Your Pet’s Food Might Kill Him/Her
This is not presented in any attempt to scare you. These are facts
and they are current. This is happening right now today. If you have a pet and the first
listed ingredient is corn or corn meal, use with caution. If your dog food brand is Diamond, beware using it at all.
Yesterday, I was quite disturbed to discover a thread on one of the
forums that I frequent that was talking about severe poisoning in some dogs. The culprit
turned out to be the dry dog food they had eaten, Diamond
Brand, to be precise. Of the people posting to the forum, the total dogs dead as of yesterday evening
is 39. Several people said they had
friends or relatives who had lost their dogs as well. These are just the people on one
discussion forum, and their dogs were directly affected by this brand of dog food within
the last week. The number doesn’t take into account the number of people who said
they’d lost dogs in the past to mysterious, sudden illnesses, who also fed the same
brand of food.
One of the forum members sent an e-mail to the company asking them
about the problem and this is the reply she got (the letter is left as is without
corrections on our part, except highlight):
Thank you for your email to Diamond Pet Foods.
The Diamond products that are sold in
Please let me know if you have any other questions or comments.
Sincerely,
Mark Schell
Assistant General Manager
Not only does
this man not know how to spell, but he also doesn’t seem to be very concerned about
the problem.
I don’t know if anyone receiving this newsletter feeds Diamond brand to their dogs or cats, but just in
case, here’s the official listing of affected foods and states:
Voluntarily
Recalled Products and States:
Ala., Conn., Del., Fla., Ga., Ky., Maine, Md., Mass, Mich., Miss.,
N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Pa., R.I., S.C., Tenn., W.Va., Vt., Va.
Diamond Low Fat Dog Food
Diamond Hi-Energy Dog Food
Diamond Maintenance Dog Food
Diamond Performance Dog Food
Diamond Premium Adult Dog Food
Diamond Puppy Food
Diamond Maintenance Cat Food
Diamond Professional Cat Food
Country Value Puppy
Country Value Adult Dog
Country Value High Energy Dog
Country Value Adult Cat Food
Professional Chicken & Rice Senior Dog Food
Professional Reduced Fat Chicken & Rice Dog Food
Professional Adult Dog Food
Professional Large-Breed Puppy Food
Professional Puppy Food
Professional Reduced Fat Cat Food
Professional Adult Cat Food
The curious thing about the above list is that a couple of these foods
are listed as “chicken and rice,” but they had enough contaminated corn in them
to be recalled. Just another reason to read the labels!
Another person on that forum posted a quote from Joe Reardon, Director
of the Food and Drug Protection Division in North Carolina, stating that the samples of
tainted Diamond dog food tested at 250 ppb
(parts per billion), which is two and a half times the lethal dose for pets (and people,
too).
I know we’ve discussed this before, but here’s a graphic
example of why you should be watching what you put in your mouth. These dogs usually died
within 24 to 48 hours of eating the contaminated food. The first symptoms were loss of
appetite and excessive thirst, followed by bloody diarrhea and bloody vomiting, followed
by death. Most of the dogs I heard about were taken immediately to a vet, but the vets were confounded as to the
reason for their illness. While they were scratching their heads, the dogs died.
All they could find on autopsy was severe liver damage. Now that they know what it is,
their response can be no better. Once you’ve consumed that much aflatoxin,
there’s not much to be done about it. I’m sure there are thousands of people who
haven’t heard about this who are still feeding their pets Diamond brand and not knowing why they suddenly
died. One woman on the aforementioned forum said that she had just gone to town and
stocked up on dog food (Diamond) for her four
dogs, but hadn’t opened the bags yet when she saw the forum thread warning of it.
When she checked her bags, she did indeed have some of the contaminated food. Talk about
“Just in the nick of time!” She returned the food to the store and is now
preparing her dogs’ food herself. She said that she will no longer trust commercial
dog food because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to her.
I have not heard of any instances of mycotoxin-laden pet food before,
at least not to the point of causing sudden death, but that’s not to say it
hasn’t happened. She knew of at least one other time. Another member of that forum
mentioned that she’s had problems with this particular brand of dog food before.
Fourteen of her Keeshond show dogs ripped their own fur out to the point they had bloody
bald spots all over them, and several of the bitches reabsorbed litters of pups. This
sounds like zearelanone toxin to me, not aflatoxin, but it’s still contaminated corn
we’re talking about.
This is one of the reasons that Rich and I have tried so hard to
select better food for our animals. They can’t tell you if their joints hurt or they
have a headache, so you usually don’t know anything is wrong until it’s too
late. I’ve had numerous experiences with animals having autoimmune diseases or
cancer, and I firmly believe now that it was the cumulative effect of the mycotoxins,
particularly aflatoxin, in the corn-based food I’ve used my whole life. Because corn
is relatively cheap to grow, it’s the major ingredient in most animal feeds, whether
it’s a grain-eating animal or a carnivore like a dog or cat. Dogs and cats
shouldn’t be eating grain in the first place, but we’ve force-fed them
commercial pet foods for so long that now they do eat it. One of our cats,
in fact, is so addicted to corn that when we changed to a rice-based food for them, he
doesn’t want to eat it. He cries and cries for his Friskies or Purina, but all he
gets is the healthy stuff. I guess he’s having a hard time giving up his
“Doritos.” He doesn’t seem at all interested in the corn-free canned food
we also give them. The others will fight over it, but he doesn’t want it at all. This
is meddling by man at its most heinous, as far as I’m concerned. A carnivore who
won’t eat meat...
I’ve had dogs and/or cats most of my life, and I’m happy to
say most of them died of old age, but there are the ones who have died from
“strange” diseases. One of my dogs died of “cancer” when he was 11
(still young for that breed of dog), a three-year old cat also died of “cancer,”
three purebred dogs had unexplained lumps all over their bodies, one of which had a
“stroke” and had to be put down, and our old cat and Rich’s horse, both of
whom died from mycotoxin poisoning just this past summer. In the case of the horse, the
official cause of death was listed as “unknown.”
(But I
am sure it was Aspergillus
I’ve been trying to find out what the FDA limit is on aflatoxin
in pet foods, and what I’ve found indicates that it’s the same as for people -
20 ppb (although Joe Reardon’s comment above would
seem to imply 100 ppb is the FDA acceptability limit). I
think if that were the case, you wouldn’t see so many cases of cancer, arthritis,
heart problems, tumors and the like on dogs and cats that are only six to ten years old.
It takes longer than that to build up to the toxic levels that cause such diseases. Most
people don’t get sick until their thirties and forties, so if the pet foods have the
same limits, our animals should live perfectly healthy lives and never have any of these
problems, unless they live to be thirty or forty. So I think that the levels of allowable
aflatoxin in pet foods are much higher. And according to the e-mail from Diamond’s Assistant General Manager, one of
their employees must have made a mistake when testing for aflatoxin. What is an
employee of a dog food company doing testing corn for aflatoxin? That should be done by a
qualified testing agency, long before it gets to the processing plant.
Personally, I think a class-action lawsuit is in order here.
And the next question is: What if a lax employee at a human food
facility makes the same mistake? How many of you will die before they discover the
problem? And, like Diamond, refuse to admit it
is a real problem (Gee, we’re sorry all your children died. If you’ll send the
unused portion of your corn flakes back to us, we’ll issue you a partial refund.).
We’re
Changing Our Majors
Back in Orygun, Le Anne and I were big into astronomy. So much so, that we not only read lots of books and sat on the deck most clear night with an array of small telescopes and binoculars, but that we also got involved in a group of volunteers at Pine Mountain Observatory (University of Oregon – the only professional observatory in the state) and progressed through the ranks until we became team leaders. I gave the astronomy lectures and Le Anne ran the 24” Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope to show the visitors distant galaxies. Le Anne tended toward the more visual side of astronomy and how the physical rules of the universe applied (astrophysics), while I tended toward the theoretical ideas of what made it all happen (cosmology and quantum mechanics). But now, even though we still look at stars occasionally, we have switched our majors.
The photo above shows one of the reasons why the newsletters have
been sparse the past couple weeks: I’ve been remodeling the dungeon and rewiring all
the electronic devices. For those of you who
remember the last photo of “where it all happens” (issue 38), there used to be a
chest of drawers in this spot with an old Mac sitting on it. I moved that and built this
workbench for the new computer (we still have five other working computers here, three in
a LAN (local area network), all of which connect to the web through a common router) and
so the microscopes and chemistry stuff can be more readily accessed and magazine/book
articles can be easily scanned with OCR (optical character recognition), edited, and
printed copies made for the couple members of the Path
to Health Support Group who do not have e-mail access.
Instead of looking out into deep space at huge distant objects, now
we are focused on the tiny spaces in life, looking for micro-organisms. I suspect we will
still have a complementary split in this new major. Le Anne is delving deep into
microbiology and I will probably focus on biochemistry so, as a team, we should have the
bases covered. We really need access to a SEM (scanning electron microscope), but hey,
“we’s po’ folks,” so the two small scopes in this picture (manual in
foreground, computer microscope just to the right of the display) are all we have to play
with. But, because we’ve also upgraded our DSL to 512 kbps, we can now access all
those university libraries and research documents much quicker.
Natren
Discount Reminder
Because we have a few new members, who very probably do not know that
their membership entitles them to a 25% discount at Natren, I figure I should repeat that
just for them. If you decide
to purchase Natren products (we use their probiotics) for yourself, your cats, dogs, or
horses, phone Connie Dupree toll-free at 1-866-462-8736 (extension 2132) and tell her you
are a member of the Path to Health Support Group. Or you can e-mail her at connied1@natren.com, give your name and phone
number, and “Path to Health Group” in the subject line, and she’ll call you
back. Whatever you buy will be 25% off.
It’s that simple.
Use
of Pain Pills
We have stated, a few times now, that when you are in pain and need
immediate relief, the allopathic solution is a reasonable good first step (followed by
figuring out the cause and eliminating that from your life). Recently, I heard a
conversation where someone said, “The bottle says ‘take two’ but I really
hurt, so I take four to six.” Whoa! That stuff is a small dose of poison and there is
a reason why you should restrict your consumption. For example, did you know that
acetaminophen is the leading cause of acute liver failure? And this is the favorite
pain killer in this country.
When used correctly, acetaminophen is pretty safe. About 100 million
people a year use it, and liver damage occurs in only a small fraction of users. But that
is damage that can kill or require
a liver transplant, damage that is avoidable if you read the PDR or follow the
instructions included with the product. Don’t have time to read the small print? Is
your life worth a few minutes?
Acetaminophen is in hundreds of products, (e.g., Theraflu, Excedrin,
Tylenol, Vicodin, Percocet, etc.). The absolute maximum daily amount of acetaminophen for
an adult is 4,000 milligrams (eight extra-strength pills). Just a doubling of the maximum daily dose can
be enough to kill.
.
The FDA warns that two years ago, more than 56,000 emergency-room
visits a year are due to acetaminophen overdoses and that 100 people die annually from
unintentionally taking too much. (If an herb had a track
record like that, it would be banned immediately!) During the last six years, researchers tracked well over 600 patients
who had acute liver failure. Acute
liver failure is the most severe type, developing over just a few days, unlike
chronic liver failure that can take a few years. About half those failures were
acetaminophen-related. Acetaminophen was blamed for 28% of the liver poisonings in 1998
but rose to 51% of the cases in 2003, and 48% of those were unintentional
overdoses.
If you have doubts about your pain reliever, ask your doctor or
pharmacist about alternatives. Non-chemical alternatives,
that is. Because Tylenol is considered one of the “safest” pain relievers, I
can’t imagine a doctor or pharmacist coming up with something even safer. And I need
to put my two cents’ worth in here about types of pain. If you’ve just
had surgery or you’re hurting from having stitches, or a broken bone, that’s one
thing. Yes, you’ll want that deep pain to go away. But if you have pain from a more
minor injury or some other malfunction of the body, the pain is there for a reason.
It’s there to keep you from injuring it any further. What it means is, sit and put
your foot up (or whatever) and don’t use it until it’s healed. My fear of taking
pain relievers for an injury is that the pain will go away, then I’ll do something
stupid (because I feel no pain there) and hurt it worse than it was to begin with. So you
have to make a judgment call as to whether to even take pain relievers in the first place.
Junk
Food Marketing to Kids
The Institute of Medicine (IOM), an influential group of experts chartered by Congress to provide health-policy advice, called for sweeping changes in the marketing of foods and beverages to children. In a landmark report, they argued that popular cartoon characters such as SpongeBob and ScoobyDoo should only be used to endorse healthy foods.
An IOM committee reviewed hundreds of studies on the effect of marketing, particularly TV ads, on the diets of American children. More than $10 billion a year is spent to market food products to children – generally high-calorie, low-nutrient varieties.
The top five food categories marketed to kids over the last decade have been:
- Cereals (235 different kinds)
- Chocolate candies (236)
- Snacks (265)
- Chewing gum (354)
- Non-chocolate candies (1,407)
Currently, almost one third of
Many studies have shown a link between TV viewing and childhood
obesity (see: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-10-31-tv-weight_x.htm), but don’t think for even one minute that the manufacturers of
all those junk foods are not ready for the backlash. They have already created a lobby
group to defend their rights to ruin your children’s health. Food giants General
Mills, Kellogg Co., and Kraft Foods, Inc. (among others) created a lobbying group, called
the Alliance for American Advertising, which is considered to be the most aggressive
attempt to deflect government regulation when it comes to advertising foods to kids. Check
out http://www.theomnivore.com/US-versus-WHO-diet.html
for more info.
Headlines
with Links (AKA, cleaning up my files)
Alcohol can damage bones, new study shows
Bone loss potential climbs with heavy drinking; risk threshold not clear
Bone loss is an often-overlooked consequence of heavy drinking, but recent research has illuminated how alcohol takes a toll on the bones… see story at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10615986/
And, of course, any of us who subscribe to the “alcohol is mycotoxins” belief already knew this to be one of the results. “They” still don’t know why, but at least they are now acknowledging the consequences.
‘Super flu’ fears grip the world
Pandemic concerns overshadow this year’s good health news
What a difference a year makes ... or not. We head into 2006 the same way we began 2005: Worried about flu and not enough vaccine. See story at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10466767/
Total BS, my friends. None of you is going to get any silly
“bird” flu. This trumped up pandemic is a scare tactic of the government and the
drug companies, who stand to make two billion dollars ($2,000,000,000!!!) selling a
vaccine for a non-existent disease. Yes, 70 people have died from it, but what the news
media refuses to tell you is that they were all bird handlers (by profession) who lived in
third-world countries and were in continuous contact with sick birds. Just how does anyone
expect this to translate to 200,000-to-2,000,000 American deaths? Can anyone in their
right minds envision similar circumstances in this country – from a virus that does not
readily spread from bird to human and never from human to human? See next
headline’s links for Dr. Mercola’s blog (he talks at length on this subject).
Taking a Shot for
Science
Volunteers in Vaccine Study Help Doctors Combat Bird Flu
The experimental vaccine has been deemed safe and potentially protective
enough that federal officials hope to stockpile nearly 8 million doses by early next year.
But one of the many continuing unknowns is the level at which it would be effective. See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/07/AR2005120702302.html?nav=rss_health
Pardon me, but this is more crap. If you read Dr. Mercola’s blog with any regularity, you know how dangerous and health-harming vaccines can be. Imagine what it’s like for patients who volunteer for a vaccine study...
If you want to protect yourself against the dangers of vaccines, an
essential resource to aid you in learning more about this vitally important issue –
including how to protect your children – is Vaccines: What CDC Documents and
Science Reveal, a two-hour video by world-renowned vaccine
expert Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.
Longer needles needed for fatter butts
Many patients fail to receive full dosage of drug, study finds
Fatter rear ends are causing many drug injections to miss their mark, requiring longer needles to reach buttock muscle, researchers said Monday. Standard-sized needles failed to reach the buttock muscle in 23 out of 25 women whose rears were examined after what was supposed to be an intramuscular injection of a drug.
That’s so sick I’m not including the link. Obviously people
with more fat cells between their skin and their muscles require longer needles. Why did
they waste our money on this study? And why are you getting a shot in the butt anyway? J
GE
Tobacco: good for you?
One acre of genetically engineered tobacco plants can produce enough
anthrax vaccine to inoculate the entire
OK, some good might come from the dread weed, but if it is only to
produce a vaccine, I won’t be getting that shot either.