Thursday, August 16, 2007

The corporate bottom line

GREED - corporations value the bottom line - read that again - corporations value the bottom line!

Note that people, persons, humans, pets, children or any words that refer to LIVE beings are NOT valued by corporations - well unless you are the CEO - then you value YOU and your Boards.

Hence the outsourcing of manufacturing to countries that pay low wages. and the business in those countries have learned also to value the bottom line so they cut corners, use poor quality materials - so that those companies make money too [for the owners.]

Who pays? The low wage workers who get sick and the consumers around the world who buy products that can kill them or damage them.. like plastic in dog food, deadly fish sold as edible, lead in toys, etc., etc.

We need to revamp our corporation laws and we need to stop all this outsourcing...until we do - this deadly GREED will continue to harm ourselves, our children and our pets.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Bad pet food = corporate issues?

A few additional foods are being recalled; lawsuits are springing up and people are worried with good reason.

It seems that the wheat gluten in the dog food contained melamine...used in making plastic!

An aside here - plastic is becoming more well known as a major source of "much badness." In San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors approved legislation this past Tuesday "to outlaw plastic checkout bags at large supermarkets in about six months and large chain pharmacies in about a year."
Full article HERE.

HERE is a CNN article about recent recalls and if you are in Oregon, HERE is a link to a local article that includes Oregon and FDA links for more information.

Some news sources suggest checking your dry pet food for what gluten - I just did and feel a lot better - none there!

If we were not "wedded" to large mega corporations would we have this kind of problem? Why is ONE manufacturer the maker of so many varieties of pet food? does that mean they are all the same except for the pricing? And of course even though it's a Canadian corporation - it buys it's products from countries other than Canada and the last I knew, Canada had sizable farming areas....so is GREED always the bottom line?

Fraid so.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Corporations and lack of oversight

What else can the corporations do to harm us?

They knew about the bad pet food on February 20th!

From the CBC website: full story HERE

The investigation is focusing on wheat gluten used at two U.S. plants as the likely source of contamination.

The FDA first learned of a potential problem after receiving complaints on Feb. 20 and followed up by feeding the "cuts and gravy" product to 40 to 50 cats. Of those, seven animals died, said Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's top veterinarian. He added the contamination appeared more deadly to cats than to dogs.


I love my pets and my food is not on the list - and I don't feed pouches and/or wet food to them.

Turns out the the bad stuff most likely comes from two US plants - not the Canadian manufacturer..interesting?

We live in a country where people food is bad and pet food is bade...any connection to an administration that has curtailed inspections of food? Hmmmmm

More that needs investigating - but we know that democrats can multitask and do more than who-knows-how-many investigations at the same time.

From the AP FEBRUARY 27


FDA food-safety inspections steadily decreasing

By Andrew Bridges and Seth Borenstein

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The federal agency that has been front and center in warning the public about tainted spinach and contaminated peanut butter is conducting just half the food-safety inspections it did three years ago.

The cuts by the Food and Drug Administration come despite a barrage of high-profile food recalls.

"We have a food-safety crisis on the horizon," said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

Between 2003 and 2006, FDA food-safety inspections dropped 47 percent, according to a database analysis of federal records by The Associated Press.



Full article HERE

Guess we should start asking who knew about all this bad food and when did they know it?

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Bad dog food being recalled

Warning

Many of us have pets - check what you are feeding them just as you watch what you eat for you

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A major manufacturer of dog and cat food sold under Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and other store brands recalled 60 million containers of wet pet food Friday after reports of kidney failure and deaths....

The recall covers the company's "cuts and gravy" style food, which consists of chunks of meat in gravy, sold in cans and small foil pouches between December 3 and March 6 throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico...


The pet food was sold by stores operated by the Kroger Co., Safeway Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and PetSmart Inc.

full article HERE


The company has a list of the recalled food for dog and cats - HERE

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

New Year - new direction

Started this blog as a diatribe on specific corporations - at least in my head... now that a new year has begun, I am thinking that I will get into some specifics on how corporations like to think of themselves as "persons" except when they don't ...

more later after I do some research....