Pets Aren't the Only Ones Hurt by Poisoned Food

I am not the kind of person that will argue that animals are more important than people. But I do think that if you own a pet, you have an inherent responsibility to that animal to see that it gets the best possible care that you can give it.

That's why I sit here, wondering why pet food isn't subject to quality control measures that are anywhere close to that which people food gets. I know it would make production costs somewhat higher, but what is an extra dollar or two per bag if you know that your pet isn't going to get sick or possibly die from eating what you feed them?

I went to go look up information about the Menu Foods recall. The first results that showed up, aside from the links from Google News, were not about the Menu Foods recall; they were about the Diamond Pet Foods recall.

Does anyone remember that recall, from December 2005? That time, instead of rat poison being in the food it was a fungus contamination. In that case, it was still not something that should have been in the food, but at least it was a naturally occurring substance. Perhaps it should have been anticipated, since people knew about this species of fungus, and tested for; they say hindsight is 20/20.

But the rat poison being found in the Menu Foods recall has no excuse. Rat poison does not belong in food. It doesn't grow in food. There is no reason it should be there. And especially not in such huge quantities. 95 brands in dozens of different varieties and across who knows how many stores is a great volume of food. How did so much poison get into the pet food?

What if had been another type of rat poison, the variety that uses something like arsenic or cyanide... And what if it had been used to make baby food? People would be terribly angry at the deaths of any babies who ate the food. But because these are just dumb animals, there is been a distinct slowness to the investigations.

The fact that Menu Foods is offering to compensate people whose pets have been harmed by the recalled food is little consolation. Especially to those that have lost their pets. How many peoples' pets died, but they have no proof that it was the food? They have no vet bills, no food receipts (how many people keep their grocery receipts around?), nothing. All they have now is a hole in their lives where their pet used to be.

Something needs to be done about the pet food industry. Someone needs to hold them up to higher standards. When you go buy pet food from the store, expecting it to be healthy and nutritious, and it ends up killing them instead, there is something very wrong with that. This is especially true with the higher end brands that spend millions of dollars a year, trying to convince us that their food is healthier than other foods.

When it's all processed at the same plant, using the many of the same ingredients, is there really that much difference between Iams and Ol' Roy?

When are consumers going to start actually getting what they expected when they paid for a product?