Officials: Pet Food Poison May Have Been Intentional

Source: ABC News

For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

Food and Drug Administration investigators say the Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products.

Officials now suspect this possibility because a second ingredient from China, rice protein concentrate, has tested positive for melamine. So has corn gluten shipped to South Africa. That means there is a possibility for another round of recalls.

The FDA's top veterinarian, Stephen Sundlof, says finding melamine in so many products "would certainly lend credibility to the theory that it was maybe intentional."



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3058844

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In any case I think any gluten product from China should be banned!

:shrug:

I'm sure they were very careful not to put it in any grain consumed by humans. :eyes:

our outsourced jobs back! Of course if that happened China might call our debts due.

...on both counts.

What this is all about is Wall Street. Herbert Hoover said the problem with capitalism is capitalists and their greed. He was right, of course.

If you really want to get angry, you should see the new Buick Park Avenue that General Motors is planning to sell in China. Buick is a hot ticket over there and if US dealers had the car that's shown on Auto Extremist this week (http://www.autoextremist.com/page6.shtml#table) we wouldn't need Hondas or Toyotas or anything like them. It's rear drive, laid out like a Mercedes and AFFORDABLE. I'd dump both my Beemers if Chevy had stuff like that on their lots.

I'm beginning to increasingly smell a rat when it comes to the Detroit auto companies. The guys working on the line can only build what the suits design for them, and when I see shit like this going to Asian markets it tells me the big boys have been screwing around with us all along.

I mean, this car is gorgeous! It's the car you knew GM could build but for some reason wouldn't. Go look at it!

something with your suspicions of Detroit auto companies....."something" os going on because it just doesn't make sense that Americans aren't the ones to build the best....or is that an old dream?

...build the best and we always could, but people don't always want to pay the price.

As I've said, I've got two BMWs in the garage and I hate what it costs to maintain them. A hundred and fifty bucks per wheel for a brake job and two hundred bucks for a windshield gets old pretty quickly.

I try to buy American whenever possible and most of my dress clothing and shoes are American, but that's about all.

One report is saying 39,000 pets died in this debacle. Sue them for billions and billions. Take it off our debt.



Cher

They have caused us more actual harm than Saddam Hussein ever did.

No, I forgot, we only invade make-believe enemies. The real ones we sell weapons to.

:sarcasm: in case it's not obvious

is to produce all our food products, human and animal.

use to find out if theyeven usethese wheat and rice concentrates. I doens't surprise me thata company would haveadded something toboost the price of their product,and I'm not quite ready to accept the fact that they knew it would cause deaths. I called Diamond Pet foods today. They are the company that makes Kirkland dry pet food for Costco. I have been feeding their chicken, rice and vegies to my flufferbutts for about 1 1/2 years and I was very concerned when I heardthis morning that RICE has now entered the picture. It seemsrice protein concentrate is different from the rice formulated dog foods and Kirkland doesn't use it.

They also told me that they process Natural Life pet foods but the ingredients are sent tothemandthey do not testthem because Natural Life advised themthat they do all their own testing before shipping the ingredients to them for processing.

and it was 2 in the afternoon. Obviously they don't want to talk to anyone.

that pops up if all their lines are busy. Probably usually isn't an issue but with the recalls there's way more phone traffic.

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

- 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)

- Canine Early Cardiac EC 22™
- Canine Skin Support SS21™
- Feline Hypoallergenic HP23™\

ALL PRODUCTS WITH AN EXPIRATION DATE OF APRIL 19TH, 2008 ARE MADE WITHOUT CHINESE SOURCED VEGETABLE PROTEINS AND ARE SAFE.

http://www.royalcanin.us/

I threw out all of the Royal Canin dry cat food I had anyway! :grr:

:kick:

The implications for human foods are truly frightening.

They're poisoning their own people over there. There is no doubt they're exporting all kinds of crap.

regardless of whether it's me or my pets. The FDA should have banned all food imports from China immediately upon discovering the toxic wheat gluten, at the very least, until they got to the bottom of this. Instead they crossed their fingers and hoped that was the end of it. x(

Someone in the fish industry said he wasn't surprised about the pet food because Chinese fish tends to be contaminated.

New York stops Chinese food imports at an average rate of one per day, far better than the FDA is doing.

China supplies fish, shrimp, poultry, and I don't know what else. This food is not labeled in the supermarket.

A California hog farm fed their hogs Chinese food contaminated with melamine, and those hogs were sold to private people and unnamed (by FDA) companies. It is suspected that people already ate the pork that had consumed the melamine.

We need food labeling and food inspection. I don't know what I'll be eating in the meantime, but I intend to avoid food of undisclosed origin. This won't be easy.

Think of all the products that have not been inspected in any way.

People may have kidney damage from eating contaminated food, and no one is connecting the dots. People could have died, and no one thought to look for a contaminated food source.

When do we start bombing these terrorists.

Hey, smirk. Are you a man or a wimp?

n/T

Everyone, whether they have pets....or not. It's only a matter of time before something of this nature reaches the human food supply....if it hasn't already.

The US should be all over China's ass.

The U.S. only sells $1 of goods to China for every $5 they sell in the US. But they still won't let our FDA investigators into China to investigate the poisoning. I say we ban agricultural imports from China until they cooperate fully.

If they're intentionally adding poison to cheat content tests without regards to what happens to the consumer, God only knows what else they're adding to the other exports.

No one should have to eat that shit.

Just saw that on another thread, as well.

Not good.

A society of flat screen zombies, watching reality shows, and imbiciles betting that one briefcase holds more cash than another, and CNN is infotainment with a gay serious, (or is it seriously gay) intent looking news reader giving us crap for news.

But intentional to kill the animals?

I think this headline is misleading.

Why are we importing ANY foodstuffs from China? This pet food supplier is located in Canada, but they're supplying to our PetsMart stores, etc.
Can't we grow enough wheat in this country to make PET FOOD?

It's all about saving $$$$$.

Corporate integrity does not exist in the world of big business. Use of slave labor, outsourcing, deceitful marketing, and lowered product quality without regard for consumer safety are standard practices. They know that if they can sell their product cheaper, people will buy it even if the quality stinks. Just look at WalMart.

Anti-trust laws might as well not exist; and nobody who is capable of doing something about the problem is going to do anything about it; because we have the best effing government corporate bucks can buy.

Our only hope may be to give our business to small companies as much as possible. Spend more, and try to offset the cost by consuming less. And support labor unions whenever we can.

...Our only hope may be to give our business to small companies as much as possible. Spend more, and try to offset the cost by consuming less. And support labor unions whenever we can...

We must do our best. We are at the mercy of profiteers.

Their legal system is entirely different from ours. God knows their political structure is different, but our idiot corporatists and their Washington lackeys have tried to make believe that opening China to capitalism would magicaly make China a democracy.

Their culture, customs, and mores are very different from our Western systems -- and I think the average American is so ignorant of foreign cultures that they can't imagine a scenario where pet food would be systematically poisoned like that.

Yes, the US food supply has a LOT wrong with it, from pesticides that linger in the soil to HFCS inserted in everything. But adding a known poison (melamine) to make it appear the protein content is higher? And then letting it get into the human food chain?

China has a recent history of individuals deciding to poison their competitors' products -- as documented here at DU earlier on in this scandal -- something we do not see here either.

Also, the Chinese attitude toward pets is different. Cat and dog fur have shown up on Chinese imports (fur trim on clothing, stuffed toys) in the recent past, something we find abhorrent but which doesn't bother them at all. Last year the Chinese decided to crack down on rabid dogs, which led to the citizenry hunting down strays and beating them to death in public.

It is a very different culture than ours.

Our trade relations with China have been out of whack from the get-go, if the US did not insist on the ability to inspect and regulate food processors in accordance with our own standards of safety.

And now we are here -- massively in debt to China in every way possible, seemingly without the ability to protect our own people.

Mao Tse Tung once mocked America as a "paper tiger". It only took 40 years for it to be so, and we did it to ourselves.

Hekate

average worker), we should make them eat their own dog and cat food until it kills them.

:grr: :grr: :grr:

that we may be doing exactly this and not even know it depending on what you eat. Best idea right now is to eat as many organic vegetarian foods if at all possible. Definitely avoid all pork.

What other animals that are farmed are fed corn gluten?

:mad:

:kick:

They're testing our limits...and bush is opening the doors and saying come right in. I don't think the middle east is our main concern.

I've signed the pledge, and will do my best to see to it that China gets no more of my money. I'm also trying (which is about all one can do) to buy pet foods using American ingredients. But one must depend on the manufacturers to tell the truth. There's the rub.

and if dogs aren't smart enough to know what they're eating, it's their own fault.

:sarcasm: