- A prominent Florida law firm has filed a Class Action Lawsuit
against the $16 billion dollar a year pet food industry, specifically the pet
food companies and retailers. The suit alleges premium-grade pet food labeled
and promoted as "Complete and Balanced" has “Historically Contained Such Items
as Euthanized Dogs and Cats, Restaurant Grease, Hair, Hooves, and Diseased
Animals, and Other Inedible Garbage.” The action
specifies
a long list of food industry giants by name.
The Miami firm of Maltzman Foreman PA point out the defendants
claim the foods contain “choice cuts of prime beef, chunks of chicken, fish,
fresh wholesome vegetables and whole grains” but their Plaintiffs say the food
actually contains "inedible slaughterhouse waste products of the human food
chain such as spines, heads, tails, hooves, hair, and blood.” The suit states
in part “rendering companies … also added other inedible ‘waste’ such as
euthanized cats and dogs from veterinarian offices and animal shelters …”
This is news?
Not. Major websites such as
TheDogPlace (links below) have presented the sickening facts for nearly a decade.
It also helped break this story
“It
isn’t just the remains of someone’s pet… he could be ingesting pentobarbital,
the lethal drug used to euthanize pets."
That gruesome fact is more than sickening. It can be deadly to
pets that eat the food. Quoting from reporter Jamie Allmar, KMOV TV,
“It's a sad secret kept by most animal
shelters run by local governments. The dogs and cats they put to death go to
one place, a rendering plant in Millstadt, Illinois where their bodies are
boiled down into raw materials that could be winding up in pet food.”
TheDogPlace (Dog Eat Dog*) article explains “Like
many other dark secretes that affect the food you and I eat, the Food and Drug
Administration appears to ignore the problem. The FDA claimed that drugs like
sodium pentobarbital, which is used to kill the animals, did not survive the
rendering process. Now the FDA has proof that it does. We learn that test
results in 1998 have been kept secrete and that "several retail feeds were
confirmed for the presence of pentobarbital which could have only come from
euthanized animals.”
Class Counsel for Maltzman Foreman, Catherine J. MacIvor says
"The melamine debacle is not the only serious problem with pet food. The number
and frequency of lethal pet food recalls in the last few years clearly shows the
seriousness and extent of this problem." Indeed it does. But aflatoxin and
waste from the slaughterhouse floor is almost understandable compared to the
esthetic and medically abhorrent practice of feeding euthanized pets to other
pets.
Cattle and dairy farmers learned the hard way. Indeed, there
exists serious concern that the practice of feeding cows to cows may have led to
the spread of Mad Cow Disease.
The Class Action suit points out that today’s pet foods are
“largely carbohydrates and sugars combined with toxic preservatives and
additives with very little to no meat at all.” Dedicated breeders know how to
read labels. In fact, most have been so turned off by that knowledge they feed
human-grade foodstuffs.
Most cat breeder-exhibitors know cats require more meat
than dogs. Cats simply do not thrive on today’s plethora of “junk food” and in
fact, wild cats die if fed “cat food.” Dog owners, let that be food for
thought. We have domesticated dogs even better than ourselves, therefore they
tolerate more but at what cost?
related story
that precipitated this lawsuit
Dog Eat
Dog
http://www.thedogpress.com/DogFood/Lawsuit-0705.asp
