, print out the article at the above link and take it to your vet next time you go.

(BIG hat tip)

Remembrance of Pets Past and the metaphysical question of souls

Eight years ago we lost both our cats, Wendy and Oliver, within three weeks of each other. Ollie went first, on December 10, 2000. He was fifteen, and we had been treating him for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure for a year before his kidneys gave out, perhaps partially due to the Lasix we'd been giving him to treat the congestive heart failure. He and Wendy had fought like crazy their entire lives. Wendy was a true cat -- haughty, aloof, intelligent, and did not suffer fools, or buffoons like Oliver, gladly. Ollie was always more like a dog. He was vocal, needy of attention, highly social and adaptable. Wendy always thought this was a huge betrayal of the cat ethos, and rarely missed a chance to swat him in the head to remind him that he wasn't supposed to be the way he was.

And yet, when he was gone, Wendy, who was also fifteen, became depressed. We had thought we'd give her a bit of time as an only cat, but that didn't seem to help her. She was like the wife in a dysfunctional marriage who couldn't live with him, but couldn't live without him either. So we set out to find a cat that wouldn't harass or threaten her, and brought Jenny home Christmas Eve day, where she promptly took up residence under a chair in our home office and didn't move from there, except to eat, for the next three months. But for all that Wendy wanted to be in the room with her, it didn't help, and by New Year's Day, she could barely move from her cat bed in front of the forced air vent to go get a drink of water. Her kidneys too were failing rapidly, and we lost her January 2nd, 2001.

The following weekend we went in search of our next cat and brought Maggie home. With Jenny huddled under the chair in a constant state of abject terror, it was imperative that we get a social cat. We wanted one that talked the way Ollie did, and who was playful like him and affectionate like him. And Maggie fit the bill perfectly.

As time went on, it became clear that history had repeated itself. The more Jenny came out of her shell, the less patience she had with Maggie, while Maggie proved so similar to Ollie that at times I felt he visited her in the dead of night to give her pointers. To this day, I can remember Wendy's haughtiness and condescension vividly, while Ollie is a haze, largely because Maggie is the piece that fit into that hole in the puzzle, so when I think of his personality, it's her that I see. But even more astonishingly, she and Jenny have the same relationship. They fight like our last generation of cats did, and while Jenny is a much sweeter cat than Wendy was, she was a stray for at least a year, and is one tough customer, and finds the relentless yowling for an hour and a half before mealtimes that Maggie does to be undignified. So every now and then she has to tackle Maggie, pin her to the ground, and bite at her a few times to remind her of what a cat is supposed to be.

When you're attached to your pets, losing them is devastating. I'm not sure how we ended up with history repeating itself. Perhaps it's simply a function of needing a more "catty" cat to be with Wendy in those last days, and then needing a more social cat to offset that. But whatever the reason, we have now had essentially the same two cats for the last 22 years; only the coloring has changed.

And we did it without cloning.

Today's New York Times profiles the owner of a biotech company who had his mother's dog cloned upon its death, and who in this article jumps through hoops to insist that the clones are just like the original dog:

When Mr. Hawthorne recalls Missy, he tends to wax eugenic. “She was an amazing dog: superior intellect, incredibly beautiful, obedient, a phenomenal temperament,” he said. “I especially loved her majestic plume of a tail.” And in the clones, as he put it matter-of-factly, “all those qualities are represented.”

As for some of the discrepancies, the clones vary in size and color, Mr. Hawthorne said, primarily because they were born months apart, and none are fully grown yet. “The dark part of their fur starts out reddish-black and gets blacker over time,” he said. “Except on the faces, which start out black and go white within the first year.”

[snip]

While he does acknowledge that when it comes to such highly trainable creatures as dogs, it’s pretty difficult to know where nature ends and nurture begins, he said that in the case of his dogs, the ambiguities have nothing on the essential Missy-ness of the clones.

“The girls love to run after each other,” he said pointing at the dogs in the distance. “You see the speed and athleticism? That’s part of what made me want to do this. There are dogs that are faster on a straightaway, but I’d never seen a dog make turns like this until Missy.”

Mr. Hawthorne sees himself as a cultivator of prodigious talent — from the clones to his team of scientists in South Korea to his 8-year-old son, Skye, who had accompanied him and the dogs on the hike. Skye is in third grade but is already studying high school algebra. Mr. Hawthorne brought along a notebook with a handful of quadratic-equation problems, in case his son got restless.

Last spring, Skye completed a science project, “Cloning Grandma’s Dog” that included a behavioral comparison chart. Among other findings, the study concluded that Mira shares Missy’s fondness for broccoli and “lots of snuggles” — both dogs scored five out of five points in these categories, in addition to the one for “likes long walks.” (“Most dogs do,” Skye noted under “comments.”) Two key matters of variance were “Jumps into cars” (“Clone still learning which car is ours”) and “Hates camera flash” (“Clone did not respond to standard flash”).

Ultimately, Skye determined that Mira looked a lot like Missy but that their behavior was only 77 percent similar. “But that was April,” Mr. Hawthorne said. “I think they’re a lot more similar now.”

LIVING with a clone, Mr. Hawthorne claims, is a lot like living with the original dog. “It’s totally as if I’ve got Missy in my house, once you get over the ‘wow’ factor,” he said. He and Mira and Skye inhabit a two-story “1950s futurist house” built into a hill in Mill Valley (Mr. Hawthorne is divorced and shares custody of his son with his ex-wife — “an excellent genetic donor, by the way,” he said of her). At night, he said, Mira “puts Skye to bed,” which means she walks with him to his room and ascends the stairs of his loft bed with him, waiting to be told “Good night” before she leaves. Mira is an outdoor dog, as Missy was, and sleeps on the front steps.

[snip]

nd who says goodnight to Mira’s fellow clone, MissyToo? Mr. Hawthorne gave her to his mother, Joan Hawthorne, who still misses the original Missy. But she has yet to take a liking to Missy’s progeny, and the dog has lived primarily with paid “handlers” in the Mill Valley pied-à-terre of her longtime companion, John Sperling.

“They’re not at all alike,” Ms. Hawthorne said of the old Missy and the new one. “In looks, they are a little bit, of course. But, I mean, the puppy is delicate and aggressive. Missy was robust and completely calm.” She added, “Missy wouldn’t come through my home and knock over every wineglass.”

Besides, she adopted another puppy not long after Missy died. “I already have a dog — a real dog.”

It seems to me that the traits about which Hawthorne waxes rhapsodic are a function of the breed mix of both the original dogs and the clone, and could be obtained just as easily by finding a similar border collie/husky mix at a shelter and raising it in the same way.

One of the more interesting implications of the idea that cloning re-creates the original dog is that it acknowledges the highly unscientific notion that animals have "souls", which can readily be reproduced along with its DNA traits. Those of us who have ever had a pet crawl into our laps at the precisely right moment when we need a hug know that while the idea of animals having souls may fly in the face of religion, it's far from a ridiculous notion. But the larger idea that souls, or personalities, can be reproduced in their entirety has implications for a future of human cloning in which parents who lose a child might be inclined to clone the dead child to "replace" him or her -- a chance to "do it all again". But if such things are possible, then what does it say about the uniqueness of the individual?

When did Super Bowl Sunday become a family holiday?

It's hardly surprising that the Super Bowl should have evolved into an occasion to have a holiday. After all, it's over a month past Christmas, the weather sucks, it's three weeks till pitchers and catchers report to spring training, and why not turn this annual orgy of testosterone excess and advertising dollars into an excuse to throw a party? That it has to be something manly to warrant a holiday (unlike, say, the Oscars®, which few self-respecting men will even admit to watching despite the prospect of Angelina Jolie in a push-up evening gown) is besides the point.

It's been a widely held myth that domestic violence rates go up on Super Bowl Sunday, and perhaps that's why the powers that be in the NFL seem to want the players to pretend to be as cute and cuddly as possible in the Week-O-Hype that precedes the inevitably disappointing Big Game. This year it's especially important as the sport starts to heal from the ugliness of Michael Vick's extracurricular activities; and so we have our Two Handsome Quarterbacks and Cute and Cuddly wide receivers like Plaxico Burress, whom we love not just because of his manhandling of Al Smith two weeks ago but because his very name sounds like an antidepressant.

It may be that an all-East-Coast Superbowl isn't the ideal matchup for advertisers, though the Boston and New York markets are hardly chopped liver. And the matchup of the Scrappy Little Team that Could and the Eighteen-And-Oh Beantown juggernaut is the kind of stuff of which movies starring Dennis Quaid and Mark Wahlberg with trailers featuring for the 4,962nd time that music from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story are made.

But as the whole family settles down tomorrow to chow down on wings and fried cheese and other LDL-raising delights (we're having pita chips with spinach and artichoke dup, corn chips with black bean and corn salsa, vegetable lasagne, multigrain focaccia, and salad at Chez Brilliant), the New York Times gets in the spirit of Super Bowl as Family Holiday by taking a look at how some of the horribly abused dogs that were rescued from Michael Vick's house are doing. It's a rare dose o'Warm Fuzzies (heh) in a world with precious few of them:

They are assigned to an area of the sanctuary called Dogtown Heights, what Best Friends calls a gated community. Vick’s dogs have their own building with heated floors, sound-absorbing barriers and skylights. Each has an individual dog run because, for now, the dogs must remain isolated, for safety’s sake.

Little Red is a tiny rust-colored female whose teeth were filed, most likely because she was bait for the Bad Newz fighters. Handlers cannot explain why loud noises make her jumpy.

Cherry, a black-and-white male, has what seems to be chemical burns on his back. His file at Best Friends says he loves car rides and having his backside rubbed. But like many of Mr. Vick’s pit bulls, he is petrified of new situations and new people.

Oscar cowers in the corner of his run when strangers arrive. Shadow runs in circles. Black Bear pants so heavily that he seems on the verge of hyperventilation.

All but one of the Vick dogs at Best Friends wear green collars, signaling that they are good with people. But Meryl, who arrived with a rap sheet, wears a red collar.

She was aggressive toward the veterinary staff at a previous shelter. When Best Friends evaluated her in November, she lunged at a veterinary technician, snapping at him three times. By court order, she must stay at Best Friends forever.

Mr. Vick paid $18,275 for the lifetime care of each of his dogs here but one. Denzel was deemed highly adoptable, so his fee was only $5,000.

The actual cost for personnel and medical staff to care for the dogs, said Best Friends officials, is much higher at the sanctuary, a no-kill, nonprofit facility for 2,000 animals. For example, Denzel needed a blood transfusion to treat a tick-borne virus. Donations must make up the difference.

Bred to Be Friendly

John Garcia, the assistant dog care manager of Dogtown, which houses about 500 dogs, said pit bulls that are withdrawn or aggressive toward humans break his heart because they are bred to be people-friendly. “With most of these dogs, even Meryl, their actions are based on fear,” said Mr. Garcia, who communicates with the dogs in soothing baby talk. “The biggest job we have with these guys is teaching them that it’s O.K. to trust people. It may take months or years, but we’re very stubborn. We won’t give up on them.”

Because the dogs are still adjusting to their surroundings, it is difficult to predict how many of them will become adoptable. They arrived Jan. 2 from Richmond, Va., on a chartered airplane, stressed after eight months in shelters. In initial evaluations last September, many lay flat and looked frightened. Now, many respond to caregivers by wagging their tails and giving sloppy kisses.

“They have improved by light-years,” Mr. Garcia said, adding that it would take patience and a lot of time for these dogs to be happy and safe in an adoptive home.

Caregivers walk the dogs several times a day and spend time in their kennels, praising and caressing them. It is progress when a dog like Cherry does not need to be carried, because he is afraid to walk on a leash. It is monumental when Shadow approaches them instead of retreating.

“We want to get them to understand that being around people isn’t necessarily a bad thing; that we won’t hurt them,” Mr. Garcia said. “The worst thing we could do is push them too hard, too fast.”

Mr. Garcia, an expert in working with aggressive dogs, said getting some of these pit bulls accustomed to other dogs would be the toughest task. Initially, 10 were evaluated as aggressive toward other dogs.

[snip]

Ellen arrived at Best Friends overweight, looking more like a sausage than a fighter. She was a breeding dog but had spent time in the ring. One side of her face droops from nerve damage, but she is still affectionate and loves to offer her belly for rubs.

Lucas was Vick’s champion, a 65-pound muscular brown dog with a face mottled with dark scars. He is so friendly and confident that his trainers suspect he was pampered.

“I bet you ate steak every day, didn’t you, Lucas?” the caregiver McKenzie Garcia, who is married to John, said. “I bet they took care of you because you made them money.”

Every Vick dog here has a Personalized Emotional Rehabilitation Plan. Caregivers rate each dog in several categories. How fearful was Little Red today? How confident was Black Bear? How much did Meryl enjoy life?

Recording the dogs’ progress will help Dr. McMillan, the veterinarian, track their well-being. “DogTown,” on the National Geographic Channel, also plans to follow the progress of several of Mr. Vick’s dogs, including Georgia.

“The successful rehab rate for these kinds of dogs is unknown because nobody has ever studied it until now,” Dr. McMillan said. “You might see an incredibly friendly dog, but does that dog’s personality change over several weeks, over several months, after psychological trauma? Are they hard-wired to be aggressive, or can they change? What’s the best way to work with them?”

The plan is to determine how to keep these dogs happy, even if a real home is not in their future.

And one dog already has his forever home:

His back resting comfortably against her chest, Hector nestles his massive canine head into Leslie Nuccio's shoulder, high-fiving pit bull paws against human hands.
The big dog—52 pounds—is social, people-focused, happy now, it seems, wearing a rhinestone collar in his new home in sunny California.

But as Hector sits up, deep scars stand out on his chest, and his eyes are imploring.

"I wish he could let us know what happened to him," says Nuccio, the big tan dog's foster mother.

Hector ought to be dead, she knows—killed in one of his staged fights, or executed for not being "game" enough, not winning, or euthanized by those who see pit bulls seized in busts as "kennel trash," unsuited to any kind of normal life.

Instead, Hector is learning how to be a pet.

After the hell of a fighting ring, he has reached a heaven of sorts: saved by a series of unlikely breaks, transported thousands of miles, along with other dogs rescued with him, by devoted strangers, and now nurtured by Nuccio, her roommate, Danielle White, and their three other dogs.

The animals barrel around the house, with 4-year-old Hector leading the puppy-like antics—stealth underwear grabs from the laundry basket, sprints across the living room, food heists from the coffee table—until it's "love time" and he decelerates and engulfs the women in a hug.

[snip]

Hector's settling into his new life, getting further and further from his past.

Weekly AKC "canine good citizen" classes are correcting his social ineptitude. And he's taking cues on good manners from patient Pandora, a female pit bull mix who's queen of the household's dogs. Once Hector graduates, he'll take classes to become a certified therapy dog, helping at nursing homes and the like.

For now, he's learning the simple pleasures of a blanket at bedtime, a peanut butter-filled chew toy, even classical music.

"I put on Yo-Yo Ma one day and he cocked his head, laid down and listened to the cello next to the speaker," Nuccio said. "He's turning out to be a man of high class and culture."

(Note to my mom: Don't even THINK about it.)

Pet Nazis, or "No Dog for You"

I haven't really followed the whole Ellen DeGeneres/dog story. I try to make a habit of avoiding tabloid stories whenever possible because it only encourages them. I have a loose policy of "No tabloid figures" on this blog, because the attention given to whether Britney gets custody, or whether Amy Winehouse is on drugs again, unless they can be tied to some larger current issue, are better left to the TMZs and the Perez Hiltons of the world, and besides, they are much better at it than I am.

But since I've been on both sides of the pet adoption issue, and after reading Heather Havrilesky's self-justifying critique of animal rescue groups, I thought I'd weigh in on what the real issue is: the responsibility of pet adopters and the responsibility of the rescue groups.

In the 1980's, I volunteered every Saturday at the Bergen County Animal Shelter through its associated volunteer arm. Every weekend we'd see families with crying kids as the parents led in terrified dogs, giving them up because "he dirties up in the house" or "he barks" or "the landlord won't let us keep him" or "we're going to have a baby" or "we don't have time for him." I always wondered what these crying children thought about their busy parents taking their beloved dog to the pound because they take too much time, and whether they wondered when they too would be shuffled off.

Sometimes the animal control guys would bring in a dog that had been found wandering on Route 17 -- dropped off on a highway by people who thought it was more humane to abandon a dog by the side of the road than to take it to a shelter where it might be euthanized -- or because they could delude themselves that some nice person would pick the dog up and give him a good home.

We'd also see people returning pets they'd adopted: "He's too scared." "My husband doesn't like him." "The kids are allergic." When we went through the few minutes of training required at the time, we were told that a family looking for a dog where the parent said to the kids, "Now remember, he's YOUR responsibility" was a giant red flag.

Because animal shelter volunteers are exposed to the irresponsibility, cruelty, and just plain stupidity of people every day, they do, after a while, start to assume that everyone is an idiot and no home is good enough. When you're a volunteer and you reach that point, it's time to take a break. I have a friend who after her second miscarriage years ago decided she wanted to adopt a dog. She went to the shelter and filled out the application. She had a full-time job, but her husband worked locally and came home for lunch every day. But because there wasn't someone at home all day, her adoption was denied. Although I no longer worked at the shelter, I knew the volunteer who denied her adoption, and yes, she was LONG past the point at which it's time to step away. The postscript to the story is that my friend ended up going to a pet shop and buying a puppy. I never knew if the three-year-old dog she'd been trying to adopt ever found a home. I didn't want to know.

I've been lucky with pet adoptions. It helps that we adopt cats, where housebreaking is not an issue. It also helps that I have shelter experience as well as a track record of pet ownership. I know that when you adopt a pet, or even if you buy one from a reputable breeder, the agreement always states that if for some reason you cannot keep the animal, you must return it. I think this is a reasonable policy. It protects both those who care about shelter pets and those who adopt. It gives the adopter an escape clause in case for some very good reason the adoption just doesn't work out. Shelter volunteers may be overzealous at times, but all they want is to see the animals in their care go to good homes. And when an adopter gives the pet to someone else, the shelter can't live up to its screening responsibility.

In this particular case, the smart thing would have been for the shelter to vet the family to whom the dog was given before simply yanking the dog away from them. But because everyone handled it badly is no reason to either drive people to pet stores where money talks and no questions are asked rather than go through the Spanish Inquisition in order to adopt a pet, or to call a well-meaning shelter with death threats. I also think it's incumbent on shelters to recognize when their volunteers are starting to go off the deep end and behaving in a manner that is not conducive to what the shelter's mission should be, which is placing animals on good homes -- and ask them to remove themselves for a while until they regain some perspective.

Golden Retrievers in NC Need Your Help

Between Michael Vick and stories like this, one wonders just what kind of people populate this country:

In early July, authorities seized control of a puppy mill in Hoke County, North Carolina when the owners abandoned the property. The animals were malnourished, suffering from lack of medical care, and kept in deplorable conditions. Within two days of being contacted about six Golden Retrievers at the site, the volunteers of Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue were there to rescue them.

The animals were initially scared of their rescuers, but who could blame them. In their experience, nothing good had come from humans. They didn't know that their lives were about to change for the better.

We rescued five Golden girls and one Golden boy. The first stop on their journey was the vet, where they received complete medical exams. Their weights ranged from 38 to 48 pounds (a typical full-grown Golden should weigh at least 60 pounds). Most of them were running fevers and had ear infections, hookworms, hot spots, skin infections and heartworms. One is suspected to have a heart murmur and another may have hip problems. Two have multiple scars and bite marks and one has a split in her tongue, probably from a bite. One girl has an abscess the size of a tennis ball. All of them were filthy and suffered from ticks, fleas, and matts.

Go here for more information or to donate to help offset the costs of rescuing these dogs.

More melamine in the pet food supply

More tainted rice protein from a second Chinese source has gotten into the American pet food supply -- and the FDA isn't telling American consumers which pet food manufacturers might be affected:

A second company likely imported rice protein from China that was contaminated with a chemical linked to a major pet food recall, two U.S. senators said on Monday.

Rice protein tainted with the chemical melamine was used in pet foods from at least five manufacturers who obtained the protein from one supplier, U.S. officials have said. It also made its way into feed used at a California hog farm.

Now, another company is suspected of importing rice protein from China, Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Maria Cantwell of Washington said in a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“We have learned that in addition to Wilbur-Ellis, a second United States company imported a shipment of rice protein from China that is also likely to be contaminated with melamine,” the senators wrote. “We request the FDA identify this second importer as well as those manufacturers to which it may have sold the contaminated product.”

An aide to Durbin said the senators found out about the second importer from industry sources.

The agency has said the rice protein was supplied by China-based Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd. but the company has denied involvement.

Last week, privately held Wilbur-Ellis said contaminated rice protein was distributed to several pet food makers. Three of them — Natural Balance Pet Foods, the Blue Buffalo Co. and Diamond Pet Foods — have pulled some of their products.

Wilbur-Ellis and the FDA declined to name the other two makers. Durbin and Cantwell called on the agency to make those two companies publicly known.

Meanwhile, kids in California have been sickened by E coli-tainted beef.

The FDA is still protecting corporations over consumers. This is what deregulation means. This is what "less government" does. This is what happens when you allow the "invisible hand" to control the market -- except that there is no invisible hand at work here. When consumers are not informed of the dangers in the food supply because the FDA is protecting the food manufacturers instead of consumers, Americans lack the information they need to punish manufacturers who use adulterated ingredients by withholding their business.

Conservatives will respond by saying that since the FDA doesn't work, it should be disbanded. And I'm sure this is the whole point of this exercise -- to demonstrate the FDA's incompetence so that it can be eliminated as a federal agency. Wouldn't it make more sense to provide oversight and ensure that it does its job properly?

This is what happens when the food industry runs amok

Now the pet food recalls have extended to rice protein, which has also been contaminated with melamine:

April 19, 2007

Dear Royal Canin USA Customer,

It is with sincere regret that I inform you of a new and unfortunate development with some of our pet food products.

Although we have no confirmed cases of illness in pets, we have decided to voluntarily remove the following dry pet food products that contain rice protein concentrate due to the presence of a melamine derivative.

ROYAL CANIN SENSIBLE CHOICE® (available in pet specialty stores nationwide)

Dry Dog Food
- Chicken Meal & Rice Formula Senior
- Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Puppy
- Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Adult
- Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Senior
- Rice & Catfish Meal Formula Adult

ROYAL CANIN VETERINARY DIET™ (available only in veterinary clinics)

Dry Dog Food
- Canine Early Cardiac EC 22™
- Canine Skin Support SS21™

Dry Cat Food
- Feline Hypoallergenic HP23™

We are taking this proactive stance to voluntarily recall these products to avoid any confusion for our customers about which Royal Canin USA products are safe and which products may be affected.

Pet owners should immediately stop feeding their pets the Royal Canin USA dry pet food products listed above. Pet owners should consult with a veterinarian if they are concerned about the health of their pet. No other Royal Canin diets are affected by this recall and CONTINUE TO BE safe for pets to eat.

In addition, Royal Canin USA will no longer use any Chinese suppliers for any of our vegetable proteins.

This decision to recall some of our dry pet food products is driven by our philosophy that the “Pet Comes First”. The safety and nutritional quality of our pet food is Royal Canin USA’s top priority. Pet owners who have questions about this recall and other Royal Canin USA products should call 1-800-592-6687.

On behalf of the entire Royal Canin family, our hearts go out to the pet owners and everyone in the pet community who have been affected by all of the recent recalls. We are as passionate about the health and happiness of our customers’ pets as we are of our own, so we are committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure this never happens again.

Sincerely,

Olivier Amice
President and CEO
Royal Canin USA

The Royal Canin recall follows on the heels of the recent Natural Balance recall as a result of possibly contaminated rice protein concentrate.

The AVMA weighs in:

Natural Balance Pet Foods has announced a recall of all its Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food and Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Food in response to consumer complaints that animals were vomiting and experiencing kidney problems. The California-based pet food company has stated that testing has shown that these recalled foods contain melamine, the same chemical suspected in previous pet food recalls, but from a new source—rice protein concentrate imported from China by San Francisco-based Wilbur-Ellis. Previous recalls were associated with melamine-contaminated wheat gluten also imported from China but by ChemNutra Inc., which is based in Las Vegas.

Dr. Roger Mahr, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), said pet owners should continue to use the AVMA Web site as a source of information during these ongoing pet food recalls.

"It's clear from this new information that all pet owners should remain vigilant regarding the ongoing pet food recalls and continue to check the AVMA recall list," Dr. Mahr said. "Information is power, and keeping current will help pet owners protect their pets from contaminated food."

There has been no U.S. recall by the third entry in the Holy Trinity of Pet Food Fillers, corn gluten, this product has sickened pets in South Africa. While I'm sure people like Debbie Schlussel will try to look for an Islamic terrorism connection, it's starting to look like the presence of melamine in these grain-based protein products is deliberate -- a way of bumping up the protein content of glutens and other derivatives on the cheap. This particular adulteration is being done in a country with little oversight over its food industry. The San Jose Mercury-News reports on the kind of crap that China is sending over here for human consumption:

Consider this list of Chinese products detained by the FDA just in the past month: frozen catfish tainted with illegal veterinary drugs, fresh ginger polluted with pesticides, melon seeds contaminated with a cancer-causing toxin and filthy dried dates.

It hardly takes a leap of faith to figure that pet food manufacturers are buying cheap grain proteins from China which are cheap largely because they are adulterated with toxic chemicals.

These are trying times for pet owners. It's easy for those who are not pet owners to shrug this off, saying "It's just animals." But forgetting for a moment about the relative worth of companion animals, are we sure that the glutens we find in the products we eat; products like breads, sauces, gravies, etc. aren't similarly tainted? Do you like sausage or bacon with your breakfast? Federal officials are investigating whether pork products are contaminated with melamine. How did this happen? Feeding pork hogs on the cheap:

The Trib learned yesterday that melamine-contaminated feed was fed to hogs.The FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture are investigating.

Some animals that are believed to have eaten the contaminated food were slaughtered and sold as food before authorities learned their feed had been contaminated, said Nancy Lungren, spokeswoman for the California agriculture department.

The state quarantined the farm Wednesday, she said.

Yesterday, the urine of some pigs at the 1,500-animal American Hog Farm in Ceres, Calif., tested positive for melamine, although all appeared healthy, Lungren said. About half a dozen pigs were put down and researchers at the University of California-Davis are testing their kidneys, tissues, blood and other body parts for melamine contamination, she said.

The contaminated feed was bought April 3 and 13 as salvage pet food from Diamond Pet Foods Inc., which received contaminated rice protein concentrate used in some recalled Natural Balance pet food, Lungren said.

"Salvage pet food"? What the hell is "salvage pet food"? What are they putting into the animals that then become the shrink-wrapped packages in our supermarkets?

Americans have sold their liberty to George W. Bush so that they can "feel safer." The college administrators at Virginia Tech are being criticized for not locking down the campus when the first shots were fired on Monday. Talking heads everywhere are wondering what will make campuses safe. Parents are outfitting their kids in body armor before putting them on a bicycle. Kids have to be in car booster seats practically until they're sporting nose rings and goth T-shirts. But Americans seem curiously oblivious to the kind of swill being dished out to them in America's supermarkets in the name of bigger profits for the food industry.

American pets are just the canaries in the coal mine on this, folks. If we don't demand an end to the FDA protecting the food industry's profits instead of the American people, if we don't demand to know where the components of our food are coming from, soon it'll be American children hooked up to tubes and wires in hospitals, victim to organ failures for what seems to be no reason at all.

UPDATE: More at Shakesville, including -- yup -- a Bush family connection at ChemNutra.

More pet food recalls

Thanks to Cernig for this link to the latest pet foods recalled by Menu Foods.

I'm feeding my cats Innova Dry, which they seem to like just fine. My recommendation would be to not assume that ANY pet food containing wheat gluten is "fine unless recalled." It's worth reading the labels for the peace of mind. I'm paying $8.95 for a 6.6-pound bag of Innova. They eat less of it at each meal, they like it, and I can sleep at night.

Nothing to see here, move along, it's just a coinkydink

With now tens of thousands of pets across the country sickened and dead because of tainted wheat gluten in pet food, it seems that the CEO of the company that manufactures these pet foods, Mark Wien, just by sheer coincidence =ahem= happened to sell nearly half his shares in the company's stock just three weeks before the recall:

The reports show that Mark Wiens sold 14,000 units for C$102,900 (U.S. $89,700) on February 26 and February 27. As of Monday’s close of C$4.46, the units would be worth C$62,440.

After the sale, Wiens owned 17,193 units and had options to buy 101,812, the trading reports show.

Wiens was not available for comment, but company spokesman Sam Bornstein said on Tuesday “there was no link whatsoever” over the timing of the trades and the pet food recall.

“This is a guy who conducts himself to the highest ethical and moral standards and he wouldn’t do anything to imperil the high governance standards that he demands of himself and the company,” said Bornstein. “In fact, to do so would compromise his ability to make a living.”

Wiens told the Globe and Mail newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday it was a “horrible coincidence” that he sold nearly half his units before the pet food recall.

He added he did not hear of any possible problem with the company’s products until early March. Wiens also told the newspaper that the Ontario Securities Commission, Canada’s senior equities watchdog, had not approached him over the timing of the trades.

Oh, well, that makes it all OK then, right? Did Wiens suspect something was wrong? Did he have concerns over the Chinese wheat gluten? Had the company purchseed gluten from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company before? Menu Foods first received word from the testing company on March 2 that three animals were becoming ill. That's four days after the stock sale.

Something stinks royally about this.

Blog Comment of the Day

From robert green at Sadly, No:

first, the chinese wheat gluten contaminated with melamine came for my dog, and i said nothing.

then it came for my cat, and again i said nothing.

then it came for my hamster, but still i said nothing.

then it came for a member of my church group, and i was left to wonder if voting against my own economic interests in the name of being afraid of gay people and terrorists was a good idea.

Is there ANYTHING AT ALL the Republicans haven't rendered completely FUBAR?

I just got back from a pilgrimage to Trader Joe's and Westwood Feed Co. in search of wheat-free and wheat gluten-free dry kibble for Queen Jenny and Maggie the Great White Squirrel Huntress. I have an unopened bag of Purine One Hairball and Healthy Weight formula, but I'll be damned if I'll give it to them after following the ever-spreading tainted pet food scandal on PatConnection.com. Between E Coli-tainted spinach, tainted peanut butter, mad cow disease, and now this, we are seeing in action the results of the Republican "make government small enough to drown in a bathtub" doctrine. This is what happens when you decide that regulation is bad and we should let market forces determine outcomes and when the FDA acts to protect corporations instead of people. Tell the over 2,600 people who have reported their pets dead from kidney failure from eating food containing wheat gluten imported from China that contains PLASTIC, for God's sake, about market forces and how we can't allow companies to be hurt by bad press.

Republican corporatism isn't new, it's just that after six years of an all-Republican government, we're seeing what laissez-faire corporatism looks like. But food safety, health care, and the middle-class job market aren't all that's been destroyed by this bunch; it looks like they fucked up even where they're supposed to be strongest -- national defense:

Two Afghanistan experts painted a sobering picture of the conditions there yesterday, arguing support among Afghans for NATO forces is plummeting, the U.S.-driven policy of poppy eradication is wrongheaded, and the war might not be winnable in its present form.

U.S. scholar Barnett Rubin and Gordon Smith, Canada's former ambassador to NATO, delivered their withering comments to a Commons committee only days after Canada's top military commander, Gen. Rick Hillier, touted progress being made there.

Hillier, the chief of defence staff, this week predicted Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan will soon see a rise in attacks from the Taliban. But he insisted on using the term "surge" rather than "offensive."

He also noted many Afghans are moving back into their homes in districts west of Kandahar following a Canadian-led NATO offensive last fall.

But Rubin, who has been to Afghanistan 29 times over more than two decades, said yesterday many Afghans are growing frustrated with the pace of Western efforts to stabilize the country.

"They're not at all happy. Support for both the international presence and the government has plummeted in the past year or so," he told the foreign affairs committee.

He said Afghans aren't seeing the results of promises by the United States and NATO, which took over the mission in 2003, to increase security, establish democracy and improve the economy. "The main complaint that I hear from Afghans is ... that we haven't delivered what they think we promised."

Perhaps it's because George W. Bush got bored with Afghanistan and needed the shiny new bauble of Iraq to hang on his codpiece. And now Afghanistan is about to be turned back over to the Taliban (where presumably we will once again give them a shitload of money for so-called poppy eradication).

So five and one-half years after the 9/11/01 attacks, we are about to lose Afghanistan, and we are bogged down in Iraq in perpetuity. This is a country that defeated Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese Emperoro in less time....and we can't handle Afghanistan and Iraq?

So once again, I ask: can anyone name ANYTHING this bunch hasn't completely fucked up?

Your pet -- and you -- may still be at risk

The tainted wheat gluten from China that has sickened and killed pets across the country may not be limited to wet pet foods. It may be in kibble as well -- or even in the human food supply -- and the FDA ain't talking:

In an FDA press conference this morning, a reporter asked the FDA’s Dr. Stephen Sundlof if people could be feeding unsafe food to their pets right now, because the FDA won’t reveal the name of a company - that makes dry “kibbled” food as well as “wet” pet food - that received wheat gluten from the same source Menu did.

The response? “It is possible, but I think we’ve been following every lead that we can. My sense is that we have gotten most of it under control.”

As soon as we have any information, he assured reporters at a press conference this morning, we’ll notify the public. Except for the name of the company, it seems.

How about the numbers? asked another attendee. You’re still saying only 15 confirmed deaths, but some reports are in the thousands. How do you explain the discrepancy?

Dr. Sundlof said FDA can’t confirm any cases beyond those first few in Menu’s test labs, even though they have received over 8800 additional reports, because “We have not had the luxury of confirming these reports.” They’ll work on that, he said, after they “make sure all the product is off the shelves.”

He pointed out that in human medicine, the job of defining what constitutes a confirmed case would fall to the Centers for Disease Control, not the FDA… and there is no CDC for animals.

Updated: Karen Roebuck of the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, who broke the story earlier this morning that melamine, not aminopterin, had been found in the tested foods, asked if any of the wheat gluten had found its way into the human food supply.

The response: “At this point we are not aware that any of that went into human food.” They do know the company that supplied the contaminated wheat gluten, and are tracking its shipments, but they aren’t disclosing the name of the company.

Not sure why but this made me feel awful

Yeah, I know, there are PEOPLE being killed every day, and in the larger sphere of things, this is pretty damned insignificant. But for some strange reason, I felt kicked in the gut when I read this:

Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized Monday after complications from his gruesome breakdown at last year's Preakness, ending an eight-month ordeal that prompted an outpouring of support across the country.

"We just reached a point where it was going to be difficult for him to go on without pain," co-owner Roy Jackson said. "It was the right decision, it was the right thing to do. We said all along if there was a situation where it would become more difficult for him then it would be time."

A series of ailments, including laminitis in the left rear hoof and a recent abscess in the right rear hoof, proved too much for the gallant colt.

Barbaro battled in his ICU stall for eight months. The 4-year-old colt underwent several procedures and was fitted with fiberglass casts. He spent time in a sling to ease pressure on his legs, had pins inserted and was fitted at the end with an external brace. These were all extraordinary measures for a horse with such injuries.

He suffered a significant setback over the weekend, and surgery was required to insert two steel pins in a bone — one of three shattered in the Preakness but now healthy — to eliminate all weight bearing on the ailing right rear foot.

The procedure Saturday was a risky one, because it transferred more weight to the leg while the foot rests on the ground bearing no weight.

The leg was on the mend until the abscess began causing discomfort last week. Until then, the major concern was Barbaro's left rear leg, which developed laminitis in July, and 80 percent of the hoof was removed.

Richardson said Monday morning that Barbaro did not have a good night.

I don't even LIKE horses.

I guess it's because those of us who have had pets have at one time or another had to endure that terrible dilemma of judging when the animal we love has been through enough. And when someone else goes through that, it brings back all the pain we've had in our lives making similar decisions. The loss of a beloved pet or animal companion of any kind, whether through death or another reason, is sharper than those who are not animal people can understand. The pain of this couple making the correct, if painful choice to return a cat they had adopted to its desperate original owner is palpable.

I'm still not sure why Barbaro became the mascot of a nation. Perhaps we wanted to believe in a happy ending because it meant we didn't have to confront the sick waste and Darwinian brutality of horse racing. Perhaps it was because he seemed to WANT to fight back and be the one horse that makes it. Whatever the reason, an entire nation affixed its own emotional baggage to this one horse, and when he was unable to come through for us, it feels like a personal loss.