Globalization killed Fido

The recent genocide of pets by the greedy capitalists highlights one of the many problems (which are discussed rarely, if at all in the popular press) with globalization. When you distribute your supply chain across the world, you lose control of the quality.

The genocide of pets by greedy capitalists is an excellent example of this point. The wheat gluten from China was tainted with melamine. This tainted product then crosses the ocean and is dumped into the North American manufacturing complex. At this point the tainted gluten is mixed with other components at a range of facilities (by different companies) and canned as food for your pets.

Why is wheat gluten cheaper to mill from wheat kernels and ship to North America than to produce here.

Think about that for one second. Wheat grows all through the Midwest and we subsidize the price (which is one of the reasons bread costs much more than it ought to). Anyhoo - a country with 1 billion people (and has problems feeding its own lower classes) has room to grow this wheat for animals and also to process it? Nope - I'll posit something even worse. We ship our wheat to China (or China buys it from Russia or some other country with a net excess) - China then mills it for a variety of purposes, and then sends it back. I'm going to guess that this milling step is so over-regulated in America that it is "an unreasonable burden" and so multi-nationals have pushed this step to countries where oversight is lax (or non-existant).

So the multi-nationals have cut out the expensive step to minimize costs but we see that there is a serious problem with this particular cost-cutting step. When melamine gets mixed into the food supply, what controls are there to detect its presence? Clearly none. Fido is your canary in the coal mine.

My solution!!! Buy local, organic produce for yourself and your pets. Both Linus and Kidogo get food that is 100% organic and 100% produced in America. It costs about 5 times what Iams costs, but I don't worry about these pernicious effects of globalization in my cat and dog's food. Vote with your pocketbook and keep small businesses that produce niche products here in America alive. And keep alive the idea of quality in products - at least some ideal higher than buying it because it was "cheaper". I'm sure all the dead Fidos and Fluffies who have passed onto a better place because a multi-national needed to become more "efficient" are thanking their owners for buying the cheapest food. Yes kids, as I had to point out to my mother, Iams is essentially high end saw dust. So is Pedigree. And anything else you see in Safeway. As the pet genocide has pointed out - all of these multi-nationals that make pet food and have outsourced componenets of their supply chain care less about your pet and more about their profit. The only way to punish is to vote with your pocketbook.

Where to get a range of high quality, all organic food? Big Bad Woof in Takoma is a fantastic local store that carries only the best. Plus they have pet adoption each week and lots of really creative and fun stuff for pets and their owners. Give it a look. Linus gets Lamb and Rice Blackwood and Kidogo gets the Feline Fresh line from Artemis.