In case you missed them here's Part One & Part Two
There's a bit more information & 4 companies are now recalling some of their pet foods. I'm just going to jot down what I have so far & offer little commentary as I'm pressed for time. Well & from what I understand of the order of events I'm probably too pissed to provide much more than venting if I get in depth about anything. Open the extended entry for more, including info on making your own pet food & an estimated pet death count that I'm hoping is grossly exaggerated.
Wikipedia has a section on it in their Menu foods page. From there I found a pet blog that seems to be focusing on the recall. There's also a time line of the situation.
If the time line is to be trusted then Menu foods started receiving complaints from consumers in December. It also says that an estimated 2,797 pets have died in relation to the poisoned pet food. Menu foods is only taking responsibility for 16 of those deaths.
Again according to the time line Menu Foods did some lab tests in late February & by early March 9 animals out of about 50 died of acute renal failure. They did not start recalling their products until March 16th.
It's also been said that the recall could be expanded beyond the 4 pet food companies currently involved. Also worth mentioning is that Nestle took about 4 hours to track down the melamine they found in their pet foods. Although it's also been speculated that melamine could be a marker for something else since it usually isn't very toxic.
There's also a class action lawsuit group on yahoo for anyone interested. Although it's not expected that any individual pet owner will receive much in the way of compensation as pets are treated as personal property in the courts & therefore emotional suffering isn't usually a consideration.
Most importantly here's the FDA page about the recall with links at the bottom of the page about the companies recalling their products.
The FDA says that human food was not contaminated.
& it turns out that this isn't the first pet food recall in recent years that involved fatalities.
Just for the helluvit here's a site about dog foods. I found it interesting because through its "dog years converter" I'm guessing I'm about 247 years old now.
It's always advised to consult your vet before switching to a home made diet for your animal. My not-too-tall hot blonde brunette friend is a Vet Tech & she's been telling me that her clinic always advises against feeding pets human food. However due to the nature of the situation the last week or so they've been telling anyone who calls to go ahead & feed their pets table scraps until the pet food recall is all sorted out. That being said here's a site on how to make your own dog food (I didn't know garlic was a flea repellent - I just thought it worked on dates). Here's one on making your own cat food. Those are general pages. Here's one giving recipes for home made pet food. Here's another general page about making cat food & it also has a page with recipes. Those are just what I gleamed from a quick Google search but there are many more sites with information on making your own pet food. Just use your favorite search engine to find out more.