LET’S DO IT AGAIN!

MOST EFFECTIVE LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN IN U.S. HISTORY ABOUT A NON-WAR ISSUE: THE WILD FREE-ROAMING HORSE AND BURRO ACT, 1971

Across the nation, school children and their mothers wrote to Congress to preserve/protect the wild horses in the western states that were being used as fowl and pet food, and according to a few accounts, were even chased to exhaustion by vehicles to make it easier for rendering trucks to pick them up.
(According to the magazine, AMERICAN COWBOY, May-June, 2007)

Can we prompt a new law/act/inspection standards to achieve safer pet food?

Does anyone belong to any teacher discussion boards? I see an excellent topic for persuasive essays and for students to witness the “power of the pen” to effect change. Many states have end-of-year tests that require a persuasive essay that is written to a real audience for a real purpose. This is a timely topic affecting over 60% U.S. households (pet owners), and it’s good writing practice.

*****
MODERATOR: Although I’ve seen a couple of letters of action in their entirety on this blog, with the writers giving their permission for people to copy them and send them in to government officials or other agencies, the letters are difficult to find in the blog format, at least for me. Many people are very busy or may not feel comfortable with their writing skills to attempt a letter themselves. Pre-written letters, at least available for people to select a paragraph or two to “paste in,” would greatly help.

Is it possible to have a framed section on the left side of the home page and/or blog page that stores the letters of people who agree to let others use them with each letter’s title made into an active link? Ex. Letter to Congress person, Letter to FDA, Letter to Pet Food Institure, Letter to Sen. Durbin, Letter to Pet Food Company, Letter to News Agency to Cover Story, Letter to Stock/Securities Commission Seeking an Investigation, etc.

And, I admit, this is the first time I’ve written on a blog and realize the format is far different from a discussion board with more evident themes and a chronological response format, but I’m having great difficulty trying to find previous comments that I’m looking for. I absolutely love Petconnection and click to it first, but due to the inherent nature of a blog’s format, a topic such as “Pet Food Recall: Speak! Speak!” gets pushed back to page 4 or 5 when scrolling through blog topics. Maybe I’m just slow, but for the first couple of days being here, I didn’t know that I could access previous blog topics that had dropped off the list of active topics in the upper right side of the blog page. Again, I’m not complaining about Petconnection at all because I absolutely love this site, just seeing if we can add a feature because this site has gained a lot in popularity/more users, and we need letters, emails, calls, and ACTION in any form to be prominent, IMHO. I feel as if we were more active last week on letter writing/emailing than we are this week (last post on this topic was 04/07/07, not that this is the only topic under which people discussed letters they wrote). I could easily be wrong. The pet food companies are probably hoping that as the shock and grief lessen and there is less press coverage, that we will go away, adopt another pet to ease the pain, and forget about a call for change since we will be somewhat pacified once again.

I’m not singling out anyone, because I know I have done this as well many times, but when someone is adhering to a particular blog title, another person will post about an unrelated issue — maybe due to the time factor in going back to look for the appropriate blog title, (ie. Is this pet food safe? Raw vs. cooked? I know we’re all concerned about a variety of issues. I am as well.) — but can we try for a separate section for pre-written letters?

Thank you for listening and especially for your tireless work on this site to provide a forum for us to discuss the issues, share our stories, and learn about how to keep our pets safe. I recommend this site to everyone I talk with.

http://www.nlpp.com/

PR Newswire: http://tinyurl.com/2c479z

Today, I am taking the time to go to each website & print off ALLLLLL the long lists.

But, just remember — what’s SAFE TODAY is NOT necessarily SAFE TOMORROW! I am VERY skeptical.

Since all these companies are holding back & not coming forth that they made pet food from ingredients, purchased by ChemNutra (China link), they are waiting to be told by the FDA, weeks later…ie: Purina for one.

Just wondering HOW the FDA equates over 100 brands to only 1% of the pet food??

I don’t pretend to know how to use YOUTUBE DOT COM, but I just visited the site and saw “Aeroslin’s” video story (first to come up in the search when you type in “pet food recall”) of how his 9 yr. old cat died from acute kidney failure after eating Iams canned cat food.

I know this would be very hard to do, but maybe your pet will not have died in vain, if some people who have the technology needed could create video stories of their experiences with their ill and dead pets. The combination of the audio and video may make the stories even more powerful than words alone.

Although I can’t prove it (yet) that my dog died of renal failure, the video I could make about his last 2 - 3 days would yank the heartstrings of anyone seeing it. Even the most callous person on earth would be reaching for a tissue. The images of him ill and dying are engraved in my mind forever!

So far, when I typed in “pet food recall” in the site’s search box, only 67 videos came up related to the issue.

Doesn’t CNN (Is it Wolf Blitzer?) do some kind of a run down on what’s popular on you tube dot com or other self-submitted video sites? Didn’t a politician go on you tube dot com to make a release of some sort?

Moderator: I hope I succeeded in not having anything turn into a hot link.

This whole industry has been reactive, and slow to do so at that.

LAWYERS WHO RECOGNIZE MY ROCK SOLID CASE CAN EMAIL ME AT TAINTEDPETFOOD@FASTERMAIL.COM THAT IS TAINTEDPETFOOD @ FASTERMAIL DOT COM ….

This is pivotal for my case against wal-mart! I HAVE RECEIPTS FROM THE
25th! This is what finally killed her! she was better and had been
away from the food for a few days prior to this! My vet record even
says she was doing better on the 24th, and then I re-poisoned her on
the 25th! THAT FOOD SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ON THE SHELF ON THE 25TH!

—- In MenuFoodsClassAction@yahoogroups.com, “nthstarr1”
wrote:
>
> FDA Recall Classifications and ‘Market Withdrawl’ Defintion
>
>
> I finally found the actual defintion I remember reading at one time.
> ‘Market Withdrawl’ not on the same ‘level’ alert as recall, therefore
> perhaps this is WHY all the stores ignored Menu Food’s March 24th
> ***Market Withdrawl*** of all affected recall products REGARDLESS OF
> DATE CODES.*** I am very unhappy with ALL THE STORES for not
> complying with this Market Withdrawl.
>
> —- Background and Definitions—-
>
> Recalls are actions taken by a firm to remove a product from the
> market. Recalls may be conducted on a firm’s own initiative, by FDA
> request, or by FDA order under statutory authority. A Class I recall
> is a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use
> of or exposure to a violative product will cause serious adverse
> health consequences or death. A Class II recall is a situation in
> which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or
> medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the
> probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote. A Class
> III recall is a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative
> product is not likely to cause adverse health consequences.
>
> A market withdrawal occurs when a product has a minor violation that
> would not be subject to FDA legal action. The firm removes the product
> from the market or corrects the violation. For example, a product
> removed from the market due to tampering, without evidence of
> manufacturing or distribution problems, would be a market withdrawal.
>
> A medical device safety alert is issued in situations where a medical
> device may present an unreasonable risk of substantial harm. In some
> case, these situations also are considered recalls.
>
>
> —- In MenuFoodsClassAction@yahoogroups.com, “nthstarr1”
> wrote:
> >
> > The stores should have pulled ALL affected products REGARDLESS OF THE
> > DATE CODE as they were requested to by Menu Foods back on MARCH 24th.
> > This press release is on both The FDA website and Menu Foods website
> > as I posted before.
> > &
> >
> >
> > I went and spoke about this with Managers of stores in my area as NOT
> > ONE STORE I went into did this Expanded Recall/ MARKET WITHDRAWL
> > initiated on March 24th 2007. End result was apparently if the store
> > is not told to do so by the corporate office, it just is not going to
> > happen in places like WAL-MART, grocery stores, etc. WHY the command
> > never came down from Corporate Headquarters, I do not understand as
> > the EXPANDED RECALL was entitled ‘Menu Foods Initiates Market
> > Withdrawal of All Varieties of Recalled Wet Pet Food to Ensure
> > Consumer Protection- NOTE ***MARKET WITHDRAWL***, not Voluntary
> > Recall- there is a substantial difference per the FDA defintion if I
> > am correct. I TOLD THE MANAGERS THIS and to also consider that not
> > only was it a good idea to pull all dates codes as requested to avoid
> > human error ( and subsequently contaiminated product for sale) as the
> > ‘offical’ reason given by Menu Foods, but to consider the possibilitiy
> > that MENU FOODS may actually be looking into other date codes and this
> > MARKET WITHDRAWL OF ALL AFFECTED PRODUCT REGARDLESS OF DATE CODES may
> > be a way to cover their rear-end while investigating further into the
> > contamination issue. ( actually it this point, they were still
> > searching for the cause of the contamination and it was hypothesized
> > to be the the aminopterin.)
> >
> > MORAL OF THE STORY- CORPORATE AMERICA has some Major issues and so
> > does our Media for ignoring this issue. I’d really like to see the
> > Media do comething right and take this story and blow it wide open.
> > HOW SAFE ARE YOU FROM YOUR LOCAL GROCERY STORES AND WAL_MART LEAVING
> > ***MARKET WITHDRAWED*** CONTAMINATED FOOD PRODUCTS ON THE SHELF!!!
> >