Today I have quite a number of questions. My first question is have Menu Foods’s troubles just begun?
Two of the pet food samples that tested positive for the painkiller acetaminophen are Menu Foods’ Pet Pride “Turkey and Giblets Dinner” and Pet Pride “Mixed Grill,†ConsumerAffairs.com has learned.
As we reported last week, a Texas laboratory discovered acetaminophen in about a half dozen samples of pet food tested in May.
The lab did not disclose the pet food brands because of a confidentiality agreement.
Neither of these foods is on the recall list and, significantly, neither was found to contain melamine. However, they did contain acetaminophen and cyanuric acid, neither of which are approved ingredients in human or animal food in any quantity whatever.
My second question is is the FDA examining pet foods for acetaminophen? The several stories I’ve linked to here have said that the findings have been sent to the FDA. What’s the FDA doing? I’ve seen nothing on the FDA web site on this subject.
My third question is related to who bears responsibility for the ingredients in food? Let’s say you’re a name brand company that has an agreement with a private label manufacturer to supply a pet food that you’ll sell under you own brand name. Presumably, you have some sort of agreement with the private label manufacturer over the formula for what you’re buying. How do you know that it does contain A, B, and C and doesn’t contain X, Y, or Z? I don’t think it’s reasonable to place the responsibility for making that determination on the end customer. And certifying the contents of individual products isn’t the job of the FDA. I’d think that, since you’re putting your brand name on the product that you’d take some responsibility, testing, and so on, but, apparently, the brand name companies don’t agree.
Is it the private label manufacturer’s responsibility to do so? You’d think they’d have a contract that says so but, apparently, that isn’t the case either. Will you put the responsibility on a tiny, fly-by-night exporter in a country 12,000 miles away without robust consumer product safety laws that’s being run by people you’ve never even spoken with? How do you plan on enforcing that? There’s no such thing, for practical purposes, as an international civil code.
Anybody have any answers to these questions?
