Pet Food Perils

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So is it worth enticing your stubborn beast into eating what's best for them? And how do you recognize what's best? Hansen urges caution, "If you have a pet that's on a diet for a specific health issue, it may be a much greater risk to change your pet's diet." And he points out that relying on organic foods may give a false sense of security, noting that like their conventional counterparts, with "organically-raised grains there could be contaminants, such as high mycotoxin levels [toxins produced by naturally occurring molds]."

If, however, your pet is healthy, Hansen believes switching to a wheat-gluten free food is a reasonable choice, especially as contaminated products may still be on store shelves. But even wheat-gluten-free products aren't failsafe. On April 16, Natural Balance Pet Foods recalled its wheat-gluten-free Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food and Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Foods due to reports of intestinal upset and kidney problems in animals. Product testing indicates that the rice protein concentrate used contains melamine. The FDA has issued a nationwide recall of these products.

For the finicky pet, Hansen recommends drizzling dry food with chicken broth or the water from canned tuna. These act as taste enhancers without raising the caloric content significantly and are often well-received by both cats and dogs. If you're considering homemade foods, the ASPCA recommends you consult about acceptable recipes with your veterinarian or an expert with an advanced degree in animal nutrition who is certified by the American College of Veterinary Nutrition (see listings in resources). Due to risks such as salmonella poisoning, the ASPCA does not recommend a raw food diet for pets.

Chinese Delivery

As for our own food, global trade has boosted the presence of Chinese goods on our stores shelves—these days we import 20 times the amount of foodstuffs from China that we did 25 years ago, with $2.26 billion in sales. But the FDA rejects more food shipments from China, 145 per month on average, than any country besides India. These numbers are an order of magnitude higher than some other large exporters to the U.S., such as Thailand, with an average of 18 rejected shipments monthly, and Italy, with 35.

The FDA has no evidence that contaminated wheat gluten has entered the U.S. human food supply, but has "asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to use its surveillance network to monitor for signs of human illness, such as increased renal failure, that could indicate contamination of the human food supply," as Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, told a Senate subcommittee on April 12. So far, no human illnesses have been linked to the melamine-tainted wheat gluten.