Dog Food Blog

The Great Dog Food Scare is now one year away. In the first months a lot of websites and blogs were writing about this topic and many more people were searching for information to find safe dog food.

Menu Foods stock was sent into a free fall and faces more than 100 class-action lawsuits. Last month, many of the lawsuits in the US were consolidated into one class-action lawsuit.

The search is now over as is clearly reflected in the Google Trend. Pet food is also off the radar of regulators and other agencies.

The chemical used for making plastics, melamine, was added by a China-based supplier as a cheap way to make the wheat gluten look like it had higher protein levels. This way they could charge more money for this dog food ingredient but it also killed some pets consuming it.

A tricky and fraudulent game and very bad for their karma indeed.The government is still relying on the pet food companies to self-regulate and monitor their international suppliers. Thank god the pet food industry has been taking appropriate action to avoid the next dog food scandal. Whether it’s out of karmic responsibility or to prevent another stock free fall doesn’t matter in the end just as long as our beloved tail waggers don’t die from eating commercial dog food.

In countries amongst which is Canada, the public wants more safety. Cathy Sterling euthanized her eight-year-old Australian Sheppard in March 2007. Her dog had become ill, only a week before Menu Foods issued the recall and warning. Since then she has collected about 3,000 signatures from pet owners. She is using the signature list to convince the government to pay more attention to pet food.

“We’ve recognized there’s a problem.. and we need a change”.

The FDA still has no mandatory authority over recalling pet food in the US. Some suggest that the industry is doing enough to regulate itself. Is this the way it works for all laws? No, it’s not. The industry for children’s toys and human food is also regulating itself but still regulating agencies do exist.

Listen to the words of Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948):

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man”

In my opinion we as humans haven’t made real progress for some time and we can take the next big step right now!