Pet Food Recall Waves Continue...

On March 16th, 2007, Menu Foods Inc., a company out of Ontario, Canada, was forced to issue a nationwide recall on all it's "cuts and gravy" styled foods, manufactured for most of the top brand names on our shelves. The initial echos are still reverberating, now across the globe. In a country where, for all intents and purposes, the pet food industry is allowed to regulate itself, Canadian organizations and citizens alike are angry that there has been no investigatory actions taken. This even 2 months after the recall was announced. Federal Minister of Agriculture Chuck Stahl said four weeks after the initial recall that while the Canadian Government is willing to review whether pet food should be regulated that it doesn't mean that it necessarily will or should be regulated saying that "regulation in the United States didn't prevent the recent deaths of pets from tainted food." Now this being my own opinion, and as flippant as his comment initally appears to be, he's got a point. I always find issue with people out there who automatically think that because a governmental body said they're going to "regulate" an industry, it means that said industry is now squeaky clean. My viewpoint is, for the most part, grandeous bureaucracies are often so large and cumbersome that when and if an event occurs like this recall, they are so slow to action that it's almost farcical. It's often like watching the Titanic turn on a dime. With quite a few class action law suits floating out there on the horizon, the subject of this recall becomes real quite quickly. No matter how much blame or legal action is thrown around, nothing will mend the damage already done. I am truely sorry for anyone who reads this post and has been directly or indirectly affected by this awful event. Unfortunately sometimes it takes a disaster of large proportion like this to wake us out of our day to day monotany, make us sit up and really take an active role in shaping our lives. Not just being victim of circumstance. Most recent list of recalled foods: http://www.menufoods.com/recall/PressRelease05222007.htm Canadian Government Ignores Calls to Investigate Food Industry: http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp?action=showRelease&searchText=false&showText=all&actionFor=653692 Pet Food Recall Widens: http://www.planet-pets.com/petfoodalert.htm www.fda.com