Moving forward on tainted pet food

We're such news junkies. Today I would like to bring to your attention a little article in the Wall Street Journal noting that three firms have been indicted in relation to the poisonous pet food incidents of last summer.

Now I don't know about you, but when we learned about the toxic substances that were allegedly being added to pet food, wasn't it also interesting (even surprising?) to learn that so much of our pet food, from the cheapest generic kibble to the more high end nuggets come from the same manufacturing plants?

This was probably what I found most disturbing about the whole tainted pet food incident: so much of the pet food is being made by the same folks, with the same ingredients, in the same manufacturing plants. In the meantime, the pet food industry has sold pet food purchasers on the fact that certain products have higher quality ingredients which is why we silly consumers pay, oh, two, three, four, or even five times more for 'higher quality' kibble than for your generic or store brands. We can't taste it after all, what do we know? And for many of us, our furry friends don't have terribly discriminating palates. Sure the recipes are changed during different production runs.... Call me cynical on this score.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the courts. It seems to me that it is incumbent on the pet food companies, regardless of where they manufacture the product, to maintain quality controls. After all, their product is consumed! There is really no excuse for the fact that the manufacturers were able to put nasty substances into the product that weren't listed on the ingredients list. Clearly this was intentional, but someone from the home office should have known about it. I assume it had to be ordered from somewhere, it had to be mixed into the kibble, etc.

What the heck are we supposed to do? I understand that some folks have started making their own pet food. This is a complicated process at best because you have to make sure the animals get the right combination of protein, carbs and vitamins, etc. I know others who will now only buy American manufactured products. This can be quite expensive and time consuming since the local supermarket or box store doesn't typically carry these products so you have to hunt them out.

As for me and Phoebe, well, she's an erratic, though not terribly picky, eater, and I must confess to doing a bit of mix and match. We have some gourmet "all natural" food, (very expensive) but we also have some kibble that spent some time on the watch list (bought well after the food recalls took place, so I don't think she's at risk). Not really a very satisfactory state of affairs, but it seems like pretty much of a crap shoot to me until we have some way of knowing that we're actually getting what we think we're paying for.