Court: Menu Foods harassed pet owners

[RamboLiberal]

Source: USA Today

The pet food company that recalled 60 million cans of contaminated dog and cat food repeatedly made harassing phone calls to pet owners who had lawyers and said they didn't want to talk, even after a judge ordered the firm to leave them alone, court records show.

Lawyers from six firms representing clients who claim their pets were harmed by Menu's pet food asked a federal judge in New Jersey Wednesday to stop Menu from "bullying" people who had called the company since the recall was announced March 16, according to their court filing.

U.S. District Judge Noel Hillman in Camden, N.J., agreed with the plaintiffs, describing the calls as "aggressive," according to a transcript of the hearing obtained by USA TODAY.

"It's one thing for two people to sit down at the table and voluntarily agree to settle their case. It's another thing to harass people on weekends through automated phone calls," Hillman said to Edward Ruff of Pretzel & Stouffer, Menu's lawyer.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-26-menu-foods-harassment_N.htm

---

Bastards. Also the Chinese blame American companies for wanting cheap ingredients, and they may be right, why didn't Menu Foods question why the Chinese company they were buying from was so much cheaper!

Chinese say U.S. shares blame in food scandal

Fed up with weeks of Americans bashing their food safety standards, Chinese government and industry officials say that bargain-hunting U.S. food companies share blame if contaminated Chinese ingredients wind up in food.

More than two months after the USA began a massive pet-food recall, since linked to contaminated ingredients imported from China, business and government officials in China are investigating what went wrong and promising improvement in a country where mass poisonings from tainted foods have been common. But they also say they're not the only ones who need to take more responsibility.

"Officials like me in the Chinese government can supervise the producers here, but U.S. companies doing business with Chinese companies must also be very clear about the standards they need, and don't just look for a cheap price," says Yuan Changxiang, a deputy director in the ministry responsible for inspecting imports and exports.

Jin Zemin, general manager of Shanghai Kaijin Bio-Tech, which specializes in wheat gluten, agrees. U.S. importers "want cheaper prices, but that can come at a cost," he says. "You should know exactly where the products you buy are coming from. Don't just look at the price."

<snip>

"I thought it was strange that other companies offered wheat gluten at $26 to $39 per ton cheaper than ours, with a very high protein level," he says, adding that his company's wheat gluten sells for about $900 a ton. "How could that be? If it is so cheap, there must be a problem, I thought."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-05-25-china-food-scandal_N.htm

[Madspirit]

1. k&r...n/t

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. Jin Zemin does have a point!

I think the importers need to get their assets confiscated also.

[iamjoy]

3. The Chinese Are Right

We do share the blame, always trying to do things on the cheap - well, this is the result.

I wonder how many American "get it." When they talk about reducing "cumbersome" or costly regulations on business - do we really want to be like China where the government doesn't really care if tainted food sickens their citizens? How many contaminated food outbreaks must we have, how many must die before Americans recognize the value of government regulation?

[BrklynLiberal]

5. One of my first thoughts was why didn't the purchasers of this cheap gluten wonder why it was so

cheap.
They simply HAD to suspect there was something wrong, but did not give a damn...or care enough to investigate why they were getting such a great bargain.

[jmowreader]

8. Let's blame this one on Wal-Mart and MBAs

Wal-Mart's policy is very simple: on items that don't change from year to year, the price Wal-Mart will pay will decrease every year.

There are five numbers we need to deal with here: price of production, manufacturer's profit, wholesale price, initial markup and retail price. At the retailer's level, we have the wholesale price, initial markup and retail price to deal with. Most retailers can only control either their IMU or their retail price, because the vendor controls the wholesale price, we can decide that we either want to sell at x price and let the IMU float, or decide we want to make Y percent on it and let the price float. Wal-Mart's business model revolves around controlling both retail price AND IMU, which requires them to dictate wholesale price to their suppliers.

Wal-Mart decides to carry Happy Kitty canned food. They're going to sell it for 50 cents per can and slap a 100-percent IMU on it, which means they're paying 25 cents per can for this product. Wal-Mart has tripled Happy Kitty's volume, but unfortunately the boutique pet shops that were selling Happy Kitty before W-M got its meat hooks into Happy Kitty Co were paying 32 cents per can. Seven cents per can doesn't SOUND like a hell of a lot until you remember Wal-Mart's ordering 10 million cans of it a week.

Some MBA at Happy Kitty headquarters, who ain't real happy right now, is flipping through his e-mail and sees "Wheat Gluten from Famous Chinese Manufacturers $820 per ton." That's better than the $900 they're paying now, and it will help them meet their price target. Happy Kitty doesn't want to lose money on 520 million cans of cat food per year. Only later, when Happy Kitty has to recall a few tens of millions of cans of food because the gluten's really adulterated flour, do they see the error of their ways. (And they STILL have to figure out how to make 32-cent food for a quarter.)

Let me tell you EXACTLY what it's going to take to get Wal-Mart back in line: "No." There are products you MUST have if you're a retailer. If you sell food you must have Kraft products. If you sell bras you must have Playtex. An auto parts retailer must have Pennzoil. You can't run a toy department with no Barbies. Wal-Mart didn't get where it is by selling lipstick cheaper than anyone else, they got there by selling Revlon lipstick cheaper. The brand you want at a price no one else can touch. If seven or eight of the companies Wal-Mart can't afford to piss off got together and told W-M, "look, there ain't no mo, this is what the stuff costs and if you don't like it, try running your store with no Miracle Whip on the shelves," Wal-Mart would learn to behave tout suite.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. I can see how it could be argued that Wal-Mart almost singlehandedly gave our economy

over to the Chinese.
Their marketing practices have been abominable for years. Their underselling and knocking out the US competition has been wonderful for the Chinese economy. I believe I read that if Wal-Mart were a country, it would be the nation that was China's biggest importer.

They should be tried and convicted of trying to overthrow this govenment by underminding the economy.

They are perpetrators of events with unforeseen consequences: Economic blowback that is ruining our nation.

[PSPS]

12. You described pretty well how WalMart destroyed Vlasic pickles.

For Vlasic, the gallon jar of pickles became what might be called a devastating success. "Quickly, it started cannibalizing our non-Wal-Mart business," says Young. "We saw consumers who used to buy the spears and the chips in supermarkets buying the Wal-Mart gallons. They'd eat a quarter of a jar and throw the thing away when they got moldy. A family can't eat them fast enough."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart_Printer_Friendly.html

[Nikki Stone1]

16. Good post

:kick:

[bullwinkle428]

15. The "invisible hand" always ends up giving us the finger in the end!

[candice]

4. It wasn't even gluten, just plain wheat with melamine...

took the FDA two months to figure that out. Even more of a windfall to the company that pretends to be manufacturing wheat gluten. We need to bring manufacturing home.

[kestrel91316]

14. So you're a food chemistry whiz who could have figured it out a

lot faster?? DO TELL.....

[UpInArms]

6. Profits at any cost?

http://opinion.zdnet.co.uk/comment/0,1000002138,39145068,00.htm

published: 29 Jan 2004 16:17 GMT

It's not been a great week for IT companies. While the whole financial landscape may be looking more fecund, the moral topography of some companies is appearing distinctly barren.

The week began with a damning report from the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) highlighting sweatshop conditions in the factories that produce components for several leading PC manufacturers, including IBM, Dell and HP. The agency claimed to have uncovered "dire working conditions" at production sites in Mexico, Thailand and China. The wider implications of the report have already been touched on but basically CAFOD claims that these "appallingly low" conditions are a direct result of extreme pressures within the IT industry to cut costs.

While unsafe working practices and human-rights abuses are wholly unacceptable, previous cases such as Nike's mean that manufacturers treating factory staff in developing countries poorly is sadly neither new nor particularly shocking. But a report issued yesterday by human-rights campaign group Amnesty indicates that moral bankruptcy in the IT industry is not limited to the relatively low-margin, commoditised PC market. It seems some of the industries biggest software or "solution" providers could have also been driven onto equally shaky moral ground by financial pressure.

In the report, China: Controls tighten as Internet activism grows, Amnesty claims there has been a dramatic rise in the number of people detained or sentenced for expressing their opinions online or for downloading information from the Internet. Up to and including January 2004, 54 people had been detained or imprisoned for "Internet activism" in China -- a 60 per cent increase on November 2002 figures, according to Amnesty.

And where does China get the technology to monitor and restrict access to the Internet? From Microsoft, Sun, Cisco and Nortel, among others, claims Amnesty. According to the report: "Amnesty International remains concerned that in the pursuit of new and lucrative markets, foreign corporations may be indirectly contributing to human-rights violations or at, the very least, failing to give consideration to the human-rights implications of their investments."

At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, And The Pursuit Of Profit

http://www.opengroup.com/fibooks/037/0375705678.shtml

[madrchsod]

7. walmart effect

always contract at the lowest price. then demand even lower price the next contract...cry me a river china i suggest you regulate your companies whether they contract wheat gluten for dog food or baby bibs for walmart...

[loudsue]

9. Check out this quote from the USA Today article::

"Yuan hopes U.S. authorities will adopt a less aggressive approach. "If you find there is a problem with Chinese imports, tell me first so we can solve the problem together; don't just ban it or take other measures, as that affects trade and relations. At present, the USA takes action first, and then informs us. I hope this will change," he says."

That sounds EXACTLY like what the republicans would want to do.... don't recall anything that is found bad, as it "affects trade". Fuck them all.

:kick:

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Wait til it kills a few thousand people or pets..THEN take action.

Isn't that the same policy that Bushco wants for the FDA and the regulatory agencies?

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. Jin Zemin is right...

American pet food companies are partially to blame.

America the Beautiful has become America the Cheapass. :(

[Nikki Stone1]

17. No , Jin Zemin is irresponsible and China needs better controls on its foodstuffs

US companies are used to the fact that the FDA, at least in the past, prevented abuses like those the Chinese are guilty of, from happening for the most part. In a way, they naively played the bargain shopping game, not realizing that the Chinese don't have the same protections this country does.

[anotherdrew]

20. oh come on...

these poor companies... just ignorant suckers.... let's all have a god damned pity party for these bastards. fuck them, they chose to buy shit and put it in your pet's food untested until it was way too late. They own 100% of the responsibility for what goes in their products. if they can't be bothered to test, that's their problem, not the suppliers fault.

[Nikki Stone1]

27. Look--If I am a company and I sell you a computer really cheaply, you still expect the thing to work

If you bring it home and it doesn't work and I tell you "Hey, you get what you pay for?", you'd still think I was wrong for selling you a machine that didn't work. You wouldn't immediately take the blame on yourself for being a bargain hunter.

[wickerwoman]

33. But if you buy a computer

off a blanket for $75 you don't get to be shocked when it turns out to be stolen.

Just sayin...

[GoddessOfGuinness]

22. Certainly China needs to clean up its act, but the US companies

are not blameless. They should have known that in going for cheap product, quality would be sacrificed. It's been happening for years. It isn't as if US companies are naive...it's that they don't care.

[Nikki Stone1]

28. No, but buying cheap in US did not mean buying "contaminated" or "adulerated"; the FDA had rules

You might get a lesser quality, but you wouldn't get something that killed you.

If China is going to be a global player, they've got to live up to the expectations set by the rest of the world.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

32. But as I said, they've been doing it for decades now..

it was only a matter of time before they got so tight-fisted that they bought contaminated product. The corporate consumers need to take responsibility to test their product and insure that it is safe for consumption. They used to do that when quality was more important.

[anotherdrew]

18. in other words, we're gladly buying the rope with which to hang us n/t

[PinkyisBlue]

19. Yuan Changxiang is the Chinese equivalent of America's "heck of a job, Brownie" Michael Brown.

"Officials like me in the Chinese government can supervise the producers here, but U.S. companies doing business with Chinese companies must also be very clear about the standards they need, and don't just look for a cheap price," says Yuan Changxiang, a deputy director in the ministry responsible for inspecting imports and exports.

Yuan, it should go without saying that U.S. companies don't want poison in their foods. I'm not saying that our companies and food inspectors are not without blame, but attempting to say that there is poison in our food because we did not specifically say we don't want poison in our food is just stupid!!

[Nikki Stone1]

29. Exactly. He's just fingerpointing because his countrymen got caught

.,.

[StarryNite]

21. This whole mess is so disturbing.

And it's only a small window into all the problems created by outsourcing.

[formercia]

23. So much for Free Trade

If there were consistent labor and product standards across the board, Free Trade would be a failure because it takes away the corporate profit incentive in trying to take advantage of existing product standards and cost of doing business in a given area.
NAFTA and the WTO are a legal means to take advantage of or bypassing existing local protections.

[loudsue]

30. THAT was the best comment on this whole thread.

It's about the corporate take-over of our political systems! Governments are supposed to PROTECT their CITIZENS. Not the corporations that undermine, or try to KILL, OPPRESS, or BILK their citizens. Free Trade is bullshit. What is needed is FAIR Trade.

:kick:

[formercia]

31. I'm glad someone understood

what I was trying to say.


I'm fed up with being lied to by the people we entrust.

:hi:

[fasttense]

24. Poisoned pet food and harassment by corporations brought to you by free trade. n/t

[Honeycombe8]

26. Oh, but don't you know? Free trade is the answer to EVERYTHING!....

No matter what the issue, the Republican/Libertarian response is...let free trade handle that! The market will take care of that! If it's not a good thing, the free market will kill it!

Sure it will (not). As long as some big corporation makes a buck, the product will stay. Or at least will stay long enough to do serious harm...like thousands of dead pets.

Bastards. I'm sick as hell of all this. Our loveable pets?

Don't blame me. I didn't vote for these bastards.

[Ian David]

25. How to contact Menu Foods

How To Contact Menu Foods Executives, Makers Of Rat-Poisoned Pet Food 4,367 Views

If you would like to let Menu Foods know what you think about them selling pet food laced with rat poison, here's their executive contact info:

1) To reach Paul Henderson (pictured), President & CEO of Menu Foods GenPar Limited, call [phone]
2) Press 0 when the recording picks up.
3) Leave a short message
4) Press #.
5) Press # again when prompted.
6) Then press # to use the directory.
7) Type in "henderson" with the alphanumeric pad.
8) Press #.
9) You are then taken straight to the man.

This at least worked for us after-hours, results may vary during the day. You can use this method to reach the other executives, like:

Robert W. Luba, Chairman of the Board of Trustees & Administration Board ([e-mail])
Mark A. Wiens, Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Secretary of Administrator ([e-mail])
Randall C. Copeland, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Administrator ([e-mail])
William F. Grant, Executive Vice President - Corporate Purchasing & Logistics of Administrator ([e-mail])
Christopher J. Mifflin, Executive Vice President - Operations of Administrator ([e-mail])
Richard G. Shields, Executive Vice President - Technical Services of Administrator ([e-mail])
Serge Darkazanli, President and Chief Executive Officer ([e-mail], [e-mail])

Address:
Menu Foods Income Fund
8 Falconer Drive
Streetsville, ON
Canada L5N 1B1
Fax: [phone]

We made this post at the request of Darla and Dave, whose dog Sissy died after eating the deadly dog food.

"We only want Menu Food to be responsible for the vet bills, cremation, cost of the dog. We do not want to get rich off this. Just be compensated for our beloved dog," the couple wrote The Consumerist. — BEN POPKEN

More:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/menu-foods/how-to-contact-menu-foods-executives-makers-of-rat+poisoned-pet-food-247980.php




Edward B. Ruff, III

Mr. Ruff is an Equity Partner at the Law Offices of Pretzel & Stouffer, Chartered. He is also a member of Pretzel & Stouffer's Executive and Partner Compensation Committees. Mr. Ruff's area of concentration includes product liability, mass tort, environmental and professional negligence, medical malpractice and construction litigation. Mr. Ruff is has extensive experience as a Trial Attorney with over 40 trials to verdict. He is a member of the trial bar 7th Circuit, Northern District of Illinois; Eastern District, Wisconsin, and has argued appeals before 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

E-Mail Edward Ruff
[e-mail] <[e-mail]>

http://www.pretzel-stouffer.com/eruff.html

[napi21]

34. The Chinese excuse is total BS!

Rubbing alcohol is cheaper than vodka too, but I sure don't want it in my glass!!!

To say, just because the American companies wanted the cheapest price the Chinese mfg. had to provide non-food ingredients in their product is the dumbest damn excuse I ever heard of!

If I want to buy 50 pounds of tomatoes, and I don't want to pay more than $.50 a pound but no seller will go that low...GUESS WHAT? Either I change my price constraints, or I DON'T GET ANY TOMATOES!

IMO, it's the fault of the greedy Chinese MFG. who wasn't willing to risk losing a sale, so they decided to adulterate the damn product with some cheap DEADLY ingredient instead!