The World According To Bob

Bob Allen is a philosopher and cyber libertarian. He advocates for the basic human rights of men. Bob has learned to cut through the political nonsense, the propaganda hate, the surface discourse, and talk about the underlying metamessage that the front is hiding. Bob tells it like it is and lets the chips fall where they may. If you like what you read be sure to bookmark this blog and share it with your friends.

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Location: United States

You can't make wrong into right by doing wrong more effectively. It's time for real MEN to stand up and take back our families, our society, and our self respect. It is not a crime to be born a man. It is not a crime to act manly.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Rat Poison in Food?

Many American dogs and cats have died and thousands are sick from poisoned pet food. Canned pet food manufactured by Ontario, Canada-based Menu Foods has been killing pets. The government, with their typical incompetence, reports that there are only 16 "confirmed" deaths of pets. One local veterinarian has collected more than 250 reports of dead pets in his practice area alone. The cause of death has been tracked down to contamination of the pet food with a rat and mice poison called Aminopterin. This compound was once used as a cancer drug in the USA in small quantities, but is no longer used for reasons that should be obvious today. Read story

So how does rat poison not used in the USA get into American pet food you might ask. Blame international trade and either ignorance or lack of due concern. Some decades ago when Bob was 15 year old he worked in the wheat harvests, doing a man's work. [By the way, young men should be out working, doing a man's work, instead of wasting years in state prisons called "schools." For more on schools see "Burn Them Down." http://bobstruth.blogspot.com/2007/01/burn-them-down.html Young men and women in general learn more from a few months of real work than in several years spent in the state holding cells.] When we had cut all the wheat and trucked it into town to the elevators the last truck load was processed as seed for next year's crop. The ten tons of wheat was shoveled by hand into a machine that mixed mice and rat poison with the grain, and then fed the grain into gunny sacks. The sacks were carried into a shed and stacked for storage until the next planting season. You shovel and stack ten tons of grain and you've done a day's work.

The wheat was coated with rat and mice poison was used to prevent mice from eating the seed. It only takes about 6 weeks for a newborn mouse to become a breeding mother mouse. One pregnant mouse can breed into a million mice in only a few months. Without the poison twenty tons of seed could turn into twenty tons of mice much like the little furry Tribbles from the original Star Treck. The rat and mice poison we used was colored bright purple so that nobody would mistake the poisoned seed grain for human or animal feed. Rat and mice poison used on seeds does not kill the plant seeds because their biology is fundamentally different from animal biology. When the grain grows the poison is not transmitted to the new plants, at least the poison we used in the USA in the 1950s wasn't. Its been done that way for many years. Many farmers also buy their seed from commercial firms instead of using their own production. Either way, seed grain is commonly treated with rat and mice poison.

Aminopterin is used in China to poison seed grain, but not in the US or Canada. Canada imports grain from China. A lot of grain, perhaps the majority of grain, is used to feed cattle and other animals. Menu Foods of Ontario, Canada, buys grain in bulk to add to its pet food. Somewhere along the supply chain someone got the poisoned seed grain mixed up with grain suitable for feed. It might have been done accidentally. Somewhere in China, or Canada, or somewhere inbetween during shipping, storage, and re-shipping the paperwork or knowledge of the poisoned grain may have gotten lost or mixed up. Seed grain looks like grain. Grain is not like lettuce, for example, where the seeds are a different part of the plant than the product. Grain is the seeds of the plants, so the seeds for next year's crop can not be distinguished from the produce of this year's crop. When I was working on a farm in 1960 we dyed the seed purple, and the farmers thereabouts knew that purple grain was poisoned. But, does some illegal immigrant farm worker know that purple grain is poisoned? Does some pet food processing plant wank know that purple grain is poisoned? Do the Chinese dye their seed purple when they add the Aminopterin to keep mice from eating the seeds? There are a lot of places that a poison seed grain could have accidentally gotten mixed up with feed grain.

On the other hand it very well could have been deliberate and reckless conversion for profit. Some functionary along the way may have had a load of outdated seed, or deteriorating seed grain, and seen a way to recover his cost by selling it as feed grain. Or a merchant may have found a "good deal" on surplus or deteriorated seed grain and bought it to use for feed thinking that a few dead cats and dogs wouldn't matter. Bob's best guess is that grain traders lost track of the poison, didn't know that seed grain is poisoned, and/or didn't know that this load of grain was seed grain. Once the grain is poisoned it needs to be carefully tracked from poison to soil, and kept out of the food or feed chain. I seriously doubt that the management at Menu Foods knew that they were using poisoned seed grain in their products, but they did know that they were buying "good deal" cheap grain of undetermined origin.

These days with the international trade, the NAFTA agreements Canadian or Mexican laws (or lack of laws) replace the US laws which protect consumers in our country. Canada apparently allows seed grain poisoned with Aminopterin to be imported from China, and then to be carelessly or recklessly sold back into the feed chain. When we throw open our gates and leave our borders wide open we get whatever unscrupulous or careless products are tolerated in other countries.

This year the rat poison ended up in pet food. But who can say that the manufactures of "natural" granola bars, wheat flakes, or other human food haven't gotten a "good deal" on a load of Chinese seed grain being resold by an unknowing merchant in Canada or Mexico? Who can say?

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

My 15 year old lab died last month. Why? The vet claims fluid in the chest. But he stopped eating and drinking water. Didn't move. He was eating Nutro dry dog food. The vet claims it came on "suddenly." No warning. We then gave him gravy dog food to get him to eat. So we're unsure why he died. In fact, no one will know until we hear more, or as I say, the real facts will come out. I will bet every dollar I have that there is MORE contamination with this recall. Why did it take three months to hear about this poisoning by CHINA? The food was contaminated since Dec. 2006. My family now has a new lab. We paid $850 and are training her again. Keep in mind, families with pets, especially dogs, give them training. This is costly. A good dog, requires special care, food and training. Imagine if our dear lab was a service dog? What would the cost be to replace him then? These dogs costs $50K up to replace. It is not like going to the pound and getting a replacement.

I am so upset. Now I hear on my local news (not nationa) as well as international (Canadian) that it "might" be in the human food supply? They can't rule this out? Let's see. Where is our Homeland Security dept? Where is our Dept. of Agriculture?

I read last week that one of the US processing plants for dog food which was part of this recall was located in Kansas. Apparently, this same plant was fined years ago for contaminated cow food, and the FDA or dept of agriculture had to intervene and warm them not to mix certain feed in their product for cattle.

Mad cow?

There is definitely more to come from this CHINA poisoning.

I don't believe anything they tell me.

My otherwise healthy lab is gone and I'm not left wondering who is watching out for Americans!

Angela
Washington, State

March 24, 2007 7:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cats go bad after 3 years from what I've seen, so probably no loss there, but Dogs don't go bad usually (they're loyal till they die). Kinda sucks that Canada is trying to kill off man's best friend, but then again... Canada, like America, hates men (also canadians on the net seem to hate america for some reason also).

Just Sayin' :)
--MikeeUSA--

Canadians would probably be glad if the rat poison got in our human food supply: to "thin out" the "american hurd".

March 24, 2007 7:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Angela
I really don't want to be disrespectful, I love dogs myself
and the loss of your fifteen year old friend must have been terrible. However, for a dog fifteen is very old age, and natural, sudden deaths are very frequent at that lifestage. Just enjoy the good memories and be happy of the good life your dog had.

March 27, 2007 6:54 PM  

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