China Animal Feed Exports Regularly Contain Melamine

April 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I just (finally) read the NY Times article about melamine in pet food. Here are some key quotes from the article, available currently at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business/worldbusiness/30food.html

“For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here. …Melamine is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food… its presence in any form of American food is illegal.”

“This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional.”

Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest was quoted as saying in the article.

“The Food and Drug Administration has already banned imports of wheat gluten from China after it received more than 14,000 reports of pets believed to have been sickened by packaged food.”

Remember, the FDA is still claiming the death toll is under 20. Do you really think all these pet food makers would recall their foods if only 20 cats died?

“…pet food ingredients laced with melamine were accidentally sent to hog farms in eight states…”

Yes, eight states. Not just California.

The article goes on to explain how melamine is regularly used in Chinese animal feed because it is cheaper than real protein but tests like protein. So they can con buyers into buying feed they think is high in protein, but it actually protein deficient. The Chinese feed sellers don’t think it’s a problem, mainly because they don’t understand animal nutrition.

Cats are strict carnivores and must have high levels of protein, including taurine. The gravy style cutlet pet foods (sold in pouches) are allowed to have lower levels of protein than canned foods, which are allowed to have lower levels than dry foods. So it’s likely the pouched foods that contained melamine had very low levels of actual protein. Even if melamine were completely safe to ingest (which it isn’t) a lack of protein in pet food is extremely dangerous, particularly to cats. If cats don’t get enough taurine in their diets, they will get heart disease and die.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Animals, The Pet Food Recall
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The Poker Stigma

April 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment

My husband, Ed wrote,

“I’ve found that I have two major passions in life: learning new things and teaching them to others. I’m not sure why, but that’s what I enjoy doing most. No matter where I go or what I do, I will always end up teaching something. I think I was just made that way.”

Might it have something to do with the fact that both his parents are professors?

We met someone the other day and when Ed answered the “What do you do?” requisite question with “I teach people how to play poker” the reaction was something we’re used to. They started in with the “Those who can’t, teach” line. But the thing was, this guy didn’t know anything about poker, didn’t know who Ed Miller is, and let his assumptions guide the conversation.

Even if the “those who can’t, teach” mantra were true for all teachers only some types of teachers ever hear that complaint. If Ed had said, “I’m an elementary school science teacher” I doubt the response would have been a “so do you make more money doing or teaching?” grilling from a guy who barely knows the subject. If Ed had said, “I teach manners at a charm school” the response would have been more genuine curiosity than interrogation. Even if Ed had said, “I teach people to play backgammon, chess, dominoes, and hearts” the response probably wouldn’t have been the same as when he says he teaches poker.

Poker has a stigma. Lots of people gamble in lots of different ways, but some gambling is more socially acceptable than other types of gambling. Playing the lottery may make you look like you’re stupid or bad at math, but it doesn’t make you look like a cheat or a fake. Betting on horses will make you look like you throw your money away, but it does it in the same way buying a nice car does. You don’t look stupid, you look rich. Gambling on stocks makes you look smart and rich, even when it’s not true. But playing poker… playing poker makes you look like a lot of things, and almost all of them are bad.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Entertainment, Fun and Games, Poker, Work, Business, & Finances
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Pet Food Recall List

April 30, 2007 | 3 Comments

List of Recalled Pet Foods

(up to date as of April 30, 2007)
If your pet’s food is on this list, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Throw away the food and buy a different brand or make your own pet food. Don’t chance it.

Recalled Pet Food Brands for Cats & Dogs

A. B. Puppy Chews
A. B. Dog Chews
American Nutrition Inc.
Americas Choice, Preferred Pet
Authority
Award
Berkley & Jensen Pig Ears
Best Choice
Big Bet
Big Red
Bloom
Blue
Blue Buffalo Company
Blue Spa Select
Cadillac
Champion Breed Lg Biscuit
Champion Breed Peanut Butter Biscuits
Companion
Companion’s Best Multi-Flavor Biscuit
Companion/Giant Companion
Companion/Giant Companion/Tops Companion
Companion/Tops Companion
Compliments
Demoulas Market Basket
Diamond Pet Foods
Dingo Chick’n Jerky
Doctors Foster & Smith
Dollar General
Eukanuba Dog Bites in Gravy
Eukanuba Dog Chunks in Gravy
Eukanuba Cat Cuts and Flaked
Eukanuba Morsels in Gravy
Fine Feline Cat
Food Lion
Foodtown
Giant Companion
Giant Companion/Tops Companion
Gravy Train
Grreat Choice
Hannaford
Happy Tails
Harmony Farms cat food
Harmony Farms dog food
Harmony Farms dog treats
Hill Country Fare
Hill’s Prescription Diet
Hy-Vee
Iams Cat Slices and Flakes
Iams Select Bites
Iams Dog Chunks
Iams Dog Select Bites
Iams Dog Small Bites
J.E. Mondou
Jerky Treats
Laura Lynn
Lick Your Chops
Li’l Red
LiveSmart Weight Management Chicken and Brown Rice Dog Food
LiveSmart Adult Chicken and Brown Rice
LiveSmart Senior Chicken and Brown Rice
LiveSmart Puppy Chicken and Brown Rice
LiveSmart Adult Lamb and Brown Rice
Loving Meals
Medi-Cal
Meijer’s Main Choice
Mighty Dog
Mixables
Natural Balance Venison Dry
Natural Life
Natural Way
Nutriplan
Nutro
Nutro Max Gourmet Classics
Nutro Natural Choice
Nutro Products
Nutro - Ultra
Nutro Max
Nuture
Ol’ Roy
Ol’ Roy 4-Flavor Lg Biscuits
Ol’ Roy Canada
Ol’ Roy Peanut Butter Biscuits
Ol’ Roy Puppy
Ol’Roy US
Paws
Perfect Pals Large Biscuits
Pet Essentials
Pet Life
Pet Pride
Pet Pride / Good n Meaty
Pounce
Presidents Choice
Price Chopper
Priority US
Publix
Price Chopper
Priority Canada
Priority US
Royal Canin Veterinary Diet
Roche Brothers
Royal Canin Veterinary Diet
Royal Canin Sensible Choice
Save-A-Lot Choice Morsels
Save-A-Lot Special Blend
Schnucks
Science Diet Feline Cuts Adult
Science Diet Feline Cuts Kitten
Science Diet Feline Cuts Mature Adult 7+
Science Diet Feline Savory Cuts Can
Shep Dog
Sierra Pet Products
Springfield Prize
Sprout
Stater Brothers
Stater Brothers Large Biscuits
Sophistacat
Spa Select Kitten Dry Food
Special Kitty Canada
Special Kitty US
Springfield Prize
Sprout
Stop & Shop Companion
Stop & Shop/Giant Companion
Tops Companion
Wegmans
Weis Total Pet
Western Family US
White Rose
Winn Dixie
Your Pet

FDA recall notices

(in order of most recent to oldest)
The list is for March and April and is up-to-date as of April 30th, 2007.

LiveSmart: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/smartpak04_07.html
Sierra Pet: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/sierra04_07.html
Blue Buffalo: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/bluebuffalo304_07.html
Diamond Foods: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/diamond04_07.html
Chenango Valley: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/chenango04_07.html
LiveSmart: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/livesmart04_07.html
Blue Buffalo Spa Kitten: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/bluebuffalo04_07.html
Royal Canin: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/royalcanin04_07.html
Wilbur Ellis rice: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/wilburellis04_07.html
More from Menu Foods: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/menu304_07.html
A.B. Puppy and Dog Chews: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/twenterprises04_07.html
Natural balance Venison Cat and Dog Dry Food: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01610.html
Menu Food Expansion: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/menu204_07.html
Del Monte: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/delmonte04_07.html
Menu Foods Expansion: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/menu04_07.html
ChemNutra: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/chemnutra04_07.html
Del Monte: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/delmonte03_07.html
Eight in One / Dingo: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/eightinone03_07.html
Alpo: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/purina203_07.html
Hill’s Science Diet: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/hills303_07.html
Menu Foods: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/menu032407.html
Petrapport Berkley & Jensen Pig Ears: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/petrapport03_07.html
Hill’s Science Diet: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/hills03_07.html
Purina: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/purina03_07.html
Iams and Eukanuba: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/pg03_07.html
Menu Foods: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/menu03_07.html
Berkley & Jensen Pig Ears: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/bj03_07.html
Wild Kitty: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/wildkitty02_07.html

To subscribe to the FDA’s recall news feed, go here.
Another great resource is: Itchmo.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Animals, The Pet Food Recall
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Technorati Favorites Exchange Experiment: Whores, Prom, and Pig’s Blood

April 30, 2007 | 14 Comments

As usual, the in-crowd are complaining about the out-crowds’ campaign strategies. The in-crowd think they should be prom king or queen simply because they’re the in-crowd. The less popular kids think they have a shot to be prom royalty if they run a creative and fierce election campaign. Both groups acknowledge that prom is just one day and doesn’t really mean much in the long term.

You might be starting to wonder, what the hell is she talking about? Prom? It’s an odd topic for me since I never even went to prom. I graduated high school early and never did the dance. I’m not really talking about the prom. I’m talking about the blogosphere favorite exchange. The analogy goes like this:

The prom is Technorati (a blog search and ranking system that uses a simplistic algorithm).
The elections are the “top 100″ lists at Technorati (the top most popular blogs, the top 100 most favorited blogs, etc…).

Some bloggers have savvy campaigns while others get by on their good looks. One campaign is the “Favorites Exchange.” It goes like this: if you favorite my blog, I’ll favorite yours. DoshDosh officially started the campaign, though I’m sure others were doing it before. Engtech made it even easier to do. We’re doing it at 2kbloggers. And other bloggers doing it include: BONTB, Mashable, Dark Circles, SaveSaveSave, Bill2Me, HomeBasedBusiness, and more.

The vocal nay-sayers are hypocrites

I like Darren Rowse. But on this point I strongly disagree with him. He claims the “favorite me” meme is inauthentic and “games” Technorati. But as other bloggers have pointed out, Rowse barely uses the Technorati favorites himself. He favorites his own blogs and a few others, some of which are dead blogs. I can understand having dead blogs on your list if your list is huge, but when you only have 21 blogs on the list? That fact screams, “I don’t use Technorati’s favorite me feature.” So why in the world should you trust the advice of someone who doesn’t even use the service?

Technorati encourages this meme. This isn’t ‘gaming’ anyone

Rowse emailed Technorati’s CEO. I emailed Technorati, too. No response. Technorati has nothing to say on the matter… yet.

The reason Technorati has nothing to say about it is probably because they like it. With all of us linking to Technorati and promoting their service, there really isn’t a downside for them. (That is, until a critical mass of A-listers complain. Then Technorati will probably step in, just like they did with the 2000 Bloggers Project. Technorati’s WTF? promoted the meme TWICE. Then, after A listers whined that they got displaced by something more popular, Technorati stepped in with the censor. They banned blogs and blog posts. Whoever says their algorithm is “authentic” is full of it. It appears to me that Technorati manipulates their algorithm to keep certain blogs at the top.)

“In truth, Technorati Favorites probably don’t exist for the benefit of visitors at all: I’m guessing they were created by Technorati to drive more traffic to the site from blogs: just like people post “Digg This” buttons to their sites, Technorati could boost traffic and search rankings by incentivizing lots of blogs (especially top blogs) to link to the site. Likewise, the ability to post Technorati tags on blogs is largely to boost the search rankings of Technorati, rather than help users.
Because Technorati is mainly interested in driving traffic to the site, there’s no real motivation to crack down on minor gaming attempts,” said Mashable.

For the time being the favorite me meme is helping Technorati. In fact, Technorati makes it easy to add lists of links to your favorites (hat tip: Andy Beard and Douglas Karr). They actually encourage it.

So go ahead, take your OPML file from your feed reader and favorite all those blogs. Here’s how you can favorite a ton of blogs quickly and easily:
1. copy list of links from someone’s blog post or a directory page like the one at 2kbloggers
2. paste list into a converter like this one
3. copy result and save as opml file
4. import to Technorati here

By the way, Technorati lets you favorite non-blog websites. Interesting. Is this an oversight or are they expanding beyond the blogosphere?

It took me about five minutes to favorite over 2000 blogs. If you favorite me, there’s a good chance I’ll favorite you. But I’m more of a maverick, anti-establishment type so I just favorite tons of blogs without expecting them to favorite me back.

I like playing by the rules, I just take those rules to their logical conclusions and push the boundaries. I like encouraging other people to think and getting people to question authority. (By the way, Webomatica gave me the BIGGEST COMPLIMENT EVER by including me in his list of blogs that make him think.)

I don’t suck up to big media. My blog is mine and I’ll use it how I want. If I want to favorite a ton of people or link to a ton of people, I will. And anyone who wants to stop me is a censor, plain and simple.

Participating in blog memes like ‘Favorite Me’ does not preclude other activities

Rowse (ProBlogger) argues that your time as a blogger can be better spent writing quality posts and developing real relationships rather than participating in these types of memes. But making a ‘favorite me’ exchange and developing a good blog (with solid content and true relationships) are not mutually exclusive. I can do both and they don’t harm one another, particularly because favoriting other blogs is so easy (as described above in four steps and as illustrated by engtech’s cool new toy).

His point, however, is well taken for those bloggers who do not have as much blogging time as I do. If you’re not genuinely interested in the Favorite Me Experiment there’s no reason to partake. Spend your blogging time researching and blogging about other issues. Duh.

Cheating, Gaming, and Undermining the System: Oh shit, Carrie’s here. And she’s about to fuck up your prom

Critics argue that adding blogs that you don’t read or like to your favorites list undermines the system. Well, I don’t care about the system. It’s not my system. It’s Technorati’s system. They’re the ones profiting from it, not me. I care about more noble causes like Wikipedia because it’s a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing true information:

“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.”

Technorati doesn’t care about truth or information distribution. They care about profit and popularity.

Seriously, anyone who loses trust in me because they see I have a long list of Technorati favorites is a person who doesn’t read my blog anyway. If they read my blog, they’d know I don’t care about Technorati and I’m not a whore to them. I will have lists of blogs in my favorites for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because I like diversity, I like having fun, I’m passionate about promoting small time blogs, and I absolutely hate it when people jump to conclusions about things they barely investigate:

“I was offended at Technorati’s name calling and their pompous conceit. How dare they assume the motives of the hundreds of diverse bloggers without asking them? How dare they inflate their self-importance in the blogosphere as a champion of free speech while blatantly stifling blogger speech with the chill effect? I was motivated to do something. So I started 2kbloggers.com.” (read the whole thing)

If someone loses trust in Technorati as a result of my (legal and permissible) use of their service, well that’s a problem for Technorati. They’ll have to come up with yet another creative spin on how people who use the web for fun and truth are evil while people who act like sheep and who do what A-listers tell them to do are good. Or they could improve their service.

Other bloggers discussing this topic are:
Digital Inspiration
O’Flaherty
Rugjeff
Frantic Industries
I mostly disagree with the above blogs but I link to them so you can read the opposing viewpoint if you like. If you do, check out my comment at O’Flaherty (unless he removed it). Hahaha! Hey, he called me a whore first, what’d you expect?

Update: Rowse wrote another piece on the subject. In it, he links to some more discussions:
My Real Favorite Blogs
Responding to Technorati Faves Criticism who said,

“I never even noticed the faves feature until Stephen Fung mentioned it for charity…”

Ruffled Feathers on the Top 100
The Calm Before the Storm
Favourites Exchange, my Thoughts!
Technorati Gaming is Bad
The Technorati 100 Not So Hot?
The Technorati top 100 superficial list (he adds a funny picture to his post).
The Sad State of Technorati’s Top Favorited Blogs

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Internet & Technology, Technorati
14 Comments to "Technorati Favorites Exchange Experiment: Whores, Prom, and Pig’s Blood"

Speaking Out Against Violence

April 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Speak Out Against Violence

I’m speaking out against violence today. Today I will be silent on everything else.

Here is what I think are some solutions to stop violence:

We say something when others are being hateful or violent. We must not ignore violence.
We admit when we’re being hateful or violent and we stop ourselves.
We embrace truth and facts
We discourage lies and dishonesty
We encourage free speech
We discourage assault

And of course, gun control.

“…there is no American particularity about loners, disenfranchised immigrants, narcissism, alienated youth, complex moral agency, or Evil. There is an American particularity about guns. The arc is apparent. Forty years ago, a man killed fourteen people on a college campus in Austin, Texas; this year, a man killed thirty-two in Blacksburg, Virginia. Not enough was done between those two massacres to make weapons of mass killing harder to obtain.” ~ The New Yorker

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Politics
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