I get the feeling we are being jerked around with the shifting explanation for the poison in the pet food. Almost immediately, we were told that it was rat poison. They even identified the chemical, its toxicity, and the fact that it is banned in the U.S. They told us it was on wheat gluten imported from China.
The connection to China was quickly expunged from the story as though it were an embarassing gaff. Today we are told that they have finally discovered the poison to be melamine, an ingredient in plastic. And they are delivering this breaking news as though they never mentioned rat poison. I smell a rat. Specifically, I think they are worried about offending the free-trade golden goose with the truth consisting of rat poison from China.
It reminds me of how they never arrive at a convincing explanation of the sourse of the last nineteen E.coli poisonings over the last ten years or so. They tell us tales of how wild pigs put cow manure into the spinach fields. Next thing you know, we will learn that wild pigs put the melamine into the pet food.
Well this stroy has been bumping along now for a few weeks, twisting and turning as it goes. It seems like there is a consensus that the toxin was on wheat gluten imported from China, but the specific toxin once thought to be rat poison is now thought to me melamine; maybe. Actually, other than wheat gluten from China, none of the factors of this case have been established for certain.
Two days ago (4/12), they told us that some (amount unspecified) of the poision pet food is still on the store shelves. They know this because they are finding it on the shelves. That is ASTOUNDING! Certainly all the pet food product bears production codes and would normally be taken off the shelf within hours of the realizasion of the problem. The fact that some of the tainted product is still on the shelves can only mean that they are not sure what production batches the product is in.
However, if there are toxin-containing batches which have not been identified, how can they discover those batches sitting on the shelves simply by looking at the codes on the cans????? That piece of the story makes no sense.
Another item they announced on 4/12 was that they cannot say for certain that the toxic gluten did not get into the human food supply. The product was catagorized and labeled as "Human Consumption Grade." This grade of wheat gluten is added to some rice and pasta porducts, for example. The FDA had put out a nationwide aleart for hospitals to be on the lookout for renal (kidney) failure in humans. None have occurred so far, but according to the story, if the toxin did not enter the human food supply, it was only a matter of good luck.
Meanwhile the company originating the wheat gluten in China denies that any toxin was in the product. U.S. researchers cannot say for absolute certainty that the toxin is melamine or what else it may be. They don't know the extent of the distribution of the tainted product or whether is entered the human food supply.
To me, this whole episode seems like a giant RED FLAG. We are talking poison in the food supply here. And nobody in our government, or the food industry can get their act together to address the problem. How do we know that this poisoing was not done intentionally as a test of out defenses? Was this a trial run for an attack on humans?
Consider this: When poison is used by professional hit men to commit murder, the one prominent characteristic of the poison is that it is extremely difficult to detect or identify.
03-30-2007 07:44 PM
