The Language of Politics

This stuff makes me happy and smug to be a vegetarian. Remember that contaminated pet food scare? Well, the pet food that wasn't fed to poor doggies and kitties was fed to cows and pigs that are now being fed to humans. Thus, people are eating the tainted pet food. It doesn't sound like a good idea to me. WASHINGTON, May 15 (AP) — Roughly 56,000 pigs that were fed contaminated pet food scraps are safe to be eaten, the Agriculture Department said Tuesday. The decision permits the pigs to be slaughtered for human consumption. They had been held off the market in seven states: California, Illinois, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Utah. The pigs’ feed included scraps from pet food made using an imported Chinese ingredient later found to have been tainted by the industrial chemical melamine and related compounds. While those chemicals proved lethal to an unknown number of dogs and cats fed tainted pet food, the contaminants were diluted enough when mixed into farm animal feed that they posed no risk to pigs or the people who eat them. About 80,000 birds fed contaminated feed at poultry farms are still held off the market in Indiana. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 16, 2007