Yesterday, Christie Keith once again liveblogged the latest FDA press conference without havinng her wrists fall off. Honestly, I don't know how she manages let alone keeps sane. Same goes for Gina at PC and Ben here. Perhaps Christie expressed the vastness of this recall best:
"...do you ever feel like this story has eaten your life?"Anyhoo, yesterday's FDA conference didn't tell us anything new per se. Why are we not surprised? Except to wrankle more than a few human eaters while inferring the following re: quarantined poultry & pork:
During the conference they discussed the newest recall buzz phrase, "the dilution effect", giving the following example as liveblogged at the PC today:
"Dilution effect - hog feed is only made up of a small amt of contaminated pet food. Melamine is excreted in hog urine, not known to bioaccumulate in the animal. Even if it were in the muscle tissue, pork is not consumed as a large part of the diet, unlike pets who eat a steady diet of one thing."
Moving on to poultry:
"Said contaminated wheat gluten used as a portion of chicken feed in some farms in Indiana. (The hogs were rice protein concentrate.) Same thing - dilution effect. Estimate 5 percent. Investigators have found a number of broiler and breeder farms in Indiana who rec’d the contaminated feed. The meat from the broilers has been consumed. Breeders who are still there are on voluntary hold.
They do not believe there is a threat of human illness from consuming poultry who were fed very small amounts of contaminated pet food.
Poultry is a small part of most people’s diets. Situation similar to hogs.....Not initiating recall because poultry and pork are such a small part of most people’s diets. "
The bold part above understandably bunched a few chicken eater's knickers today in blog comment land. Especially when a few commenters tried doing the math of how the FDA achieved this "insight" on calcuating their official percentages of how only minimal percentages of humans may, if at all, be affected.
Present for this round, were the following representing the FDA:
Captain David Elder, USPHS
Director, Office of Enforcement
Office of Regulatory Affairs, FDA
David Acheson, MD (the new guy - poor soul)
Chief Medical Officer
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, FDA
Kenneth Petersen, DVM, MPH
Assistant Administrator for Field Operations
Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA
As the press conference progressed, each time a reporter pressed the FDA for numbers, answers or *gasp* even names (ie: which chicken manufacturers in Indiana were affected - kind of an important piece of info dontcha know), the usual evasive manuevers ensued:
CNN: But how many people have consumed the chicken?
Response: We haven’t found any evidence consumption is unsafe....[snip]....Given consumption factors, its’ not a feature of their current investigation, to find out how many people ate the chicken.
So here we're told they haven't found (thus far) any evidence consuming chicken is unsafe. How about proof it IS safe, eh? Ever think of it from that perspective Mr. FDA? But hey - as they said in the conference, it's currently
"not a feature of their current investigation". Gee, I'm feeling safe beyond measure here, anyone else? After all, it would be downright unAmerican should you not believe 100% without question what the FDA tells you, right?
Interesting to note the similarity in FDA
answers.....evasiveness....whenever pressed by the press:
Bill Smith, office of enforcement evaluation: Still doing fact finding. Don’t know.
Question: How long will that take?
Smith: Working closely with FDA. Don’t want to guess at a timeframe.
Question: Any other states you’re looking at?
Smith: Ongoing investigation.
Atchison: We had food safety issues recently linked to products we did not consider high risk.
WSJ: How are you rethinking it?
Atchison: Not yet.
David Goldstein: Who were the farms supplying poultry to?
Atchison: Not able to do that. Ongoing active investigation.
Karen Roebuck: ...why do you have to slaughter the pigs, if they’re safe enough that you’re not recalling the ones that were already slaughtered?
Response: Not going to get into the numbers.
So pretty much the only new thing we learned is that per the FDA, poultry and pork are a small part of most people’s diets. Alriiiighty then. Hrmm......then just what IS that meat protein most of us have been consuming? Cripes........and I used to think Spam™ was scary......?
Hey - here's an idea....
The next time the FDA has a public press conference, sing-a-long, whatever, one of reporter should have some tainted chicken (or pork or PET food) on hand. Toss in a fine linen napkin, fine china, silverware and request one of the main FDA mucky-mucks eats the food on the spot.
No problem, right? It’s
all safe…..Though it's refreshing to see CNN's article dated 5/2/07
sees things a tad differently:Human food supply may be at risk
"We see the pet food recall as a warning sign for the government that they need to do more to protect the food supply," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "It could easily happen to an ingredient used in human food as well."
(above emphasis mine)
Late last night, as all good night owls prowling the sites do, I caught an interesting tid-bit shared by Kim of the
Pet Food Tracker siting a bizarre bit of info while visiting the
Pet Connection. She noticed that USA Today changed the title of their article on the FDA BS today three different times (!):
"FDA title #1: Risk from tainted feed low"
"FDA #2: Feed no human threat"
"FDA #3 million chickens ate melamine, but risk to humans minimal”?
What is
THAT all about?!
Between the now you see it, now you don't of various news articles and pet food manufacturer's web pages (Wysong), one has to wonder just what exactly IS going on behind the scenes. It's beyond weird & as Kim so eruditely pointed out, infuriating to say the least. Definitely not the best PR tactic to build trust & quality assurance among your public. As frequent blog commenter "Steve" called it - I swear it's like watching a bad re-make of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" unfold. Things get more surreal with each passing day.
At least today's other CNN article is still intact, calling it like it is:
FDA: Contaminated feed could affect farms nationwide. One snippet quotes the National Chicken Council (NCC) explaining a new one: the "cupcake cooling effect":
Occasionally, pet food manufacturers sell material left over from the molding process to animal feed manufacturers and that's how the contaminated pet food got into poultry feed, according to Richard Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, the trade group that represents U.S. poultry producers, marketers and processors.
"It's like cooking cupcakes -- you get some of the dough on the pan, you scrape it off and throw it away. What they're saying is that somebody bought that material and it got mixed in corn and soybean that gets manufactured in poultry feed," he said.
'Course the NCC also wants to remind everyone of the FDA's latest recall catch phrase "the dilution effect" in an all now too familiar puppet-like response:
"The dilution factor is enormous. You have a relatively small amount of pet food byproducts used," in poultry feed manufacturing, Lobb said.
In fact, "it's a safe and wholesome product to use," he added.
Right-O. Dash out right now to your nearest grocery store, snap up some chicken and you too can be a human test study in proving the FDA right that anything tainted is safe. Just like many pets who lost their lives discovered while being involuntary test cases. But hey - it's wholesome right?
*insert buzzer sound here*
No thanks, FDA.
I think I'll pass on this one.
