- After having to put down my last dog, a family member
for 16 years, I knew I did the right thing. The cancerous lump had gotten
huge, but not so large as to cause a great deal of discomfort; at least
that is what the veterinarian told me. I'll never forget the look in the
old dog's eyes; she knew precisely what was going on.
-
- It is for this reason that I vowed never to have a pet
again. The pain of losing a family pet that had been so loving, as well
as so loved, was a pain that I chose not to relive. So it wasn't that
I was uncaring when the news broke of a fatal contamination of dog and
cat food; it had more to do with a penchant for not wanting to remember
an earlier pain involving pets rather than being unaffected by no longer
being a pet owner..
-
- A couple of months ago, my childhood friends from the
old block in Flushing, Queens, New York City, came up to buy me dinner
in my favorite restaurant to celebrate my birthday. We've been friends
for half a century and used to "do-op" together under the street
light back in the late 50s. I asked Al, back then our lead singer, how
"Mickey D" was doing. Mickey was Al's dachshund. Imagine that!
Al was born in Puerto Rico, and my parents were immigrants, legally entering
this country from Germany. But Al had the dachshund!
-
- To be honest, my mom and dad had a dachshund before I
was born. In fact, I owned three of them. Al told me his dog died from
acute renal failure; kidney failure. Al felt his aunt, who still lives
with him, may have fed Mickey some inappropriate table scraps. But the
incidents of pet deaths from the same cause now attributed to kidney failure
tells me Mickey succumbed to the poisonous filler clandestinely jockeyed
into this country from China. Al asked me to look into the pet food problem
as well as some bad vibes he was getting concerning similar contamination
in the farm animal feed chain.
-
- I distinctly recall libertarian "free market"
global capitalists who celebrated and extolled the wonders of the industrial
boom now "profiting" the people of China. What a glorious revolution
sayeth a popular libertarian soothsayer! But our humanist failed to recall
the advantages that befell the criminal capitalists as well. He forgot
to recall the plight of low pay, unsanitary and unsafe working conditions,
the mining cave-ins and explosions, the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire, and
other exhilarating examples of glorious capitalism.
-
- Now please don't get me wrong here; I am not now, nor
have I ever been, a fan of socialism and communism. Those latter philosophies
are abhorrent to the human condition and the inherent spiritualism of each
and every human being. But realistically, there are goods and bads in
virtually all of life's experiences. Capitalism, by far and away, provides
humanity with much greater potential benefit than any form of collectivism.
It is foolish to generalize, I believe, that all capitalism is good while
portraying on the other hand that all socialism is bad.
-
- That said, it appears that Chinese capitalism is now
progressing through the same stages as was the case with America's industrial
explosion that launched the last century. We enjoyed freedom of speech
back then, before our criminal mass media silenced outrage and our government
abolished protest and the nation's rule of law. Back in the early 1900s,
America's educated, reading populace consumed the efforts of the "Muckrakers,"
those fiery writers who exposed the filthy meat industry and other abhorrent
industrial practices. These were capitalized upon by President Theodore
Roosevelt and the "Progressive Movement." In short, the movement
justified and ushered in government regulation and supervision of private
sector large businesses that wielded a definite economic and social influence
over the American people. Roosevelt was dubbed the "Trustbuster,"
launching his progressive attacks against the railroads and other conglomerates
and monopolies, in order to make US safe from evil capitalism.
-
- Without remarking upon the success or failure of the
progressive movement, especially in light of the Enrons of today and the
oil and weapons cartels that now send our kids to war, the Food and Drug
Administration is an obvious outgrowth of the progressive Big Mother government
protectionist movement started during Roosevelt I. Here's Wikipedia's
account: "By the 1930's, muckraking journalists, consumer protection
organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger
regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products which
had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages,
cosmetics which caused blindness, and worthless "cures" for diabetes
and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through
congress for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the
public outcry over the 1937 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elixir_Sulfanilamide>Elixir
Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug
formulated with a toxic, untested solvent." The primary ingredient
in that poison, was diethylene glycol. Now 70 years later, the poison
has reared its ugly head again.
-
- Just as in the case with melamine, the animal feed filler
made from coal that was used in the wheat gluten filler that contaminated
the pet foods which killed the beloved animals of Americans, the sole source
for that poison and diethylene glycol today is the Peoples Republic of
China. 70 years ago, 100 Americans died from the phony, poisonous glycerin,
and the outrage enabled Roosevelt II to initiate legislation making the
FDA a more powerful and viable watchdog in the public interest. But the
FDA isn't really tasked with watching out for our pets as concerns poisonsonous
pet food. The problem is that the wheat gluten additive from China was
also in farm feed given to hogs, cattle and chickens. These all become
food sources for human consumption in the form of meat and poultry. Where
has the FDA been on this?
-
- The pet deaths have even managed to get the attention
of our normally non-existent mass media. Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker,
writing for The New York Times, in their May 6, 2007 article, "From
China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine," point out that, "China
is already being accused by the United States authorities of exporting
wheat gluten containing and industrial chemical, melamine, that ended up
in pet food and livestock feed. The FDA recently banned imports of Chinese-made
wheat gluten after it was linked to pet deaths in the United States."
But Bogdanich and Hooker's article concerned bogus, deadly pharmaceutical
additives, none of which has yet, supposedly, hit our shores. But how
do we know that for sure? Does anyone out there still trust American government?
-
- The Chinese government is aware that its own citizens
have died from the poisonous drug additive, formulated to create massive
profits capitalizing on a minimum concern for the safety of its human consumers.
Here's more from Bogdanich and Hooker: "Toxic syrup has figured in
at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades.
Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise
origin of the poison has never been determined. But records and interviews
show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major
source of counterfeit drugs.
-
- Panama is the most recent victim. Last year, government
officials there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles
of cold medicine - with devastating results. Families have reported 365
deaths from the poison, 100 of which have been confirmed so far. With
the onset of the rainy season, investigators are racing to exhume as many
potential victims as possible before bodies decompose even more."
-
- And New York Times reporters David Barboza and Alexei
Barrionuevo in their April 30th article, "Filler in Animal Feed Is
Open Secret in China," offer, "As American food safety regulators
head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way
into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in
this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is
routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein." The article continues:
"For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly
supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive
that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional
benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers
here."
-
- Barboza and Barrionuevo explain that, "Melamine
is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food, after
the chemical was found in wheat gluten linked this month to the deaths
of at least 16 pets in the United States. No one knows exactly how melamine
(which is not believed to be particularly toxic) became so fatal in pet
food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal. The link
to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration
that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly
coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened."
-
- Foreign additives for our food? Foreign additives in
drugs? Has the latter mass production anomaly hit our big pharmaceutical
profiteers as yet? It seems anytime we hear about the FDA nowadays is
when they launch a campaign against what they believe a deficiency in God's
creation and label it as a "disease." The current outbreak in
American obesity will soon be so codified. Then Big Pharma benefits from
the required prescription writing and vitamin supplements and over-the-counter
diet pills which will now require a medical prescription: $ chi-ching $
chi-ching $! And while the FDA is busy creating problems for solving,
melamine has entered our food chain. Can we expect the FDA to get really
concerned by at least first telling US the truth about what's really going
on? Of course not!
-
- And just how far do we need to go to catch American gangsta
government operations in their latest lies? How about the very same article
I just cited from The New York Times? Let's start with Barboza and Barrionuevo
again: "The Food and Drug Administration has already banned imports
of wheat gluten from China after it received more than 14,000 reports of
pets believed to have been sickened by packaged food. And last week, the
agency opened a criminal investigation in the case and searched the offices
of at least one pet food supplier."
-
- And: "The Department of Agriculture has also stepped
in. On Thursday, the agency ordered more than 6,000 hogs quarantined or
slaughtered after some pet food ingredients laced with melamine were accidentally
sent to hog farms in eight states, including California." Again,
the date of the Barboza-Barrionuevo article was April 30, 2007.
-
- In a May 4th article from the Times by Andrew Martin
and Ian Austen, "U.S. Investigators Visiting Pet Food Makers,"
the article offers: "The F.D.A.'s commissioner of food protection,
Dr. David Acheson, said inspectors would ultimately visit hundreds of manufacturers
to make sure that a problem with contaminated ingredients, which so far
has been confined to pet food and animal feed, has not spread." Then
it declares: "Federal officials said they have received about 17,000
calls from consumers worried that their pets ate contaminated feed; of
those, about half said their pets had died as a result. However, officials
have said they have not confirmed the number of deaths. (Fewer than 20
deaths have been confirmed.)"
-
- Did you catch that? On April 30, only a mere 14,000
complaints were reported; yet, over a period of only four additional days,
17,000 complaints are admitted to. And of these, only 20 really died because
our noble officials want you to believe them rather than the untrustworthy
American public. They want you to accept their "confirmed" numbers;
but then there's this from Martin and Austen: "The F.D.A. has already
gathered about 700 samples, mostly from recalled pet food, and found that
394 of the samples were contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical
used in plastics and fertilizer." 394??? That's 56 percent!!!
-
- The FDA bozos want you not to believe the citizen consumer
call-ins which the article listed at 17,000, and which the "federal
officials" involved claimed that complaints citing that half the pets
represented by those complaints had died were untrue. Hmmmm! 56 percent
is pretty damn close to half, now isn't it?
-
- As usual, our stinking government is lying! In all probability,
an epidemic of dead pets is happening right now across the United States,
but the corrupt lying FDA won't tell US that. They don't want US to panic;
but it's more than OK if we all just drop dead! Think of all that farm
pork in the Iraq "war" funding bill that Bush just vetoed. Think
of all the pork going to the farm vote for the Demos. Think of the losses
if American consumers cut back on pork and poultry purchases. But melamine-tainted
feed has also been fed to cattle and to fish on fish farms.
-
- So the vitamin and over the counter assaults by the FDA
overburdened them in their never-ending quest to protect the American consumer
from unnamed "diseases," huh? What about protecting US from
poisons made in China to increase the profits of corporate criminals there?
Don't they have a full plate right now; bad drug additives circulating
the international shipping lanes, and bad food additives? We've come full
circle; the FDA got its power from diethylene glycol, as Bogdanich and
Hooker point out, a prime ingredient in industrial solvents and some antifreezes.
And melamine is derived from coal. Haven't we determined long ago that
coal in our locomotives, power plants, and in our former home heating and
hot water furnaces was unhealthy and environmentally unsound? Didn't we
learn, even as children, not to drink industrial solvents and anti-freeze?
-
- What good is shutting the barn door after the horse has
left? Wasn't the idea behind the FDA to serve as an inspector BEFORE the
fact, as this that makes more sense? The FDA doesn't know if melamine
is harmful to humans yet; I guess we're all soon going to find out! How
come the FDA couldn't figure out that eating coal and drinking anti-freeze
ain't good for one's inners? Perhaps the time has come to put some
coal in their stocking and some brains in their skulls!
-
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- © THEODORE E. LANG 5/7/07 All rights reserved
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- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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