amicus curiae on OpEdNews.com
This article by Susan Thixton (Horrifying, Laboratoy Animals Rendered into Pet Food) is pretty clear on how lax the FDA and Food safety laws are.
A 4D classified animal may have Mad Cow disease, the prions ARE NOT destroyed by heat, which is why they needed to state that it must NOT be fed to ruminant animals.
Pretty stupid to allow any at all, as the prions can cross species and I have read reports of dogs and cats being diagnosed with mad cow variants in Europe! This disease can live in soils that are frozen, and will do so for many years! So burial is stupid too, cremation is the ONLY safe disposal method.
I used to run a pet shop and all our foods were labeled that way, in Australia. I have not noticed it missing here.
As to what the lab animals are dosed with, and if they were finally euthanized, and didn't die of whatever was forced upon them, it is a fact that the poisons used in euthanasia do NOT break down in processing.
If you can bear to, and really, even if it makes you ill to do so!! I do strongly recommend the film clip on" whats in your pet food," at www.naturalnews.com.
I also advise any Aussies reading that OUR LAWS are a DIRECT COPY of the American ones. yup! we were too lazy to bother, and simply imported the regs whole from the US!
From Horrifying – Laboratory Animals rendered into Pet Food:
According to the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, proper disposal of test animals is as follows: "Infectious animal carcasses can be incinerated on-site or collected by a licensed contractor." In other words, used test animals would be cremated – if the laboratory has the expensive equipment to cremate test animals; or the 'licensed contractor' would be the area Rendering Facility, which provides the pet food industry with many ingredients. Many, many laboratories that use test animals are University based; struggling to make ends meet. It is unlikely that many University laboratories can afford cremation of test animals. Sadly, we must assume that most University lab test animals are rendered.
As example, the University of Illinois and Oklahoma State University both allow test animal carcasses to be rendered. The University of Illinois website mentions their renderer does not pick up dogs or cats. However, all other test animals, and the diseases and drugs in their bodies, are removed by local renderers whose end products sell to pet food manufacturers. Baylor University website states "non-hazardous carcass waste" is removed to the area landfill; however "all hazardous classified animal carcasses shall be disposed of through a contracted waste disposal vendor" – a renderer. Please take notice of the Baylor University waste protocol; non-hazardous carcass waste can be buried, but hazardous animal carcass waste is rendered.
Imagine all of the waste test animals at all of the laboratories across the country, University or otherwise. Imagine all the test drugs not yet approved for use within these animal bodies. Many, many of those test animals and test drugs are rendered, along with other waste animal material (such as 4-D livestock – dead, diseased, dying, and disabled animals rejected for use in human food), and after the rendering process become ingredients in pet food.
Pet food ingredients that could possibly contain a rendered laboratory animal would be 'animal fat', 'by-product meal', 'meat and bone meal', 'meat meal' (not 'chicken meal' or 'turkey meal' or any other specific named meat meal), and 'Animal Digest'. The FDA has determined that the common pet food ingredient 'Animal Fat' to be most likely to contain a euthanizing drug, thus most likely to contain a euthanized animal. There is NO FDA information on exactly what type of euthanized animal could be in 'animal fat', nor what other drugs are in the ingredient (and in the other above listed pet food ingredients). There is NO FDA or CVM information on the health condition of animals used in these rendered pet food ingredients, nor the research data to know the health risk to pets. The FDA, despite Federal law against this, allows diseased animals and rendered laboratory animals to become pet food ingredients. (Emphasis added)