HuffPo: Tainted Wheat Gluten Sold as "Food Grade"

[rumpel]

so - let's not attack each other -

hold the FDA accountable for poor oversight of our food supply chain - Import/Export - domestic production.

this is serious! We now know how easy it is to kill half the Nation...

Del Monte Foods has confirmed that the melamine-tainted wheat gluten used in several of its recalled pet food products was supplied as a "food grade" additive, raising the likelihood that contaminated wheat gluten might have entered the human food supply.

"Yes, it is food grade," Del Monte spokesperson Melissa Murphy-Brown wrote in reply to an e-mail query.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-goldstein/tainted-wheat-gluten-sold_b_44743.html

[pnwmom]

1. And, thanks to our food labeling law, anyone who wants to avoid

wheat gluten will have to avoid any food that contains "wheat gluten" OR "wheat" OR "natural ingredients." (The law doesn't specifically require that gluten be labeled.) In other words -- the vast majority of processed foods.

Welcome to the world of the gluten intolerant.

[KT2000]

6. was thinking

that this thing could spread and the only people left standing will be the people who are gluten intolerant and/or have Celiac's disease.

[pnwmom]

11. Ironic, isn't it? To find myself glad, for once, that I can't eat the stuff.

I feel bad that I've been feeding it to my kids though . . . .

[SidDithers]

12. Exactly...

my daughter has Celiac Disease, so we are a mostly gluten-free house. Maybe crises like these can propel governments into more stringent food labeling requirements.

Cheers.

Sid

[pnwmom]

13. I think it's time for Kennedy to bring back his bill, amended

to include gluten this time. Don't you?

[Lorien]

2. One of our own DUers made this connection earlier

and I've written for years in the pets group forum about the dangers of "pet (feed) grade" foods. They really are nothing more than industrial food waste (that's what "premium" pet foods like Iams, Hill's Science Diet, and Eukanuba are made of). It's about time that we demand higher food standards for ourselves, our pets, and our livestock.The government no longer sufficiently regulates food safety because the corporations own our government.

[pnwmom]

3. The FDA is more concerned with protecting the gluten distributor than

the health of Americans. How else to explain its reluctance to name the company that is distributing this "human grade" poison?

[rumpel]

5. perhaps a fundie n/t

[hang a left]

16. That is the big pisser right there.

We need a list of American and Canadian gluten distributors.

[rumpel]

4. albeit

even corporations would not deliberately kill off our pets...or us

We are the cash cow.

I do believe, however it is borderline - as long as they can squeeze out a penny more per product - it is more gross negligence and wanton disregard for the safety - which is equally bad in my book.

Hold shrub to his word, to protect the citizens is his most important duty, was it not?

[katmondoo]

7. So what do the Bushies eat? What do theRepugs eat?

Do they have a food source unknown to us? Is that why they don't care about what the FDA approves or doesn't approve. Maybe if a few of them get sick they will pay more attention.

[cassiepriam]

8. All govt agencies are run by Bush cronies, what do you expect?

[cassiepriam]

9. The US sells China substandard products and meds. Paybacks are hell.

[pnwmom]

14. I wonder if China was one of the countries that got our stores of

vaccines with mercury preservative, after we stopped allowing thimerosol here.

[cassiepriam]

15. We dump expired and illegal medications, including vaccines on China.

I think we can assume the mercury based vaccines went there too.

[annabanana]

10. We have to get the Big Agra people OUT of the FDA...

This is just another case of the foxes guarding the henhouses. It is an endemic situation in B*sh's Washington.