It been nearly a week since Canadian petood manufacturer Menu Foods Inc. recalled some 60 million cans and pouches of wet food linked to the deaths of at least 15 cats and one dog, yet authorities still can explain exactly what went wrong. Some critics and animal lovers are honing in on what they see as lax regulation of the $15 billion petood industry in the United States.
“There almost a void there,” says Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Product Manufacturers Association. “There is no real petood department of any federal agency.”
Technically, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for ensuring that pet foods, like human foods, are safe to eat, truthfully labeled and produced under sanitary conditions. But on Tuesday, FDA officials admitted that the regulation of pet food takes a back seat to its regulatory obligations of other food and drug sectors, and that inspections of petood processing plants are done only on a forause basis.
“There are limited resources,” said David Elder, director of the Office of Surveillance and Compliance in the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine in Rockville, Md. Elder added that inspections of companion animalsfood products are “based on risk” , which means that the processing plant in Emporia, Kans., where the tainted food was manufactured, had never been inspected by government officials until after consumers started complaining about pets dying of kidney failure. The Emporia plant remains open and continues to produce new food, according to a Menu Foods spokesperson, who adds that safety tests are being done around the clock.
The chief executive of Menu Foods told the Associated Press on Wednesday that the company is looking at one unnamed ingredient as the possible cause of the renal failure. The FDA has previously said the investigation is focusing on possibly contaminated wheat gluten, a common ingredient in pet foods. FDA inspectors have been sent to Menu Foods plants in Kansas and New Jersey.
The industry insists their products are absolutely safe. “Pet foods are the highest regulated product youl find in the grocery store,” says Duane Ekedahl, president of the Pet Food Institute (PFI), an industry trade association representing the interests of 20 member companies whose products make up about 97 percent of the dog and cat food produced in the United States. While serious, the Menu Foods recall shouldn be blown out of proportion, says Ekedahl, who points out that the recalled food accounts for less then 2 percent of the overall market. He adds that every petood company conducts extensive tests, both of incoming raw materials and of finished products. On Tuesday, PFI issued a statement claiming that “All cat and dog food products on store shelves are safe. The recall is now complete and all suspected products have been removed from the stream of commerce.”
［真题例句］ Computers are relied on by manufacturers for similar reasons.［1994年阅读2］
［例句精译］ 基于同样的原因，生产商们也依赖计算机。
ensure［in5FuE］
v.确保，保证
［真题例句］ By helping to increase demand, it ensures an increased need for labour, and is therefore an effective way to fight unemployment.［1995年阅读1］
［例句精译］ 广告有助于增加市场需求，从而确保对劳动力需求的增加，因此是遏制失业的一个有效方法。
sanitary［5sAnitEri］
a.(有关)卫生的, (保持)清洁的, 卫生的n.公共厕所
ingredient［in5gri:diEnt］
n.组成部分，成分；因素
［真题例句］ Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stockarket swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom.［2004年阅读3］