this is from peaches site:
Menu Foods was asked to attend the hearing, but it requested that the Pet Food Institute, a trade association for the industry, appear instead.The institute’s president, Duane Ekedahl, told the committee that pet food already is perhaps the most highly regulated product on store shelves.
i don\'t have enough time to actually discuss it now...but are you frickin\' kidding me!?!?! I thought pet foods were the least regulated foods on shelves. it\'s that way, at least, for reptiles....people don\'t give 2 flying-fucks about animals! it pisses me off!...not to mention that they rushed the tests so there could be numerous amounts of invalid data. :pissed:
ok...now for more bitching:
I did some research by looking up federal regulations for pet food processing. the FDA website says:
There is no requirement that pet food products have premarket approval by FDA. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act does require that pet foods, like human foods, be pure and wholesome, contain no harmful or deleterious substances, and be truthfully labeled. Canned pet foods must be processed in conformance with low acid canned food (LACF) regulations designed to ensure that the finished product is free of any viable microorganisms. Producers must file acceptable processing methods with the Agency. These LACF regulations are listed in Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 113.
so....
The institute’s president, Duane Ekedahl, told the committee that pet food already is perhaps the most highly regulated product on store shelves.
...may be true as of late, but before this incident how seriously were those regulations being taken? There are so many loopholes in our system it\'s ridiculous. i\'m actually writing a law research paper on wetland regulations right now, and the things that people come up with to get around a regulation are incredible. According to federal regulations a privately owned property located on a wetland is supposed to maintain the wetland by keeping certain species of plants throughout the land...however, they don\'t specify how many species or individual plants are needed to be kept. So that person that owns the property can destroy a good portion of their land in order to build on it...which is supposed to be a violation of the regulation but the feds can\'t do anything about it because they\'re really not violating anything...but i digress.
i guess what i\'m trying to point out is that even though there are FDA regulations on the manufacturing of pet food goods, there are still loopholes that companies can maneuver around. For instance, how many inspections a month do these companies have? is it even a monthly inspection? and how thorough are they when looking for contaminants and whatnot? if the manufacturing process isn\'t being inspected properly how are we, as consumers/pet owners/pet lovers...blah blah blah...supposed to know what\'s healthy for our pets and what\'s not? obviously, there\'s a list that tells us this right now, but almost every brand (at least that i know of, and isn\'t stupidly expensive) has been or are being taken off the shelves. and on top of this, they\'re now saying that this wheat gluten may have contaminated some human foods as well. so not only are our pet\'s lives at stake, but ours might be as well....it\'s the whole spinach/e.coli bullshit all over again, except that in this case the problem is artificially made.
woo! sorry guys...just thought i\'d give some food for thought.
