52 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
52 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
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Subject: More details on the "cat food sold as tuna" story
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There was some discussion not too long ago about an entry in the FAQ
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list that was something like "woman removes tuna label from can, finds
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cat food label underneath".
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While the general circumstances were made clear in that discussion,
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the business about the label was not. However, it turns out to be True;
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it happened in July 1991. While looking at something else in the Toronto
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Star of March 24, 1992, I came across a story by John Deverell under the
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headline "Tainted tuna sold for humans 7 years later". For copyright
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reasons I won't post the whole thing, but here are some excerpts...
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Canada's most famous cat food, the tainted Star-Kist tuna, is still
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being eaten by people. Yesterday, U.S. federal agents seized [in
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Teterboro, N.J.] 38,640 cans of "decomposed fish product" that had
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been relabelled as tuna for human consumption. ... All canned foods
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are sterilized during processing so the tuna wasn't dangerous, the
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agency said. ...
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[The] cans were part of the original 20 million recalled to the
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Star-Kist cannery in St. Andrews, N.B., in 1985. [It closed down
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the same year, reopened in 1988, and closed again in 1990.] The tuna
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had been rejected by inspectors from Canada's Department of Fisheries
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and Oceans ...
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David Bevan, director of Canada's fish plant inspection branch, said
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last night that "no Canadian and no Canadian cat has to worry about
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that stuff. There's none in the country." Several million cans of
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the substandard tuna were exported to the 7th Heaven pet food company
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in Houston, Texas, on condition that it not come back to Canada in
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any form...
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[But someone relabelled some of the cans.] Some tuna labels were
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pasted on top of cat food labels. A recall ordered after consumers
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in Minnesota and Wisconsin complained in July wasn't effective so
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the FBI decided to seize the cans ...
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One complaint came from Darlene La Musga of St. Paul, Minn., who opened
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a can, took a bite, then prepared to make tuna salad. "I went to pull off
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the label and I saw there was another label underneath," she said last
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July. "It said... 7th Heaven cat food. It gagged me and I threw up in
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the wastebasket."
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I therefore suggest the FAQ list entry be revised as follows:
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T. Woman removes label from "tuna" can, finds cat food label underneath
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T. The cat food actually was tuna canned 6 years earlier in Canada, declared
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unfit for human consumption, allowed to be exported as pet food, and then
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illegally relabeled as tuna again. (Toronto Star, March 24, 1992)
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