The Plastic Diet

Now here's a story that'll make you want to give up bread. Seems imported grain products (wheat gluten, corn gluten, corn meal, soy protein, rice bran and rice protein) have been found to be contaminated with the same melamine thought to be poisoning our pets. Melamine--as in cool colored plastic plates from the '50s or these snazzy dishes from Pier 1. Said grain is being used in everything from bread to baby formula, according to the Reuters story.

One of my favorite phrases that stuck after the Katrina debacle here in New Orleans was Gen. Russell Honore's contention that reporters who kept asking the same questions were "stuck on stupid."

So here's another stuck on stupid moment. According to the Reuters report, the tainted pet food wasn't all destroyed--it was sold to pig farms as food for porkers in North and South Carolina, California, New York, Utah and possibly Ohio. That pork chop you're eating might not just be on a plastic plate--it could be a plastic plate. The FDA recommended we not eat melamine-tainted pork, but said the "health risk is minimal."

Easy for them to say. Bet you won't see any pork on the FDA officials' plates, at least not from the affected farms. And why, if the food is poisonous to cats and dogs, would it occur to anyone to put it into the human food chain?

And not only that, but the FDA appears to be protecting the names of companies who have imported the tainted grain products.

Stuck on stupid.