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POISON IN HUMAN FOOD SUPPLY

Last post 06-07-2007, 11:51 AM by Cassandra. 1 replies.
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  •  05-04-2007, 12:03 PM 1593267

    POISON IN HUMAN FOOD SUPPLY

    OK, now I'm MAD...Angry  Now the FDA is telling us that it is OK to eat POISON FED ANIMALS!!!

    Chickens: Whole fryers come with the liver, gizzard, heart and neck stuffed into the body cavity... WHAT was it that killed thousands of cats and dogs? Kidney and Liver failure... IF this POISON destroyed these organs, how do we know that it isn't in the meat also, via the blood stream!

    I am so sick of the BIG MONEY in this country, and our darling Government, covering for their China cash cow... ALL trade with China in food stuffs of all kinds should be suspended, pending verifiable PROOF that their production, testing, and health standards meet that of this country... That includes Mexico...

    Also, any company that uses imported food stuffs should be made legally resposible to test, or retest every shipment that comes from ANY country outside the USA.... Oh boy, THEY don't care WHO or WHAT they murder, as long as their profit margin remains high... Read the following please..

    Bracketed heading word is mine....

                              

    FDA: Contaminated [POISONED] feed could affect farms nationwide

    POSTED: 12:10 a.m. EDT, May 2, 2007
    var clickExpire = "-1";

    Story Highlights

    • Contaminated feed found in 38 Indiana chicken farms; more farms likely affected
    • Feed contains recalled pet food with tainted wheat gluten
    • No human illnesses have been reported related to tainted poultry feed
    • Reports of 4,150 dog and cat deaths related to pet food recall
    By Katy Byron
    CNN
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    NEW YORK (CNN) -- More farms across the United States will likely be affected by animal feed tainted with recalled pet food, federal health officials said Tuesday, after an investigation of Indiana chicken farms found the contaminated feed in more than three dozen facilities that raise poultry for human consumption.

    The Food and Drug Administration said it expects farms in other states will report they received the tainted pet food and predicted that the number of plants that received contaminated feed could reach into the hundreds.

    Recalled pet food containing tainted Chinese wheat gluten was found in chicken feed in 38 Indiana farms, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday, but no chicken recall has been issued because the likelihood of getting sick from eating chicken fed the contaminated product is very low, FDA officials said.

    No human illnesses related to the minimally tainted poultry feed have been reported, according to the agencies.

    Last week, FDA officials said 6,000 hogs that may have ingested tainted pet food entered the human food supply. Pork producers in California, Kansas, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina and Utah are being investigated for buying adulterated feed. (Full story)

    In an effort to further contain the tainted products, the FDA last week detained all vegetable protein imports from China that are used in both human and animal food as part of its investigation into the nationwide pet food recall.

    The protein products from China that are affected include: wheat gluten, rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn gluten, corn gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten proteins, and mung bean protein, the FDA import alert dated April 27 said.

    NCC: It's like cooking cupcakes

    Occasionally, pet food manufacturers sell material left over from the molding process to animal feed manufacturers and that's how the contaminated pet food got into poultry feed, according to Richard Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, the trade group that represents U.S. poultry producers, marketers and processors.

    "It's like cooking cupcakes -- you get some of the dough on the pan, you scrape it off and throw it away. What they're saying is that somebody bought that material and it got mixed in corn and soybean that gets manufactured in poultry feed," he said.

    "The dilution factor is enormous. You have a relatively small amount of pet food byproducts used," in poultry feed manufacturing, Lobb said.

    In fact, "it's a safe and wholesome product to use," he added.

    In response to the FDA/USDA announcement, the National Chicken Council released a statement saying "We are confident that any poultry producers involved will work expeditiously with the government to resolve this matter to the satisfaction of the government agencies."

    Lobb said it is industry practice for companies to own birds and contract growers to raise them, and that companies supply the feed to the growers as well.

    "Nobody buys feed from China," Lobb told CNN.

    "Feed is made from corn, soybean meal, minerals... about 70 percent of ration is corn and that's all locally grown in the United States. Soybeans are all grown in the United States," Lobb said.

    "Melamine is not supposed to be in any animal feed, pet food... it's an industrial chemical and that problem goes back to China where they were deliberately spiking the product with melamine and before that with urea in order to boost its protein content," Lobb said.

    Perdue and Tyson Foods -- two of the largest U.S. chicken producers -- do not import any protein ingredients from China used in their chicken feeds, company representatives told their supermarket chain clients Tuesday.

    FDA: No evidence tainted gluten in U.S. stores

    FDA officials said they have found no evidence that tainted wheat gluten was added directly to any human food products that Americans may find on store shelves.

    The FDA has investigators in China working with the Chinese government's General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to investigate the sources of the contaminated products.

    It is unclear how long the United States has been importing tainted food additives from China.

    "Clearly that is a concern if that has been going on for a long period of time," said Dr. David Acheson, who was appointed to the new position of FDA Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection earlier in the day.

    Melamine, cyanuric acid might be the deadly combination

    Monday's report is the latest development in the FDA's investigation into the recall of more than 60 million cans of pet food after at least 17 cats and dogs died of kidney failure. The urine of cats that ate the tainted pet food tested positive for melamine, an industrial chemical used in the manufacturing of plastic utensils and fertilizer.

    In addition, the FDA announced last week that rice protein additive imported from China was found to contain cyanuric acid, but the federal agency has yet to positively identify the causative agent in the pet deaths. Cyanuric acid is used as a stabilizer in outdoor swimming pools and hot tubs.

    Investigators outside the FDA are uncovering evidence that suggests the combination of melamine and cyanuric acid is responsible for the pet deaths related to the recall. (Full story)

    The agency also reported last week that it has received more than 17,000 consumer complaints related to the recall, including reports of 4,150 dog and cat deaths.

    More than 150 brands and 5,300 pet food products have been recalled. Companies that produced affected items include Menu Foods, Hill's Pet Nutrition, P&G Pet Care, Nestle Purina PetCare, Del Monte Pet Products, and Sunshine Mills. The affected products have been recalled in cooperation with the FDA. The first recall was initiated March 16 by Menu Foods.

    CNN's Joe Johns, Miriam Falco and Tom Watkins contributed to this report

  •  06-07-2007, 11:51 AM 1699991 in reply to 1593267

    Re: POISON IN HUMAN FOOD SUPPLY

    Yet Another Harmful Chemical Found in Pet Food

    June 6, 2007
    By Judi McLeod
    Canada Free Press

    In the unsolved mystery of contaminated commercial pet food comes yet another riddle.

    "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating a Texas laboratory's finding of acetaminophen in dog and cat food, an agency spokesman said Monday." (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).

    "We're very interested in being able to test these samples ourselves to determine the levels of those contaminants," said FDA spokesman Doug Arbesfeld. "What's significant is these things are there. They don't belong there."

    Neither was melamine-laced gluten, Mr.Arbesfeld. Nor aminopterin. Neither was the corn-gluten contaminated with both melamine and cyuranic acid. That deadly combination was significant as lab doctors at Guelph determined it was the presence of both agents together which caused kidney crystals fatal to mammals.

    Acetaminophen, a pain killer, is the fifth chemical to be found in commercial pet foods, the same ones sold in bright packaging that we see advertised in television commercials showing finicky cats and tail-wagging dogs coming on the run when they hear the sound of the food filling their bowls.

    With vacillations as prolific as vaccinations at the FDA, pet owners are paying for their own lab tests and who can blame them?

    The pain medication is the fifth contaminant found in pet foods during the past worrisome 2-? months and can be toxic or even lethal to pets, especially of the feline category. It is not known if any animals became sick with acetaminophen poisoning, or died from it.

    "We were looking for cyanuric acid and melamine, and the acetaminophen just popped up," Donna Coneley, lab operations manager for ExperTox Inc. in Deer Park, Texas, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Monday. "It definitely was a surprise to find that in several samples."

    But when China exports seafood raised in raw sewage destined for the human dinner table, can anything really be a surprise anymore?

    The medication discovered in Texas was found most often with cyanuric acid, a chemical used in pool chlorination. Varying levels of melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, also were found among the hundreds of samples ExperTox tested.

    The findings bring more worry for already anxious pet owners: The latest discovered contaminants were found in foods that are not among the more than 150 brands recalled since March 16. The highest level of acetaminophen was found in a dog food sample submitted by a manufacturer. Coneley declined to identify the company but said its officials were given the results "well over a month ago."

    That company should have--but did not--notify the FDA, which first learned of the acetaminophen findings after pet owners posted lab reports on the Internet, Arbesfeld said.

    What this translates to is that average pet owners and not the FDA are sounding the alarm to consumers at large.

    "With any poison, it's the amount that matters," said Dr. Wilson Rumbeiha, a Michigan State University pathologist who is working with the FDA on the pet food contamination investigation. His lab has screened for acetaminophen but found none, he said.

    However, a 20-pound dog would have to eat more than 6.5 pounds of food in 24 hours to be poisoned, unless it ate the same contaminated food daily, Rumbeiha said.

    Pet owners often feed their animals their favourite brand. Why would anyone stop feeding a pet from the bag of food specifically purchased for the pet?

    Meanwhile, a still-unmeasured amount of acetaminophen and cyanuric acid were found in cat food submitted by Don Earl, 52, of Port Townsend, Wash., whose 6-year-old cat, Chuckles, died in January.

    He said he was suspicious of two flavors of Chuckles' Pet Pride food because his other two cats refused to eat it and because Chuckles, strictly an indoor girl, had been healthy.

    The ongoing contaminated pet food scandal continues to erode public confidence.

    Pet owners should form a collective and manufacture their own pet food. The new collective, of course would not do business with suppliers who import ingredients from China.

    Ironically, the FDA likely would be more watchful of the Collective than they ever were of the pet food manufacturers that poisoned thousands of pets.

    Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck and The Rant. Judi can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com.
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