Some of you may have heard this story, which has been S-L-O-W-L-Y developing for more than a week.
In a nutshell, there have been pet deaths reported in various parts of the US, and the cause of the deaths was the pet food, which, as it turns out, has a component made by one manufacturer that is used in MANY different (and supposedly UNIQUE) pet foods. Both dogs and cats were affected, but more cats than dogs.
At first they said there was a problem with this component -wheat gluten.
Now it is revealed that the wheat gluten had rat poison mixed with it.
see: http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/23/news/companies/pet_food/?postversion=2007032318
Now, what gets me is that if one small granary can of rat poison fell into a few hundred tons of wheat, it wouldn't be a concentrated enough poison to kill a cat or small dog after eating one can of the food. So the concentration of poison had to be much higher than any "accident" would allow. After all, rat poison is not a customary component of edible wheat gluten.
Are companies going to have to subject all their suppliers to gas chromatograph analysis before OK-ing them for use in a recipe? I think maybe that would be a good idea.