BREAKING NEWS FROM THE PET FOOD RECALL:

The news on the pet food recall story continues to grow by the day. Here are a few new items that Molly has dug out since she last posted on this subject:

A: MENU FOODS EXPANDS RECALL LIST:

Since she last reported Molly has found that new items have been added to the Menu Foods recall list. The updated lists can be found at http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_dog.html for dogs and at http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_cat.html . Three new items have been added to the canine list, Stop and Shop Companion, Tops Companion and Wegmans Bruiser, for a total of 53 items. No new items have been added to the feline list which totals 42 items. Given the fluid nature of events Molly has taken to advising clients to keep up with the lists above at regular intervals (Molly now does this at least twice weekly). She also advises people to avoid switching pet food brands if they have been feeding their pet on one item for a long time until at least 6 months after this matter seems to have been really and truly resolved. This is especially important as many retailers have been far from compliant in removing suspect product from their shelves. Finally, Molly has taken to exploring cupboards when she visits clients' houses looking for suspect product- not just what is on the list but also anything that lists wheat gluten as an ingredient. She has advised clients to garbage any food items containing this ingredient.

B: Those interested in the statement from ChemNutra on their recall of all of their wheat gluten supplied by Xuzhou Anying of China can go to the FDA announcement at http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/chemnutra04_07.html . The company says that it had 4 customers, only one of which was Menu Foods. They also claim that they did not send any shipments for human food consumption. Once more note the date that they claim that "one pet food manufacturer" (Menu Foods ?????) had informed them that it suspected the gluten as the source of pet food problems on March 8th. The date of the Menu Foods recall was March 16th !!!! Illinois Senator Richard J. Durbin recently announced a congressional hearing on the FDA's investigation of this matter. According to an article in the Washington Post Senator Durbin said that Menu Foods was aware of the problem with their foods as early as Feb. 20th. In a statement from the American Veterinary Medical Association published in the online version of JAVMA, the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association Menu Foods received their first complaint on Feb. 20th. The routine studies of the food revealed "no problem", and "palatability studies"(MOLLY NOTE:this is the company's term. Others have claimed that these tests were really toxicology tests disguised under another term.) were only begun on Feb. 27th. The first death amongst the animals tested was three days later on March 2nd. The FDA was only contacted on March 15th, and the recall was issued on March 16th.(MOLLY NOTE: Cover your legal ass BEFORE you correct the problem).

As Molly has mentioned previously the matter of the dates cited above will become important as the recall issue enters the courts in the upcoming lawsuits which Molly hopes to report on in the future. All that she can say for now is that she hopes the lawyers involved use the "shotgun approach" and sue everybody involved. Not just Menu Foods and not just ChemNutra but also the Chinese company and the Chinese government because.........

C: In one of the more stunning statements made about this event an article in the New York Times says that the Chinese company has denied responsibility by saying that "we are a trading company and don't manufacturer the product". All fair and good- whether it is true or not. But the Chinese government has weighed in by claiming that "no wheat gluten had been exported to the United States or Canada", and the company Xuzhou Anying fell in line by repeating this claim in contradiction to its previous statements about "investigating the problem".

Cough, hack.hack,hack, uh,uh, blaaah ! That is the sound of Molly passing her worst hairball in many years. Molly has been away from commies long enough so that she can be suitably impressed by the magnitude of their lies. Not that the Chinese government are really anything approaching the term "commie" anymore, but their cavalier communist attitude to truth has been passed on even as they have become more capitalist than the capitalists. Nobody can lie like a commie can lie because they have their own private definition of "truth", more than thoroughly described from Lenin and Trotsky on down through Stalin, Mao and Castro as "true" being that which serves the interests of "the revolution" (real world translation: the interests of the communist managers and others of their class). Thus commies and their descendants in the present Chinese government can put forward a gross and obvious lie because they have no faith that there is an independent reality against which their statements can be checked. In this case their lie can be disproved by millions (billions ?) of people across the world with access to the internet in a matter of minutes. But it hardly matters to those who are under the illusion of a "utilitarian definition of truth". They can't appreciate that they can be easily caught. In North America the only people who reach this sort of level of mendacity are ideologues of the religious right, the decaying Leninist left and academics slouching towards retirement who keep their CV up by mindlessly and incoherently babbling about post-modernism.

Molly appreciates the desire of Pet Connection to avoid the whole matter becoming politicized- even though there are obvious political implications that damn both the liberals and conservatives in the USA. But still the stunning level of dishonesty of the Chinese government begs for comment. Here and now Molly has to state what will be obvious for anarchist readers of this blog but will be new information for the average person who has dropped by here for information on this subject. Molly is not repeating right wing rhetoric about the commies. She is criticizing them from the left , as an anarchist who believes in objective reality and has suspicion of all ideology. Not that all anarchists believe that there is a real world out there, but the majority do, and as such they are critical of many aspects of Leninism including its denigration of objectivity. Anyways......

D: The Pet Connection data base for suspicious pet deaths has "gone down" recently, and the editors of the site say "tampering". The last update of their data base listed 3,242 suspect cases. Their tech support people 'Black Dog' (literally !!!) are looking into the matter, and they hope to have the db up and running again soon. Now Molly is rather a sceptical cat, and she thinks that the most likely source of this is a "computer glitch". Other have suggested "teenage hackers". If, however, the loss of data is due to a "real and deliberate attack" the prime suspect is obvious. Like the USA, the Chinese recruit convicted hackers for its government services, and, unlike the USA, the Chinese Government concentrates on its commercial interests much more thoroughly. The present American government in its detachment from reality can best be likened to China under Mao, and they simply don't make the moves that a "rational imperialism" like that of the Chinese does. To date Molly has been amazed that this blog seems to get past the Chinese censors. This may change. If I go offline it is definite proof of the claim and source of the Pet Connection people.

E:Finally, Molly has found an excellent resource for those who interested in the whole matter of what pet foods are all about.