Rational discussion without panic and emotion is how to make policy. I'm afraid this topic is too full of both.

I lived in Germany during the heart of the mad cow scare in Europe - to this day, I'm not allowed to give blood by the Red Cross just because I lived there; I never went near a farm or a cow. I'm not enough of a biologist to know if the hysteria was proper or not, but considering that the British beef industry basically ceased to exist, with hundreds of thousands of heads of cattle put down and burnt (without armed insurrection by the farmes, I might add), it's clear that a large number of people do take it very seriously. Just because it didn't happen in America doesn't mean it didn't happen...

Anderson, I do have a son. Legion, there's a bigger risk being treated by an overworked doctor in the hospital than mad cow disease. Dave, I heard it was a few hundred pets and a lot of cases of hysterical sickness.

The point is this is minor. Sure it could be worse. We could have a food distribution system like a third world country or perhaps no food at all. It's a big leap from tainted pet food to not buying any human food that's in a package.

It's not good that peoples pets have died but how many a day die getting run over because they are allowed to roam? How many are euthanized daily because of owners neglect? I'm not discounting the loss but this is not how to make public policy.

Rational discussion without panic and emotion is how to make policy. I'm afraid this topic is too full of both.

You don't have kids, do you?

Sorry, but that agency has been drowned in the bathtub.

And it all started with the death of a few pets?

Estimates are 2,000-7,000 with tens of thousands more injured and millions of dollars in vet bills. Until the reason behind the deaths is discovered, there's no reason that it couldn't be babies next time.

The world economy relies on trust and the dollar. Mostly the trust comes from knowing you'll get sued and lose all your dollars if you don't do things right.

My point was that this is not the only way to raise animals, and it's perfectly possible to buy grass-fed beef, foraging pig, and range-raised chicken. It's just expensive, by which I mean equal in price to what meat used to cost before it was "democratized".

http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=2860

WASHINGTON — Chicken feed in some farms in Indiana contained byproducts from pet food manufactured with contaminated wheat gluten imported from China, two federal agencies said Monday.

The Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration said in a joint statement that officials learned of the link between the chicken feed and tainted pet food as part of the investigation into imported rice protein concentrate and wheat gluten that have been found to contain the industrial chemical melamine and related compounds.

An estimated 30 broiler poultry farms and eight breeder poultry farms in Indiana received contaminated feed in early February and fed it to poultry within days of receiving it, the agencies said. Other farms will probably be identified as having received contaminated feed, they added.

All the broilers believed to have been fed contaminated products have been processed, while the breeders are under voluntary hold by flock owners, the agencies said.

The FDA and USDA said the likelihood of human illness from eating chicken fed the contaminated product is very low. With no evidence of harm to humans, no recall of poultry products processed from these animals was being issued, the agencies said.

Didn't you read Dave's post? There was melamine contaminated chicken feed fed to...wait for it...chickens. Chickens that you and I are likely to eat. IIRC same thing with hogs.

As for eating out, I try not to think about it :) If you eat out in the same place frequently you concentrate the risk, so I try to dine out at many different places.

When my son was younger, we had to put him on a gluten-free diet for some time. It's virtually impossible to find gluten-free products in your average grocery store.

Ditto. My son had mild allergies to processed sugars and gluten. Good luck finding something with neither in it. Fortunately he seems to have grown out of it.

Why did the Chinese plants use melamine? It's cheaper than actual protein. Why did US companies buy it? Same reason. Will US companies face sanctions for using sketchily-sourced Chinese foodstuffs? Unlikely. Will China face sanctions for burning your "trust"? Equally unlikely. Why? Again, money.

Seriously, what is this government likely to do to China?

What about the wheat glutton that might be in that meat you had freshly butchered? What about eating out? The food supply is never going to be 100% safe. That spinach with the e. coli that killed a bunch of people a few months ago? Organic spinach. So even going organic isn't necessarily going to save.

This is definitely one area where the government can fill in for market failures. Problem is we are spending lots of money on things like No Child Left Behind, the horrible energy bill, etc.