Dogged Blog

Breaking: lifestyle update

I have ordered from Waiters on Wheels three nights in a row now. I do love living in a big city where such services are available, but do you think it's possible, just REMOTELY POSSIBLE, that I might get enough of my life back any time soon so I could oh I don't know GO OUT TO A RESTAURANT instead of having someone bring me food from one?

That is all.

Melamine found in human food, FDA suspends media briefings, nothing to see here, move along

Late last night, I saw a story come across my news alert service, stating that tests for antibiotic residues in imported Chinese catfish had come back negative. I was going to glance at it anyway, but what made me glance at it extra-hard was the fact that it had come in under an alert for news stories on melamine.

The headline just said that FDA labs in Denver had found that the fish, imported for human consumption from China, had tested all-clear on a couple of antibiotics that are not approved for use in aquaculture in the U.S., and which have been of concern in fish imported from China.

And that's how the story led, too. And then, just in passing, they dropped this little bomb:

One sample of catfish, however, did show a positive test for melamine. The level of material, however, does not pose any human health hazards, according to DHHS.

Melamine is a chemical used in fertilizers in Asia and has recently been detected in wheat gluten used in the making of some pet foods distributed in the United States.

U.S. inspectors said the tainted gluten used in pet food caused the deaths of an unknown number of dogs and cats, sparking the recall of 154 brands of pet food contaminated with the chemical.

Melamine has no nutritional value, but it is high in nitrogen. Adding it to feed makes it appear to be higher in protein, bringing a better price for the makers of feed for stock animals such as pigs, chickens and fish as well as companies that make food for household pets.

Yesterday, the FDA and USDA suspended their ongoing media briefings, which had been happening twice a week, saying there was nothing new to report.

Except, of course, the melamine UC Davis labs found in a pet food that wasn't on the recall list the night before.

And now the melamine the FDA's own labs found in the catfish they were testing - as far as I know (and having been covering this story since March 16, I know a lot), this is the first time melamine has been found in testing of food itself -- not the food FED to food animals, but the actual food itself -- meant for human consumption.

But other than that, everything's fine, there's nothing to see here, move along. It's perfectly safe because... er. Well.

It's perfectly safe because no one is reporting it, no one seems to have noticed, and apparently no one cares.

Yet another reason I love San Francisco

Yet another reason I love San Francisco: the weather.

I interviewed HGTV's David Bromstad Wednesday evening. (The article about that interview will be on AfterElton.com, and I'll link to it when it's published.) His show, Color Splash, is filmed here in the Bay Area, and he moved from Miami to San Francisco when he started doing the show. He loves San Francisco, but did indicate that he's kind of cold most of the time.

"I hate hot weather," I told him.

He paused. "Really?"

Really. I know most people like hot weather. They dream of vacations in Hawaii and tropical beaches and wearing shorts and sandals all year long. And that is so not me. I like the fog and the wind, and I'm in the mood for sunshine approximately as often as I am for snow, which is to say, about two weeks out of every year. A craving I would much rather fulfill by traveling to the place with snow or sun than living in it. Nothing makes me happier than getting up in the morning and having to put on a hooded sweatshirt and warm jacket to walk the dogs on mornings when, at my old home in Sonoma, my air conditioning would have already kicked on.

The western side of San Francisco, which is where I live and where I grew up, spends most of the summer tucked in a nice dripping fog bank, courtesy of the hot inland air meeting the cold, wet air blowing in off the Pacific Ocean.

When I was looking for a house when I moved back here after 16 years in the country, I restricted my search to the fog belt. Several friends said to me, while I was looking, "Well, just be sure not to get anything out there by the beach." They would shiver. "Too cold."

I'd just smile and think, all the more houses for me to look at. "No," I'd tell them, "I'm only looking in the fog belt. I hate the sun."

Anesthesia free dental cleaning revisited

I wrote an article for SFGate.com on one of my pet peeves, so-called "anesthesia-free dental cleanings" for pets. I interviewed Dr. Stephen Holmstrom, one of the few board certified veterinary dental specialists in the country, and Nancy Campbell RVT, DVT, a Washington state veterinary technician with special training in both veterinary dentistry and anesthesia.

One of the things that kind of half-amuses and half-irritates me is that a few people, having read the article, have emailed me, sharing with me the wonders of feeding a raw diet or a diet with bones, and how that will negate the entire need for veterinary dental care. A few have offered to put me in touch with some raw feeders so I'll be able to learn about it.

I shouldn't be irritated, since I don't state in the article that I have fed a raw diet to my dogs and cats for over 21 years. But I do mention natural diets, albeit only in passing, in a "food for thought" way. And of course, my very first article for SFGate.com was about homemade diets, including raw diets.

Mostly, though, is another one of my pet peeves: The idea that raw feeding solves all problems. It doesn't. I've had lifelong raw, BARF-fed dogs who still needed dental care.

In addition, most dogs eat kibble. While I'm happy to try to change their owners' minds about that, the reality is, I'll be successful with very few of them. For the vast majority, information about how to safely get good care for their pets' dental needs is much more useful and potentially lifesaving to their pets than a thousand unheeded suggestions to give the dog a bone.

Whatever your opinion on that, here's a sample and a link to the complete piece:

Remember that the real culprit in dental disease is not the tartar you can see but the bacterial growth you can't see: under the gums, in gingival pockets and in the bone. It's not possible to properly examine a pet's mouth while he or she is awake, let alone actually probe gingival pockets and detect infection in the bone. Scraping off the visible tartar may make the teeth prettier, but it does nothing for the pet's health. And if it stops an owner from getting proper dental care for a pet who needs it, masks a serious dental problem, causes aspiration pneumonia or seeds the bloodstream with oral bacteria, how is this a good thing? How is this safer than anesthesia in the hands of an expert?

So while your fear of anesthetizing your dog or cat for a dental cleaning is natural and understandable, the solution to that fear isn't to seek out less qualified individuals who tell you what you want to hear, but to work with more qualified practitioners who really know what they're talking about.

Complete article here.

Blues legend BB King

Clint over at club.kingsnake, who swore after SXSW that he was done, done with music blogging, caught BB King's Toronto show night before last. He got some incredible photos and reviewed the show:

B.B. sits down to play now, and this contributes to the intimate nature of his live show. He also spends a lot of time telling stories and interacting with the more jovial members of the audience. Between (and during!) songs we were treated to stories of boyhood trips to town, later trips where after a "beer and half" he'd venture across the tracks to see if the "white water" tasted different form the "colored water." B.B. can laugh now about the repercussions if he'd been caught on the wrong side of the tracks in the segregated south of the 1930s and 40s, but admits that at the time it was no laughing matter. The audience also sustained a good hearted ribbing when they failed to join in during "When Love Comes To Town," which was written for Mr. King by U2's Bono.

The evening's highlight for me was when the horn section left the stage and B.B., with the guitarist and bassist seated on either side of him, played some great blues and told more of his stories. The legend's guitar tone was to die for, and I loved watching him let loose on occasion with some delicious runs and his trademark otherworldly singing vibrato. "You Are My Sunshine" was incredible!

Full review and link to the photo gallery here. Show Clint he's doing the right thing to keep blogging about music.

Irrational thoughts from a delusional place

This is the first morning in two months that I haven't gone to the PetConnection blog before I even had my morning coffee.

I'd say this is a sign that the pet food recall story might finally be winding down, but I think it's more just that I'm burning out. So consider this just a stupid meaningless venting of excess insanity that will allow me to continue functioning for one more day.

Good morning, Dr. Acheson

The LA Times' Abigail Goldman, who won a Pulitzer for "The Walmart Effect," has done some great reporting on the food safety issues around the apparently endless pet food recall. She did a profile of new FDA "food czar" David Acheson, and she quoted me:

Acheson says he tries to find a balance between informing and disseminating incomplete or inaccurate information. "The goal across the board is to be as transparent as we possibly can and to tell the public what we know and what we don't."

During an investigation, he says, some brand names can't be given out and others shouldn't be until their roles can be verified.

That's one of the key tussles with activists and pet owners. As federal officials try to reassure the public that pet food is safe, critics say, the number of recalls and animals exposed to tainted products continues to rise.

In all, more than 150 brands and more than 5,000 different products have been affected by the recall. Millions of chickens, 56,000 swine and an undetermined number of fish may have eaten tainted feed.

Acheson has declined to name the hog and poultry farms affected by the contaminated feed, and he often doles out other names only after the companies have issued their own recalls.

A dedicated group of animal owners parses Acheson's every public utterance. They scour the Internet for food safety documents and Acheson's public testimony and then post them — along with commentaries — on websites and blogs.

"The tone of his remarks is more meant to reassure than to reform (note from Christie: I actually said "inform"), to restore consumer confidence with words rather than with actions and facts and science," says Christie Keith, a contributing editor for syndicated column Pet Connection and a blogger at PetConnection.com.

Adds Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, which researches food safety issues: "They err on the side of calming people instead of saying, 'We don't know'."

Full article here.

Friday iPod Challenge, the "SHE LIVES!" edition

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: While I am indeed alive, I have no life whatsoever.

I don't even know how far behind I am on linking to stuff I've written, which I make at least some feeble attempt to keep track of here. I believe I wrote an article grading the cable networks on lesbian/gay visibility for AfterElton.com - I have the sole byline on it, but it was a collaborative effort with all the guys who are listed at the end as "contributing."

Then I boldy tread where no lesbian has gone before and wrote an article on the most groundbreaking gay male sex scenes on television. Apparently people actually like to read about sex, go figure.

So, I also blog over there on AfterElton... about the gaying of TV, about the glorious cheesy horribleness of Dante's Cove, about Hyatt Hotels not having the big gay love (I'm supposed to be following up on that story, but I had a three day headache and forgot),  about gay vampires on TV,  and a free movie about the history of queer cinema that you can download or watch online.

And next week I interview HGTV's David Bromstad.

So, that was the fluff. Now, for the substance. We had a live online panel discussion about the pet food recall with itchmo, petfoodtracker, thepetfoodlist, Gina, and me, over on pethobbyist.com. The transcript is here. It was wild, we had around 300 people come through.

If I listed all the blogging I've done on this subject at PetConnection in the last week, it would take up a lot of time I could spend more profitably shopping for shoes working, so I won't. Just believe me when I tell you, every time someone at the FDA speaks, my head explodes.

So, the iPod challenge. If you've actually read this far, well, just remember no good deed goes unpunished. Now I'm going to make you work.

You don't actually need an iPod. I just wanna know what you're listening to. I used to ask for a random playlist, but now I want the ten songs currently in heaviest rotation, or that you most recently played, on your mp3 or CD player, or heck, your tape deck or turntable, I am not a technological elitist.

Here are the last ten played songs on my iPod:

1. Baby's On Fire by Marc Almond (God, wasn't this on last week? I must like it)
2. Going to a Town by Rufus Wainwright
3. Caroline Says I by Lou Reed
4. Nessuno mi può giudicare by Caterina Caselli
5. Lover's Spit (Redux) by Broken Social Scene (this is the Bee Hives version with Leslie Feist singing)
6. Holiday in Cambodia by the Dead Kennedys
7. Coming Back to You by Leonard Cohen (I have no memory of listening to those two songs back to back; I can't believe I would have forgotten that)
8. Madam Butterfly (after "Un bel di vedremo" from "Madama Butterfly") by Malcolm McLaren
9. Glenview by Pansy Division
10. Boy (Acoustic) by Erasure

So, whatcha listening to these days?

Pet food recall: USA Today probes the pet food industry

• If you have a sick pet or a question on your pet’s health, call your veterinarian.


• If you’re new to the site, please check out our general information page (includes information on recalled foods).


• If you want to report a sick or deceased pet, click here.

Update: Here is the link to the transcript from the chat with itchmo, petfoodtracker, thepetfoodlist, Gina, and me on Tuesday night over on PetHobbyist.com - it was an amazing chat - thanks to the other panelists and everyone who came!

USA Today's Julie Schmit, both on her own and with science writer Elizabeth Weise, has done stellar work on the pet food recall story all along. And I deliberately say "pet food recall" story, because she just brought the focus back to where it all began in a brilliant piece that just came out about an hour ago.

In "Pet Food Probe: Who was watching suppliers?" she writes:

Even some pet-food companies say they don't always know what's really in the food they sell. Or where the ingredients come from.

If you long suspected pet food contained mystery meat, this won't surprise you. But for a $15 billion industry whose profits depend on consumers' trust, the admission may be the biggest revelation of all from the 8-week-old pet-food recall.

Eight weeks. I knew that, and yet it still shocks me, given that just yesterday the FDA said there may be yet more pet foods being recalled soon. Or sometime, anyway. Maybe not soon. I don't know, because they won't say.

But back to "Pet Food Probe":

Five pet-food companies also recently said the company that made food for them added rice protein concentrate without their knowledge or consent. That came to light, the pet-food companies say, because the foods had to be recalled after the contamination was discovered.

This is what has hit consumer confidence the hardest, in my view: That these same companies that keep telling us to trust them, trust them, trust them, didn't actually know what was going on with their foods. They say they were betrayed by their contract manufacturer, but how do pet owners feel? It's not, after all, our company's brand that was damaged; it was our pets' health and lives. I might trust them, but how far down the chain am I supposed to keep trusting the people they trust?

In addition, it's not just about allegations of fraud.

... American Nutrition said in a statement it didn't do anything deceitful by using the rice protein ingredient. It said the pet-food formulas, per the customers' requests, were "rice-based" and so it selected rice protein as a "fortification source" from the "same family."

Still, the pet-food labels — what consumers look at — should have listed rice protein concentrate, says Eric Nelson, president of the American Association of Feed Control Officials, which defines ingredients.

Especially given that we were constantly being urged and reassured by the pet food industry and many in the veterinary profession (who are often expressing feelings of betrayal themselves, these days) to read the labels so we could avoid wheat gluten and, later, rice protein concentrate.

So, who is responsible?

While some pet-food companies claim that they were victims of fraud, the case also illuminates weaknesses in U.S. pet-food-manufacturing oversight that companies are now trying to correct. One is that companies who market pet foods often don't make them and may not watch their contract manufacturers closely enough. The situations also raise questions about how diligent companies have been in selecting and inspecting suppliers of raw ingredients.

"The industry got lax and is ratcheting up the due diligence," says Greg Aldrich, consultant at Pet Food & Ingredient Technology. "None of them want to be caught in something like this again."

[....]

"The entire industry is bloodied," says Mark Witriol, co-owner of Pet Food Express, which has 31 San Francisco-area locations. "Consumer trust is completely broken."

One of the harshest blows to consumer trust has come from the ongoing, repeated new recalls. Even if virtually all the food on pet food store shelves is safe, the fact that we don't know where the next recall is coming from makes "trust" impossible. And the most recent recalls, involving companies claiming they didn't even know the ingredients were in their foods, are especially troubling.

There's no consistency in how well pet-food sellers supervise their co-packers. "Some do extensive audits. Some don't," Aldrich says. Costco audited American Nutrition for good manufacturing practices, which govern things from cleanliness to record keeping, and found it to be a good operator.

Since the recall, Wal-Mart has begun setting up an audit process for its pet-food makers, says spokeswoman Karen Burke.

Blue Buffalo says it sometimes has an employee in plants when its product is being made. The smaller Canine Caviar does not.

Blue Buffalo has terminated its contract with American Nutrition, saying it no longer trusts the company. Canine Caviar is considering dropping its canned-food line because it lacks confidence in American Nutrition and Menu, and there are few other options, says President Jeff Baker.

Other pet-food sellers are stepping up their oversight of:

Raw-ingredient sourcing. Royal Canin USA has vowed not to use vegetable proteins, which include wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, from China.

C.J. Foods said in a press release that it will not use protein sources from "exotic locations." Wal-Mart has asked its pet-food makers to find ways to improve raw-ingredient sourcing, says Burke.

Manufacturing oversight. Iams has a new policy forbidding its suppliers, including Menu Foods, from switching suppliers of raw ingredients unless Iams has checked out that supplier and OK'd the switch. Natural Balance and Diamond are requesting production records, which include ingredients, from contract manufacturers.



Production. The recall will push more pet-food companies to make their food rather than contract it out, says Tim Phillips, editor of Petfood Industry magazine.

One company is already heading in that direction. Natura Pet Products, owner of the Innova and Evo brands, has vowed to buy or build a canning facility to make its own wet foods, even though none of its products have been recalled.

"At the end of the day, if anybody is going to screw something up, we want it to be us," says Natura co-founder Peter Atkins.

This story of the pet food recall has become a different story now -- the one many of us knew it was from the beginning, not about pet food safety, but about food safety, period.

But for those of us for whom this will always be a story about the animals we love, and too many of us have lost, this article is essential reading. So read it.

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|Technorati Tags: pet food recall, dogs, cats,veterinarian, veterinary

Pet food recall: House Ag Committee Chair says we " got lucky "

• If you have a sick pet or a question on your pet’s health, call your veterinarian.


• If you’re new to the site, please check out our general information page (includes information on recalled foods).


• If you want to report a sick or deceased pet, click here.

Collin Peterson, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, said on Wednesday that the United States "just got lucky this time," referring to the food safety investigation that has grown out of the pet food recall. From Reuters:

He pointed to FDA's inspection of an estimated 1 percent of food imports as a problem that could create serious animal and human health issues in the future.

"This is a recipe for major problems down the road," said Peterson. "The recalls and quarantines we have seen in response to mislabeled, melamine-tainted products are minor to what we could see in the future if this problem is not addressed."

Didn't the FDA's new "food safety czar" David Acheson just say the other day, right before my head exploded, that increasing the 1 percent to 2 percent wouldn't change anything?

I was looking around for a transcript; the House Ag Committee website says they commonly take THREE TO SIX WEEKS. Is there a clip or anything anywhere out there? Gina had linked earlier to their prepared opening statements, which are here for Petersen and here for Acheson.

And ummm, speaking of Acheson again:

David Acheson, FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection, said he is optimistic the risks of eating fish will be minimal, even though contaminated ingredients may have made up a greater percentage of the fish feed than of the chicken feed

How's that "dilution effect" thing workin' for ya, Dave?

I was all happy about the memorandum of understanding with China we reported on earlier today, until one of our readers pointed out we already have one:

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Minister Li Changjiang of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to improve bilateral cooperation on animal and plant health and food safety.

"China is an increasingly important market for U.S. food and agricultural products," said Johanns. "In 2005, U.S. farmers and ranchers sold more than $6 billion in agricultural products to China, making it our fifth largest export market. This memorandum of understanding will create a structure to enable us to address sanitary, phytosanitary and food safety issues before they become barriers to the thriving agricultural trade between our two countries."

Under this MOU the two countries will exchange information on food regulations and standards, inspection and quarantine procedures, and other issues such as pests and disease, harmful residues, and food certification.

That one was signed in April.

April 11, 2006.

There goes my head exploding again.

Retailer Pet Food Express has some good news and bad news about the recall, and details about the products it sells, here.

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|Technorati Tags: pet food recall, dogs, cats,veterinarian, veterinary