PetSmart and Petco announced they are halting the sale of Chinese-made dog treats after the US FDA linked over a 1,000 pet deaths to tainted jerky.
This should be seen as a major warning to both China and India. Failure to adequately patrol the quality of manufacturing and production can blackball an entire country or industry.
Are the Indian and Chinese pharmaceutical industries next in line to face a ban?
This is no small question.
These two countries combined make about than half of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients that go into generic and branded drugs in this country. A movement to ban their use or import could devastate an economic engine in those two countries.
Danger danger.
Or 危险危险 and खतरे का खतरा, if you prefer.
Well .... not so much. They're kinda sorta phasing them out ... maybe:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=32196
VIN News is part of the Veterinary Information Network. Edie Lau is an award-winning freelance journalist who worked with me at The Sacramento Bee.
And VIN? It's run by this guy: http://www.petconnection.com/2014/01/16/you-dont-know-what-you-think-you-know/
All this action on the chews started with a VIN-funded testing of the chews, revealing contamination by DEET and an antiviral:
http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=32153
If you want to make sure you avoid Chinese sourced pet treats, make sure you look on the bag and see the "country of product source origin" or some variant of that saying. Just because it says "Made in America" doesn't mean it is American chicken/meat you are purchasing. Sometimes, all that "Made in America" means is that the final product was assembled ( bagged or boxed in the case of pet treats) here on American soil. The raw ingredients can still come from foreign countries, but as long as the final product is finished here, and packaged here, they can still get away with labeling it as "Made in America". I experienced this first hand while looking at chicken tenderloin treats at Petsmart. The bag had a "Made in America" labeling big and proud on the front of the package, but when I looked at the back of the bag, at the bottom, in tiny letters, it said the chicken was sourced from China. I'm SO glad I didn't buy those possibly toxic treats! This is good news that these large box stores are supposedly phasing the Chinese stuff out, but we still need to be vigilant.
ReplyDelete