PET FOOD SCARE

Did you know the Pet-Food Industy in the U.S. is a $15 billion industry?

from MSNBC article:
Technically, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for ensuring that pet foods, like human foods, are safe to eat, truthfully labeled and produced under sanitary conditions. But on Tuesday, FDA officials admitted that the regulation of pet food takes a back seat to its regulatory obligations of other food and drug sectors, and that inspections of pet-food processing plants are done only on a for-cause basis.

"There are limited resources," said David Elder, director of the Office of Surveillance and Compliance in the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine in Rockville, Md. Elder added that inspections of companion animals' food products are "based on risk." Which means that the processing plant in Emporia, Kans., where the tainted food was manufactured, had never been inspected by government officials until after consumers started complaining about pets dying of kidney failure.

Without regular inspections, the pet-food industry is largely self-regulated. In the United States, the Association of American Feed Control Officials sets guidelines and definitions for pet foods, and there are other government standards and regulations that companies are expected to heed through their own quality-assurance programs.

"It's wide open. As far as ingredients go, there is no regulation," says Ann Martin, a Canadian pet-health advocate and author of three pet-food-related books, including 1997's "Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food." While the raw materials used in commercial pet food often contain animal protein derived largely from slaughterhouse offal—unused animal parts—Martin contends that there are other sources of that material, including road kill, zoo animal carcasses and fecal matter. Read more.