FDA: Melamine in Human Food Chain Now in Poultry Feed; 4,150 Dogs and Cats Dead, Not Just the 18 They Admitted to Earlier

Still feeling complacent about pet food contamination? Still believe the human food chain is safe? Not according to the latest -- still widely under-reported -- news from the FDA.

- Forbes: FDA admits that

"The potential threat to human health from contaminated pet food has now widened to include chickens, with U.S. health officials announcing that melamine-tainted pet product made its way into poultry feed at 38 Indiana farms."

The agencies also warned that "as the investigation continues, additional farms will likely be identified that received contaminated feed."

Latest FDA Alert "

FDA’s acknowledgment that the agency had received more than ”17,000 consumer complaints relating to this outbreak, and those complaints included reports of approximately 1950 deaths of cats and 2200 deaths of dogs.”

Thank you to Elizabeth Weise and Julie Schmit at USA Today for their coverage on the recall issues. In their story today:

"The Food and Drug Administration is enforcing a new import alert [issued April 27th] that greatly expands its curtailment of some food ingredients imported from China, authorizing border inspectors to detain ingredients used in everything from noodles to breakfast bars.

The new restriction is likely to cause delays in the delivery of raw ingredients for the production of many commonly used products."

- Government agencies must conduct rigorous and regular inspections of pet food manufacturing plants.
- Regulation of pet food must be streamlined, effective and meaningful.
- require industry transparency and accountability.
- Veterinarians need to be brought more fully into the human public health system, including the tracking of animal illness on a national level.

NY Times mentions the FDA announcement in a couple of grafs in the business section. NY Daily News didn't bother to cover it at all.

Comments

Post a comment

Email this story to a friend

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.whatsnextonline.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3850