I wasn't going to post about this, but some new information has surfaced and I think it's about time.

For several weeks I noticed that my dog had been drinking excessive amounts of water combined with frequent urination and weight loss. He was getting old, so I really didn't think a lot about it, even my vet was mystified. That was, until this time last week. Shortly after feeding my dog a can of Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy he fell extremely ill. Within a matter of 2-3 hours he was shivering, urinating, and throwing up his dinner. Sometimes all at the same time.

About midnight I called the telephone number on the back of the Alpo can. I expected to get an answering machine, but was able to contact their security booth. During my conversation with the security manager he stated the following: "I have fielded literally hundreds of calls from people of all walks of life who's pets are severely ill". Meanwhile, the message on their main number said in part: "Mighty Dog pouch products are the only products being voluntairly recalled. No other Purina products are affected. It is still safe to feed these products, including Alpo canned" (many other brands listed) (I have a full, dated recording of the message if it is of use to anyone).

Things got progressively worse. At 2am I called the vet and asked for guidance. First thing that morning I took him to the vet hospital for observation and blood work. The blood work showed that he was in renal failure. After leaving him at the vet hospital for observation, I went home to get to the bottom of what was making my dog sick. After repeated phone calls to Purina over a period of three days, during which I provided the date and plant codes, I noticed that Purina began recalling part of it's Alpo line. All the Alpo product on my shelves was in the recall.

To make a long story short, blood tests show that he is getting progressively worse and will not make it. As we speak he is lying at my feet, dying, because I poisoned him. I poisoned him with Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy that was adulterated with melamine.





Why am I posting? I don't expect or want sympathy, I don't want a bunch of "I'm so sorry" posts. What I want is to see some action!

Purina stonewalled, denying that Alpo brand products used the adulterated wheat gluten. I had to go through their rent-a-cop to figure out what the hell was going on.

The FDA stonewalled, refusing to release the name of the US distributer, ChemNutra, until a blogger found it by digging through the FDA records. Not only that, but the FDA and the manufacturers were reactive, waiting for the body count to rise before "voluntarily" recalling their product.

It the FDA TWO DAYS to update it's website to include the Alpo recall. It has taken the FDA over three weeks to begin to get this situation under control, but they still don't know they have all the adulterated product in the recall, and the US distrubuter refuses to release his customer list to the public.

According to Del Monte, who bought some of the Chinese wheat gluten, it was sold as food grade product. ChemNutra, the US distributer, claims it was sold for animal use only and refuses to release it's customer list. Are they stonewalling too?

Canada is one of the world's largest producers of wheat and wheat products. Talk about carrying coals to Newcastle...

In this article:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...d-recall_N.htm

According to Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's center for vetrinary medicine, melamine was found in quantities of up to 6.6% in the wheat gluten from China. James Popp, president of the Society of Toxicology says: "A study on dogs in 1953 fed them 30,000 parts per million of melamine for one year and "nothing happened," Not quite! If you want to know what really happened, why not read a summary of the data? Oh, and it was 1955, not 1953. Get your facts straight, Popp!

http://www.inchem.org/documents/sids/sids/108781.pdf

The wheat gluten came from China, which has NO food safety regulations. What other kinds of food are being imported from China which are in the human food chain? I know of one, it's the Mandarin Oranges in my cupboard! Well, they were in my cupboard. They're in the trash now.





I wonder what else I've been eating that comes from a place where DDT and fertilizing with human waste is allowed and safety regulations are non-existant. America has, by trial-and-error and a massive body count, established itself as a safe food producer. By buying product from China we're short-circuiting over 100 years of experience in the food safety business and putting the entire population at risk. Don't believe me? If you want to ask my dog you had better be quick about it.

The Chinese are selling baby formula to each other that has no nutritional value and is the cause of death of several babies in China. How can they be expected to produce safe food for export when the can't ensure the quality of their baby food? Read about it here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...pet-food_N.htm

All the while, our President is cutting back the FDA's food inspection program.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/02/Op...n_on_foo.shtml

To conclude, I want to leave you with this thought: We've spent trillions upon trillions of dollars blasting terrorists in countries you and I will never set foot in. Meanwhile, we can't provide adequate hurricane relief or ensure that our dog food is safe.

How are we more secure?

Wow, that was pretty heavy.  I know you don't want sympathy, but I'm truly sorry about your dog.

This is all pretty messed up...

It's the beaurocracy. It always takes a long time to get stuff through the system. It is the way it is designed to work.

I don't know why the FDA didn't do anything, but they were probably making sure that it wasn't just a small number of things afflicted and whether it was worth the cost to do a voluntary recall. Personally, I think that is whack and they should have started the process once they noticed that animals were getting sick.

What can we do though?

Bureaucracy, nothing!  It is what happens when we have "government" of the corporations, by the corporations, and FOR the corporations.  The only thing that matters is the $$$ bottom line.  Alpo doesn't care about ANYONE'S dog.  Neither do the appointees who run every part of the executive branch.  Remember "Heckuva Job" Brownie?

When we entrust our government to people who only owe allegiance to corporate America, this is what we are left with.  It's a shameful state of affairs.  Especially sad for the government employees in these departments who have spent careers on their jobs only to see political appointees at the top ruin the effectiveness of their departments.

GeeP, I feel for you.  I have a dog and a cat who are a large part of my family.  Our dog had a seizure shortly after we began feeding him Ol' Roy Hi-Protein dry food.  After some research, we switched to a natural dog food with no preservatives and he has had no more seizures.

These people (corporate execs and politicians who care more about loyalty than job performance) will ultimately face a judgment day.  I wish I could be there to watch it.

I was sick to discover that some of our cat food was on the recalled list. We were VERY fortunate that he was being picky, and he wasn't eating it (turned his nose up at it). I tossed it all, and we still watched him like a hawk. I feel for everyone whose baby has been sickened/killed by this blatent disregard for the animals' welfare by the companies who are looking to save a buck off their backs.

I'm sorry your baby is (and you are) suffering, GeeP, and +1 on the action. One thing I don't understand is this: why would wheat gluten that's not safe for humans be sold for consumption by our pets? That makes NO sense to me...

Quote from: pandy on April 05, 2007, 01:26:15 PM
One thing I don't understand is this: why would wheat gluten that's not safe for humans be sold for consumption by our pets? That makes NO sense to me...

That's the point of my post. 

Del Monte said the stuff was sold to them labeled "Food Grade".  In FDA speak, that means "Fit for human consumption".

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/health/article_21272473.shtml

ChemNutra got 800 metric tons of the stuff in 25 kg bags per their Apr 3 press release.  http://www.chemnutra.com/pr.pdf  Because it was in bags, it means it was contaminated BEFORE it left the plant in China.  That brings into question every ounce of product they have produced.

From what I am able to learn, Xuzhou Anying, the manufacturer in China, produced 10,000 metric tons of wheat gluten for export last year.  The vital question is:  WHERE DID THE OTHER 9,200 METRIC TONS GO?

The FDA isn't being very helpful in answering this question.  We have already seen what FEMA is capable of.  Will we stand idle while the FDA does it again?

GeeP's questions are beginning to be answered.  It's only taken the "liberal" media about two months to start asking questions of the FDA and their corporate masters:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18271015/
U.S. food inspectors overwhelmed by imports
Billions of dollars' worth of foreign ingredients slip by without safety checks

Scary stuff, and we're not even close to finding out how deep this goes.  There ARE some proper functions of government. and this is one of them.  Too bad no one in Washington wants to spend the money to have real oversight or to question the multi-national corporate thugs.

You're right Trumpetguy, we're a long way from finding out where it all went.  Unfortuantely, by that time it will be too late.  Melamine is officially in the HUMAN food chain:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042002016.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Had your melamine today?

Washington doesn't want to spend money on food safety because they're too busy playing in the sandbox.  I'd still like to know how letting hundreds of thousands of tons of imported food go under the radar while they go blast some ragheads halfway around the world makes you and I any safer.

This is why I'm spending over a dollar a pound for dog food.

Yeah...it's getting to a point where we're almost afraid to feed dog food to our dog or cat food to our kitty....   

I'm still sticking with Nutro Natural choice for the moment.  I'm going to up it to this other stuff the next time I'm at PatSmart, though...I can't remember the name of the stuff at the moment but it doesn't use any of the processed wheat/grain stuff.

Kalee feeds her beagle Nature's Variety which is about $1.75/lb.  I'm going to give Blue Buffalo a shot with my huskies the next time I'm at a selling joint...it's about $1.20/lb.

That is tragic and I feel for the dog, Geep. Did he make it?

Yea I feel for the dog too. How did he do
Now we buy food from china, I thought we didn't because its too $$$ to ship
And here is what I now think of the world financial markets. I believe they are to blame for 90% of this crisis.
Currency conversion is stupid. It has no bearing on reality and it does not take into account that in some countries some thing are just much much cheaper cos they are grown there or they have the means to make it there or whatever.
My college education cost under $200 for tuition for 4 years of engineering. Its waaaaay better than any engineering program in the US.
However after graduating I would have made probably - $200 a month. However when I was living there it was serious money and it wasn't something we could all take lightly as nothing. Maybe China has a lot of oranges. But the reason we buy it from china is because their currency is cheap. Same with everything else too. However it is not as painful as people make it sound where they say 90% of china lives on less than $1 a day, so we'll buy all their oranges for $1 and they can all now live on $2 a day. WTF ... its just a quirk of conversion. I may be able to live well on under $1 a day in India a life which I may need $150-300 a day to replicate in US. So $1 in India = $150 in the US. Whooo hooo ... see how stupid that is.
Cool.
Srinath.

Quote from: nightrider on April 24, 2007, 04:49:45 AM
That is tragic and I feel for the dog, Geep. Did he make it?

So far he's doing OK.  He has permanent kidney damage, but it may be possible for him to be "normal" again.  Obviously, I have to be very careful what I feed him from now on.  He's begun to gain some weight back so hopefully he'll be OK.

For those of you with pets, be VERY careful what you feed them.  The recall has expanded to include products containing corn gluten and rice gluten.  It is working its way up into higher priced pet foods as well.  Check the manufacturer's website for information!  I'm currently feeding a combination of home-made and high-end "natural" food for now.

More new information has come out in the last two days.  Apparently the melamine-adulterated grain protein (rice and wheat) is a well-known Chinese trick.  A blog I just read even says the FDA must have known about it (it claims that's why they tested for the presence of melamine in the first place).  http://www.horsesass.org/?p=2861

The blog also gives a link to the NYT article from this weekend that clarifies a lot of facts.  Short version:  Melamine has probably been in our food supply since at least 2006 --  the human food supply.  But since we inspect less than 1% of what comes in from our trusted business partners, we don't find out until pets start to die. 

Gotta love those free trade agreements.  We give them our money and our jobs, they give us poisoned food and huge corporate profits.  Great trade if you're in top 5% of income (and that's who our government is run by and for).

NY times had a big article on it.

To clarify, melamine itself is not toxic, but it reads as protein when the product is tested. Also very cheap. You or your pet could have eaten melamine with no ill effects other than you were getting less protein than you might have thought. However, it was TAINTED melamine which is the only reason this became an issue.

Obviously somebody dropped the ball both in China and stateside and there should be big time consequences for the industry over there AND HERE (which they are in the process of investigating right now).

Pet food... god only knows all the other the grisly cheap nastiness that's gone on under those cheery, well-marketed brand names.

Quote from: nightrider on April 30, 2007, 05:10:37 PM
To clarify, melamine itself is not toxic, but it reads as protein when the product is tested. Also very cheap. You or your pet could have eaten melamine with no ill effects other than you were getting less protein than you might have thought. However, it was TAINTED melamine which is the only reason this became an issue.

I'll agree that is probably the interaction between the melamine and other impurities found in the ground melamine scrap that is likely the culprit in the pet poisonings.  However, I would not agree entirely with your statement that that melamine itself is not toxic.  Every sentence declaring something similar to that in the NYT article contains the words "probably" or "is not thought to be."  IIRC, the only melamine toxicity study was made over 40 years ago and tested much smaller concentrations than occurred here.

The real news to me is that the FDA probably knew of the issue before this happened.  If they did know, and did nothing to inspect the imported gluten, they have betrayed the American people.

FDA + pharmaceutical companies + Bush administration = ?

Quote from: nightrider on May 01, 2007, 05:44:05 PM
FDA + pharmaceutical companies + Bush administration/clinton administration/or whoever else is in power = ?