Recent media coverage of the pet food recall caught our interest and made us start asking questions. When we first heard that tainted pet food was being sold under multiple brand names, killing hundreds of animals around the country, we worried about our dog. How could we be sure the food we were buying for him was safe? Especially since many of the recalled brands were ones we’ve fed him in the past: pricey, “high quality” products touting “natural” ingredients?
Then we learned that these different brands had all bought their products from a single distributor–a Canadian company called Menu Foods. What’s more, Menu Foods got its ingredients from still other distributors, sometimes in other countries.
These ingredients included wheat gluten that had been purchased from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co., located near Shanghai. The wheat gluten had been contaminated with melamine–an industrial chemical. But the Chinese company says it’s just a middleman–it bought the wheat gluten from someone else! (Yikes!)
So–in a matter of a few weeks–we’ve learned that when we buy a brand like Iams or Science Diet, we’re not buying some yummy stew that Grandma Iams or Dr. Science cooked up in their kitchens. We’re buying a concoction of ingredients that have passed through alot of hands and crossed alot of borders. Nobody seems to be sure exactly where they came from.
That’s made us ask, “Hey, is this happening with the ingredients for human food, too?” As those of you who’ve been following this story in the media now know, the answer to this question seems to be, “Yup.”
We’re not experts in food safety. (Eric is an Agronomist and a former Organic Farmer, and Karen is a Health Educator.) But we love to eat, we’re interested in health, and we want to know where our food comes from. So we’re going to study up on the subject. We’ll share what we learn along the way. In the meantime, let us know what you think!
What on Earth Are We Eating? 