Monday, July 23, 2007

Dog food/human food, who can tell?

Every once in a while, some story will come along that kind of lifts the veil that typically shrouds the food industry. Remember that pet-food scare a few months ago, when it became obvious after reading the stories that most pet foods in the country use the exact same products? This past week saw a new scandal, as cans of "Hot Dog Chili Sauce" (note: wtf is that?) were recalled due to fears that they might harbor botulin. But beyond this, I could not help notice the following passage:

The recall by Castleberry's originally affected only 10 products, but the expanded move involves more than 80 types of stew, chili, hash and other products.

Four canned Natural Balance brand pet food products, which Castleberry's co-packs for Natural Balance, are also being recalled.
Got that? Yeah, they make human food and dog food on the exact same line. Given the automation that exists in this industry, is it totally unreasonable to imagine some poor sap in the midwest opening up what he expects to be a can of corned beef hash and instead finding a can of dog food, that syrupy gravy oozing over the plate? It's not hard to imagine that at all, and, even more frightening, it's also quite easy to imagine said poor sap going ahead and eating the dog food. Really, hypothetical person... how could you?