Assessing the tainted food debacle

I read this good editorial in SFGate today. It talks about how the number of deaths from the tainted pet food has been underreported and how the complete lack of oversight of the pet food industry is to blame.

Nearly one month passed from the date Menu got its first report of a death to the date it issued the recall. During that time, no veterinarians were warned to be on the lookout for unusual numbers of kidney failure in their patients. No pet owners were warned to watch their pets for its symptoms. And thousands and thousands of pet owners kept buying those foods and giving them to their dogs and cats.

Not only is the probably worse than we thought but we will probably never know exactly how bad it is. There's no clear system for reporting pet illness/death or even for getting information. The information has been poorly reported and disseminated and my ma ape is not entirely sure she trusts the FDA's claim that the wheat gluten isn't in the ape food supply and she eats loads of wheat gluten (as a meat substitute).