Contaminated pet food brings indictments

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silvercamaro · #1 Post by **silvercamaro** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:32 am

As always, of course, the bastidges remain innocent until proven guilty.

http://www.kidk.com/news/national/15397166.html

gsabc · #2 Post by **gsabc** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 11:58 am

Saw this yesterday. Don't know how they can prove that the US defendants knew what they were getting was adulterated, unless there's some other relationship between the US and the Chinese companies involved. Even if the US company performed the same test for nitrogen content, I don't see how they'd know it was due to melamine and not protein. With the information given, I see them more as innocent victims than active participants.

Either we test everything coming in to be sure what's in there is only what's supposed to be, or we have to trust our suppliers after making sure they're qualified in the first place. The FDA doesn't have the resources to do the latter, so the importing companies have to. The importing companies don't want to, and don't want to test, either, because either one would be expensive.

The most you can do as a consumer is try to find companies dealing with reputable suppliers, or that have extensive quality control on their incoming raw materials (and their outgoing product, for that matter). Whether that's all US suppliers or not is problematic. Anyone can cheat, or game the system. If it's lucrative enough relative to the chances of getting caught, it'll happen.

PlacentiaSoccerMom · #3 Post by **PlacentiaSoccerMom** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 12:02 pm

I always buy Iams because I thought that it had high quality pet food. I was shocked when some of their products were on the list of contaminated food.

silvercamaro · #4 Post by **silvercamaro** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 1:02 pm

gsabc wrote:Saw this yesterday. Don't know how they can prove that the US defendants knew what they were getting was adulterated, unless there's some other relationship between the US and the Chinese companies involved. Even if the US company performed the same test for nitrogen content, I don't see how they'd know it was due to melamine and not protein. With the information given, I see them more as innocent victims than active participants.

I suspect that you've just summarized the defense for the American distributors. I will be interested to learn if the prosecution brings forth some reason that the firm could have or should have known that the Chinese suppliers had a contaminated product. If not, I most certainly don't want to see the American company left holding the bag. Certainly, the Chinese suppliers will never face any punishment from the U.S. judicial system.