Menu Foods Tentative Settlement - on - April Fools

How appropriate.

A year after Menu Foods scandal, pet food off the radar of regulators

TORONTO — A year after the tainted pet food scandal at Menu Foods (TSX:MEW.UN) rattled animal lovers and sent the company's stock into a freefall, the pet food industry has slipped off the radar of Canadian regulators and other agencies.

Saturday marks a full-year since dog and cat owners were sent into a panic over the possibility that food they were giving their pets could be tainted by wheat gluten laced with poisonous melamine.

The chemical used for making plastics was added by a China-based supplier as a cheap way to make the food look like it had higher protein levels, but it was also killing some pets that consumed it.

Since then, little has been done in Canada to ensure that pet food is any safer, aside from continuing to rely on companies to self-regulate and monitor their international suppliers.

After the recalls started last year, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency began a review of its responsibilities to pet food and, according to their website, "determine if room for improvement exists within the Canadian system."

On Friday, it appeared as though nothing had changed.

PETitionz.org Gets Ready for the Next Step!

1. People have been extremely disappointed with the response of the pet food manufacturers.
2. Trust has not been re-established with the major pet food manufacturers.
3. Veterinarians did not stand up for the pets the way some expected and hoped that they would.
4. Government regulation, where it exists, is not adequate to meet the challenge and new legislation while welcome is unlikely to have much effect.
   
5. There are many different views of what food is best, what the ingredients should or should not be and a growing consumer shift to smaller and more local food suppliers.
6. Where is an accurate accounting of animals killed and injured by tainted food?
7. People have even been more upset by the emerging stories of what ingredients go into pet food to reach the necessary "crude" protein levels.
8. There is growing certainty that package labeling is not giving the true picture of what is in the food.
9. A huge number of people want to know where ALL of the ingredients really come from.  Reliable sourcing is emerging as a major issue.
   
10. A large and quickly increasing number of people are searching for better ways to make sure that the food they feed their friends is safe.

A federal grand jury in Kansas City has indicted two Chinese companies and a U.S. company for their roles in manufacturing and importing an adulterated ingredient for use in pet food.

Illness and deaths of animals that ate the food led to a massive recall of products last year and the discovery that the ingredient in question contained the contaminants melamine and cyanuric acid. The Food and Drug Administration later determined that the ingredient, which bore the label "wheat gluten," was actually wheat flour.

Following a federal investigation, the grand jury in Kansas City returned a 26-count indictment against two Chinese companies—Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd., a processor of plant proteins, and export broker Suzhou Textiles, Silk, Light Industrial Products, Arts and Crafts I/E Co. Ltd.—and against the companies' top executives.