>To be on the Safe Side, check the back and/or front of any pet food or
>treat package, for the Country Of Origin. Automatically reject any pet
>food or treat manufactured in China, India, Pakistan and/or any Asian
>Country.

That isn't so simple. While entire products themselves may be made
elsewhere many of the compounds that go into foods are now made outside
the country. In fact, a few are no longer made at all in the U.S. and
many are made almost entirely outside the country. China, for instance,
is the source of many of the vitamins used.

We really, really NEED Congress to push to undo all the budget cuts to
the FDA which Bush inserted year after year, to get the FDA to rehire
who they can of the people who had been fired due to money cuts, and to
train new people to take the place of those who can't be rehired. That
affects both human and pet food quality. The FDA is responsible for
inspection of about 80% of the food items used in the U.S. but it has
been getting less than 25% of the inspection moneys due to the repeated
budget cuts they have had in each of the last half dozen national
budgets the Administration wrote. Their money got so low that for a
while they had almost completely restricted themselves to inspecting
the two most common origins of fatal food infections: slaughterhouses
and factories for raw beef and chicken.

We also need consumers and companies to think more in terms of federal
quality control in relation to items which can kill (foods, food
ingredients, etc.) or which affect national security. A recent example
which is critical to national security are hard disc drives, which are
now mostly made in China. Hard disc drives are in everything from your
home, to your hospital, to your vet's equipment, to your power networks
(SCADA), to fighter jets, etc. Hard disc drives can be back-doored
(hidden and not so hidden entrances to get in to cause trouble or to
spy). Almost all hard drives are made in Asia, esp. People's Republic
of China, and China is at least as able to be successful in cyberwar as
we are. (There is at least one past example.) Heck, we don't even make
power grid transformers in the U.S. any longer. Talk about foolish
national security errors. Pinching pennies to lose dollars (and
potentially much more)... Some industries it just pays to have
home-based.

There are some industries that it would make sense for the federal
government to financially support to restart or grow in the U.S.;
among them are vitamins, food preservatives, non-lithium batteries,
power grid transformers, and hard drives.

There are also some segments of the federal government for which
underfunding can badly hurt us all. Some examples: FEMA (turned around
by Katrina but it had been gouged for a few years before then), Walter
Reed (also turning around after the problems became too apparent) and
more, including the FDA which has also suffered major budget cuts, with
the bad pet foods and pet treats being among illustrations of what can
go very wrong.

So, it is not just a matter of where the final product is made, but
also remembering that components may be made elsewhere.

Sukie (not a vet) but sure opinionated on some things

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html

[Posted in FML 5733]