Food Safety
Lambert at Corrente writes about a news report that Corporate pet food is killing your cats.
A researcher found a 30% increase in kidney failure in cats during the three month period that the contaminated food was sold. The research was based on information from one of the largest US veterinary hospital chains which had an extra 248 cases of renal failure in cats during the period.
Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars saw a Los Angeles Times about hearings Senator Dick Durbin is holding to question FDA about food safety.
The contaminated component in the pet food was “food grade,” and could have been used in products for people. We have been told that it wasn’t, but how do we know? The FDA didn’t test the wheat gluten when it came into the country. Apparently the testing started after the fact. People are much larger than pets, and would require more of the product, and possibly more time for renal failure. Since the Shrubbery has gutted most consumer protections, will we even know if there is a sudden spike in kidney failure?
5 comments
I hope you don’t mind an off-topic comment, but I think this is important: There is a great post on The Carpetbagger Report from a few days ago about the mainstream media’s (specifically Time magazine’s) ignoring the prosecutor purge scandal.
What explains the failure of the mainstream media to cover the purge scandal for so long, and so many other scandals? Do you think somebody just set up newspaper editors to cheat on their wives, and threatened to tell if the editors wouldn’t play ball when they come back some day and ask for something?
It wouldn’t be that hard to do, when you think about it. People wouldn’t talk about it.
The answer to your last question is yes, at least if the kidney failure is severe enough to cause significant illness or death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a compilation of statistics about sickness and causes of death throughout the United States each week. Along with the raw data, they also do alerts when something pokes its head above the normal distribution. AIDS first surfaced in its pages, for example.
It’s not a problem for me Swan, but the answer is simple – the corporate media isn’t interested in topics that might create problems for their party, the GOP. They have convinced themselves, in spite of the evidence, that the Republans are “good for business” and they don’t want to rock the boat.
That’s they way things have worked in the past, Michael, but then FEMA was very effective in 1995, and we once inspected food. There were a lot of things that once worked, but no longer seem to function, like the Justice Department and the National Institutes of Health.
Most of what goes into MMWR is required to be reported by law. To the best of my knowledge, that hasn’t changed, and the Shrubbery hasn’t tried to change it. They probably don’t even know that it exists.
There is that hope, Michael, if they don’t know it exists they may not have destroyed it.