I was watching a report this morning on CNN that repeated what Kirsten notes in her comment on Friday’s post—that some thousands of pigs had apparently been given feed containing melamine, the poison responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen dogs and cats in tainted pet food. No problem, this report quoted government officials as stating, and other media reports have said the same thing. Even though the animals will supposedly be kept out of the food system, you know that if raw milk were found to have anything like contamination with a toxic industrial product, government officials would not be yawning the problem away. No, they and the media would be hysterical, saying, "We told you so." Of this I have no doubt, given the periodic outcries from the federal Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the attacks on Michigan, Ohio, and other raw milk producers around the country.
You can get a taste of the ongoing latent media hysteria in a report on raw milk presented by ABC’s Nightline on Friday evening. Major media had been showing signs of being more evenhanded in their treatment of raw milk, but this one seems to me to lean toward the governmental fear mongering. It refers to the growing number of people consuming raw milk as a "national movement," but the overall thrust of the report makes it sound more like a cult. All these people drinking raw milk when the CDC reports 1,000 or more illnesses (yes, yet another interpretation of CDC data) and various government officials condemn raw milk as worse than poison.
But maybe because the melamine contamination came from China, and thus is attributable to globalization, well, that makes it okay. With all the riches that occur from globalization, what’s a few poisonings here and there? All the more reason to buy local and know your producers.
While I’m on the subject of globalization and raw milk, there’s a fascinating report from the blog of Foreign Policy magazine, a highly respected publication, about the growing market for human breast milk. It suggests that while this milk thus far has come from American “wet nurses,” it speculates that demand is growing to such an extent that Americans will soon be importing breast milk from mothers in Third World countries, where it will, of course, be cheaper than the American version. So does that mean the FDA and state public health authorities will become involved in testing it for contamination? Will we have different grades, organic versus conventional, whole versus skim? In a global economy, anything is possible.
A website called Pet Connection has been allowing people to self-report deaths and injuries suspected to be food related. The following information is from
http://www.petconnection.com/recall/, as of April 28:
<<4,546 pets have been reported as deceased to our PetConnection database. Total number of affected pets reported: 14,094. These are self-reported numbers, and should be in no way be considered confirmed or "official." But if even a fraction could be confirmed, they show deaths far exceeding the FDA’s count of 16 pets, most of whom died in a manufacturers feeding trial.
<<Other sources also support higher numbers, including state numbers from the Oregon State Public Health Veterinarian (45 dead, April 18) and the Michigan State Veterinary Association (52 dead, April 16), as well as a sampling of all U.S. and Canadian veterinarians from the independent Veterinary Information Network. (4/10: our post or the Sacramento Bee story; need a log-in?). The Veterinary Information Network sets a range for probable deaths at 2,000 to 7,000, based on survey of VIN member veterinarians. VIN puts the cost of veterinary care for these animals at between $2 million and $20 million.>>
This says a couple of interesting things to me, but most importantly it illustrates that when the media repeats something over and over it becomes de facto truth. Of the dozens of news stories I read that reported that 16 pets had died, only one actually stated that the figure included only those in Menu Foods own test lab.
The last I heard a majority of Americans still believe Iraq was involved in 9/11, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The same mechanism is at work here. If you repeat a lie over and over again, it becomes an entrenched part of the narrative.
Believing that only 16 pets died allows us to dismiss the crisis in our food supply (human as well as animal feed) that this recent recall illustrates. It allows us to think that this is a relatively narrow problem, and that its impact was minimal. The ramifications of this affect all of us, regardless of whether we own pets.
I recently wrote a post on my own site about the pet food recall and what it means in a broader context:
http://www.honesthuman.com/?p=491
This article further speculates that Melamine would be difficult to detect as a toxin in analyzing the contaminated pet food, unless you were already aware of its presence and knew to look for it. The use of this toxin in food in China was apparently well known.
I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but this struck a chord with me. The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30food.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
then reports "Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China"
I’ll be watching for the cover up and excuses.
As a vegetarian, I’ve not embraced the raw meat diet other dog lovers use. It is just too gross for me to do. But at least my dog eats a food grade dog food that is produced in Michigan. I haven’t had to be worried about her consumption of toxins from this mess.
Her diet is supplemented of course by yogurt made from raw milk, and vegetables and other food from my diet. And she’ll do anything to lick out the cream from the milk bottles and the utensils I use to skim the milk. Which are then carefully sterilized when she is done…
Here’s a scoop for you: all these guys care about is the money. (Can your liberal ass handle that.).
I am sure your salary comes from capitalism somewhere. So wake up and smell the roses kid.
Take off the goggles and see the REAL WORLD.
Wake up!
(people who THINK they are smart – always tell us different when they get blogs – eh kid?).
Gene Wiley