Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Pet Deaths May Finally Bring About More Screening

The Food and Drug Administration released an updated alert concerning the recent pet food contamination. The alert is quick to point out a much greater death count from the contaminated food as well as adding additional products to the recall.
As of April 26, 2007, FDA had received over 17,000 consumer complaints relating to this outbreak, and those complaints included reports of approximately 1950 deaths of cats and 2200 deaths of dogs.
This is what happens when you examine less than 1% of all food products coming into the country from foreign sources. With China having no environmental or safety standards, this was to be expected. Today's Washington Post examines this issue in detail:
Despite a temporary post-Sept. 11, 2001, staff increase inspired by fears of terrorist attacks on food, the number of FDA employees working on port inspections has returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels -- part of a gradual shriveling of the agency's food safety division relative to its burgeoning pharmaceutical branch.
How can this administration claim to be fighting terrorism when one of the greatest vulnerabilities has to be the food supply and it is not protected.
About 99 percent of imported foods are simply acknowledged by computer and waved ashore.
This time it was the animals that died but next time it could be me or you.

Read the rest of this article here.

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