Two words: Spinach, Lettuce.    We never heard what the cause
of the problem was.

"William Graham" <weg9@comcast.net> wrote in message

You think they don't do spot checking? It's called quality control and it
goes on all the time and is mostly useless if someone decides to randomly
poison a few cans of food here and there. The only way to prevent against
that kind of activity is to spot check every product and if that has to be
done then there's no sense in being in business in the first place. The only
way to mediate the situation is to have procedures in place to handle the
problem once it comes to light. As far as I can see, that's what they did.
Are you going to suggest that the millions of cans of pet food they recalled
was not a proper response?

I'm hearing figures off a few dozen animal deaths. Let's assume the actual
figure was 1000 cans of tampered pet food. (assuming it was actual tampering
and not just a tragic error) 1000 out of 60,000,000 cans of pet food. That
works out to 1 can out of 60,000 cans of pet food. How exactly would you
implement spot checking that would catch that one can out of 60,000? There
isn't some laser beam that can identify it on the production line, it takes
a laboratory specialist doing specific tests with a good idea of what
they're looking for to determine what food has been tampered with.

All they really can do is to tighten employee security and maybe eliminate a
few of the points where there's human interaction with the preparation of
the pet food. If you want to rant and make all sorts of suggestions, that's
your business. But, until you can suggest a viable way to prevent this type
of terrorism, then all you're really doing is spouting off.

In reality with the size of many businesses and the amount of food (human
and pet) that is processed it's a wonder that this type of poisoning doesn't
happen much more than it does.

Lets get real here.   If you go into xxxx store and got rid of
everything made in China those shelves at xxxxxxxx store would be
very empty..

I have to wonder if any thing could have been done to find the
contamianted product short of actually taking a few cans
at random and feeding it to a test cat.  

It's not like you pick up the can and a neon sign flashes
"this can is contaminated."

You have xxxxx can with 50+ ingredients it'd take
hours just to test that one can.

I don't want to defend menu foods here but lets
be real here too, you can't test every indredient
in the can unless spent alot of time and money
to do it.

You have to wait for some indication of a problem.

Remember this contamiantion stretched accross 90+ brands.

There is an infinite number of "degrees of poison" in any product, whether
for pets or people. If the product isn't made well, then eating it for a
lifetime will shorten one's life some real positive finite amount of time
greater than epsilon......(over what it would have been had one eaten the
best, cleanest food) So, "poisoning" is a matter of degree, and not an
absolute line that can be easily identified.
   My point? If you are really worried about it, then you should buy the
ingredients yourself and make your own pet food. I try to do this by feeding
them roast chicken. Unfortunately, even the feral cat gets tired of chicken
and eats a can of wet pet food now and then. And, they all eat kibbles,
because they (the kibbles) don't go bad, and can be kept in a bin for a week
or more, so they are very convenient, especially if we leave the house for a
weekend or so.....