Major "wet" pet food recall of dog & cat foods ~ NOW Includes Treets & Biscuits

[Cinder & Smoke]

Posted by "smokey the elder" >>>

Here's a link from CNN News:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/23/pet.food.recall.ap/index.html

It was not necessarily deliberate.
The suspect ingredient was wheat gluten, and
rat poison may have gotten into the grain by accident.

[Cinder & Smoke]

... the food is manufactured by the individual companies (using their ingredients and recipes, etc)
and then sent to be packaged at a different facility.

What she said was that all those companies use about four or five facilities
for the packaging of their foods, and that the problem was at the packaging facilities,
not the food manufacturer's facilities.

This is incorrect ... the pet food is manufactured (ingredients assembled & "cooked")
in the same plant or plants that it is packaged in.

Many of the recalled Brands are sold by companies who just have no interest,
nor the facilities, to purchase, store, mix, and "cook" pet foods.
Example is WallyMart - they don't "make" anything - they BUY their products
in bulk from the actual manufacturer and have the WalMart Brand Label applied -
Ol'Roy in the case of the WalMart store branded pet foods.

Menu Foods has BIG Plants where they purchase & store the common ingredients that
most all of their "customers" (the Owners of the Brand Names) specify be used
in "their Brand" of food under "their" label. Menu whips up a batch of "ABC Dawg Food" today and stuffs it into "ABC Cans" ...
tomorrow they'll cook up "XYZ Cat Food" according to XYZ's recipe and pack
it into cans with the XYZ label.

ABC and XYZ never step in the kitchen - Menue Foods runs the kitchen and
packaging operations; ABC and XYZ just "sell" the stuff.

And when the Chief Cook (Mr. Menu) accidentally buys a couple railroad cars
of Bad Wheat (and uses the Bad Stuff in ALL the different brands he "cooks"),
a LOT of different brands are shipped out with bad food.

I now wonder if the "source" of the bad wheat gluton ONLY sold the bad stuff to
Menu Foods at their USA plants ... I'd like to know where else "wheat gluton" is used.

/s/ Phred

[Jadapit]

The rat poison, which may have been used on wheat imported from China, is illegal in the U.S., NBC News correspondent Tom Costello told MSNBC TV.

I found this on MSN. Here is the link if anyone wants to read the whole story. Why do they import the wheat from China? There are plenty of wheat farmers in the States, I would think anyway.





http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17754681...15773?GT1=9145

[king2005]

I now wonder if the "source" of the bad wheat gluton ONLY sold the bad stuff to
Menu Foods at their USA plants ... I'd like to know where else "wheat gluton" is used.

/s/ Phred

I'm almost positive the plant in question is the one here in Streetsville (Ontario, Canada)... Streetsville is really the city of Mississauga & Mississauga is part of the Greater Toronto Area(GTA)...gives an idea where the plant is located.

Not just Wheat Gluton as a whole, but this particular W.G.! Not all W.G. will be contaminated, just the stuff from this supplier.

[Cinder & Smoke]

I'm almost positive the plant in question is the one here in Streetsville (Ontario, Canada) ...
Streetsville is really the city of Mississauga & Mississauga is part of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) ...

Menu Foods operates FOUR manufacturing & packaging plants:
* Emporia, Kansas
* Pennsauken, New Jersey
* North Sioux City, South Dakota
* Streetsville, Ontario

from their web site:
--------------------------------------
Facilities

Menu’s manufacturing platform includes four state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities located in Emporia, Kansas, Pennsauken, New Jersey, North Sioux City, South Dakota and Streetsville, Ontario. These plants utilize high-speed equipment and leading-edge technologies to produce pet food in aluminum and steel cans in all currently used sizes at rates of up to 1,000 cans per minute. With the pouch expansion completed in 2005, Menu is able to produce 85g pouches at the rate of up to 1,110 pouches per minute. Collectively, these plants are capable of producing more than one billion containers annually. These facilities are designed for maximum flexibility, which, in turn, allows Menu to provide the full range of products customers’ demand.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Depending on which news account you care to believe, two or three of the
Menu USA plants have been mentioned as the probable source of the contaminated
and recalled foods ... the Streetsville, Ontario, plant has NOT been mentioned
as a location that produced any bad lots of food.

Final resolution will probably depend on which plant locations actually received
a shipment of the suspected contaminated Wheat Gluton.

ANNNND ... there's always the POSSIBILITY that the rat poison contamination
MAY - stress MAY - not have happened at the supplier who produced the Wheat Gluton ...
the rat poison MAY have mixed with the Wheat Gluton in a truck or a railroad car,
OR at the storage container AT the Menu plant.

Hard to believe the Wheat Gluton was produced in CHINA ... but these days
nothing is impossible.

/s/ Phred

[momoffuzzyfaces]

This just makes me sick!!! I'm surprised more animals didn't die!!!

[king2005]

Menu Foods operates FOUR manufacturing & packaging plants:
* Emporia, Kansas
* Pennsauken, New Jersey
* North Sioux City, South Dakota
* Streetsville, Ontario

from their web site:
--------------------------------------
Facilities

Menu’s manufacturing platform includes four state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities located in Emporia, Kansas, Pennsauken, New Jersey, North Sioux City, South Dakota and Streetsville, Ontario. These plants utilize high-speed equipment and leading-edge technologies to produce pet food in aluminum and steel cans in all currently used sizes at rates of up to 1,000 cans per minute. With the pouch expansion completed in 2005, Menu is able to produce 85g pouches at the rate of up to 1,110 pouches per minute. Collectively, these plants are capable of producing more than one billion containers annually. These facilities are designed for maximum flexibility, which, in turn, allows Menu to provide the full range of products customers’ demand.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Depending on which news account you care to believe, two or three of the
Menu USA plants have been mentioned as the probable source of the contaminated
and recalled foods ... the Streetsville, Ontario, plant has NOT been mentioned
as a location that produced any bad lots of food.

Final resolution will probably depend on which plant locations actually received
a shipment of the suspected contaminated Wheat Gluton.

ANNNND ... there's always the POSSIBILITY that the rat poison contamination
MAY - stress MAY - not have happened at the supplier who produced the Wheat Gluton ...
the rat poison MAY have mixed with the Wheat Gluton in a truck or a railroad car,
OR at the storage container AT the Menu plant.

Hard to believe the Wheat Gluton was produced in CHINA ... but these days
nothing is impossible.

/s/ Phred

sorry...