I am pretty bothered by this China poison in pet foods

KeithsCatch said:

I am pretty mad at American Companies continually buying crap from China. This is totally out of hand.

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What American company are you talking about? Not to nit-pick, but rather to get to the heart of the issue, Menu Foods is a Canadian company with production facilities in Canada and the U.S. They produce wet and dry pet food for a huge number of brands sold throughout North America. I have seen many of these brands sold in Europe as well, but what I don't know is whether the production of those brands (Iams, Eukanuba, Science) were accomplished in North America or elsewhere under license.

So what we have is a Canadian company making pet foods for many different labels, some of which are American, buying some base product from China. Your question should more properly be "Why didn't a Canadian company buy Canadian wheat for its product?"

Do you have a problem with Kroger selling a house brand pet food made in Canada rather than in America? Kroger is a major client of Menu Foods. So is Wal-Mart and many other retailers. Do you think retailers should be put in the position of having to produce their own house brands?

This is an international world we live in. We all go fishing with foreign-made goods. I don't see too many people in here or elsewhere in the bass boards railing against Shimano. Perhaps that is because Shimano is one of the gold standards in fishing equipment. Still, try to by an American rod and reel system. Your choices are severely limited - especially when it comes to the reels. Hey, I even see the top end American rod makers using Fuji guides. So much for an all-American product.

You can quit buying at Wal-Mart if you wish. What retailer will you patronize? All retailers use off-shore producers and suppliers. You can drive yourself nuts on this issue if you let it get to you.

KC, I agree that Menu is a guilty company. I believe they are stonewalling this whole issue. From recent reports, they knew of the toxic problems well before it was publicized, yet did nothing to alert their public to the problem. My wife retired a couple of years ago from a major pet food manufacturer and they too had an issue in an Asian market where tainted food killed pets. The company immediately announced the problem, recalled their foods, and worked with owners of sick animals. Menu has done none of this to date. Who in the pet world is ever going to buy Iams or Eukanuba again - at least with any measure of confidence?

I don't believe the issue has anything to do with outsourcing or anything like that. Commodities have to come from somewhere. As with almost everything else, price and availability are major considerations. Menu should have had a testing protocol in place to ensure the quality of the product they were buying. Menu failed to police its own production.

Now as for internationalization, I am typing this message on a Dell computer. An American company which has all of its components made and assembled in 30 to 40 different countries. I am using Microsoft as an OS, which code is written and tested in a dozen different countries. Do I get an amen for buying American? I have a BPS baitcaster in the garage (with a monster birdsnest I put on it last week) that was made in China for BPS. Give me a high five for buying an American brand? Would I pay twice as much for that reel just to have it "made" in America? Hell no. The quality of that reel would not support the asking price of American labor.

Thomas Friedman has it right - the world is flat. Although I am a bit surprised it took him so long to discover it so.