See all posts related to the pet food recall.
The pet food contamination might have affected tens of thousands of animals:
Pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical might have sickened or killed 39,000 cats and dogs nationwide, based on an extrapolation from data released Monday by one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals.
Banfield, The Pet Hospital, said an analysis of its database, compiled from records collected by its more than 615 veterinary hospitals, suggests that three out of every 10,000 cats and dogs that ate the pet food contaminated with melamine developed kidney failure.
The vast number of animals affected would tend to support the theory of something a lot nastier than relatively non-toxic melamine as being responsible. And that in turn suggests a deliberate act to poison the pet food.
I've suggested that the animal liberation people might be responsible if, in fact, this turns out to deliberate. Why those people? Because I decided that the real target was the pet food industry (Menu Foods and Iams in this case), and not the pets or their owners.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is a group who hates Americans in general and Americans with pets in particular. I'm talking about illegal immigrants and their advocates:
"It's our brown skin they don't like," says Martha von Ellenrieder, standing under a banner that reads "Esta es mi Tierra" (This is my land). Her words have a chilling edge to them, though it's something everyone in the room knows all too well. Similar words have been expressed since the 1840s, when Mexico lost half its country to the United States.
She was speaking at a bi-national conference held here last week to analyze the recent immigration proposals from presidents Fox and Bush.
Mike Zepeda, a longtime human rights activist from Texas, speaks up: "I fight because I still remember growing up, seeing the "No Dogs or Mexicans" signs.
"In this country, dogs have more rights," retorts someone else. "The other day, someone received three years for killing a dog. Here, you can kill a Mexican and get away with it."
Stories flow at the conference about how the lives of Mexicans have never mattered in this country. Yet, most of the stories are about today: about how hundreds of Mexicans continue to die annually in Southwestern deserts, mountains and rivers. Also, stories flow of vigilantes and agents of the U.S. Border Patrol shooting and killing countless unarmed Mexicans with impunity.
Companion animals are worth more than illegal immigrants. This is a theme repeated over and over again:
Walking down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, a 34-hear-old Mexican native named Flor tells me she is simply grateful to have her freedom.
Four years ago, Flor says, she was lured from her home in Mexico by people who promised her free passage to the United States, legal entry, and a good job as a tailor near Los Angeles.
When she arrived, however, she was immediately enslaved in a sweat shop and forced to sew 18 hours a day, sleep in a storage room, and eat little, she tells us. She says her boss told her she could go nowhere until she paid $2,600 for her transit into the country.
Flor was lucky. After one-and-a-half months, she escaped captivity, she says, and after much adjustment became convinced that U.S. authorities would sympathize with her plight and help her.
She is now living here under a special visa developed for the victims of trafficking. She's trying to bring her children in too. But she says she is haunted by something her trafficker told her.
"She said, 'Dogs have more rights in this country than we had,'" Flor tells me.
"What did you think?" I ask.
"In some ways," Flor murmurs, "She was saying the truth."
Two reports, one by the DoJ and the other by the CDC indicates that the “probable suspects” are Mexican illegals who work at the restaurants where the poisonings broke out and certainly in the American pet food factories. Militant Latino groups are furious because the Republicans want to physically deport all illegals and are further outraged at the slave wages and poor working conditions the American businessmen force them to work under.
I can't say anything about the truth of this statement or the credibility of the source.
The use of rat poison to control the population of what we would consider pet animals is a common practise in Mexico:In Mexico, it's very common practice to put out rat poison to control populations of unwanted vermin, including dogs. I am not a veterinarian, but I have heard that the antidote for rat poisoning (WARFRIN is the actual compound) is vitamin K. Do not let your dog eat anything in Mexico, which is very hard to do. If your pet is peeing blood it is possibly due to rat poison, and you are in trouble. If you can bring intravenous vitamin K, then you are ahead of the game. They pee blood because the warfrin destroys the liver.
Warfrin is not the likely agent since in this case, cats are suffering the most, and dying from kidney failure, but the principle is the same. It makes for an interesting theory.
Meanwhile, some people continue to doubt the wheat gluten melamine theory, but that's not stopping other people from filing lawsuits against Menu Foods.
