39,000 pets may have been hurt by tainted food
How many pet effected by tainted food? Possibly up to 39,000.
So it looks like we have some new data, but want to know what is REALLY interesting. Below is the FIRST AP story.
Tainted food may have hurt 39,000 pets
By ANDREW BRIDGES, WASHINGTON
Pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical may have sickened or killed 39,000 cats and dogs nationwide, based on an extrapolation from data released Monday by one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals.
Banfield, The Pet Hospital, said an analysis of its database, compiled from records collected by its more than 615 veterinary hospitals, suggests that three out of every 10,000 cats and dogs that ate the pet food contaminated with melamine developed kidney failure. There are an estimated 60 million dogs and 70 million cats in the United States, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
The hospital chain saw 1 million dogs and cats during the three months when the more than 100 brands of now-recalled contaminated pet food were sold. It saw 284 extra cases of kidney failure among cats during that period, or a roughly 30 percent increase, when compared with background rates.
Snip: Go to full story here.
Now note and compare it to THIS version (link)
Tainted Pet Food-Kidney Illness Link
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cases of kidney failure among cats rose by 30 percent during the three months that pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical was sold, one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals reported Monday.
Compare:Tainted food may have hurt 39,000 pets vs.
Tainted Pet Food-Kidney Illness Link.
Now what is THAT about? The headline didn't just change, the whole first paragraph is different.
Who's putting pressure on whom? I'd ask Media Matters to look into it but they are busy with the whole Imus deal.
Speaking of that, thanks to JP at Welcome to Pottersville for talking about my case on the Kincaid Show today.
Labels: journalists, petconnection, recall, spocko, tainted pet food, talk radio, wheat gluten
7 Comments:
I hope you don't mind an off-topic comment, but I think this is important:
Re: the Iraq war in general
(also see this post)
Ever since the months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there have been a few reports in the newspapers that the Central Intelligence Agency was casting aspersions on the intelligence the White House was relying on to justify the war. The CIA has never given a position on whether the war is needed or justified or said that Bush is wrong to go to war. But doesn't it seem much more likely that the CIA is an extremely right wing organization than a left wing one? After all, even if the people working for them and at least a lot of the leadership really wanted a war for their own reasons, there are a lot of reasons for them to not want to tie their credibility to what they know is faulty information. They and their personnel, present and former, could use other means of promoting the Iraq war, and still be motivated to make the statements in the media. If the CIA got behind faulty information, they would have to make a choice between whether they would be involved in scamming the American people and the world once the military had invaded Iraq and no weapons were found- so: 1) Imagine the incredible difficulties involved in pulling off a hoax that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Imagine all the people you would have to be able to show the weapons to- the inspectors from the UN / the international community, the American press, statesmen, etc. Then imagine the difficulties of substantiating that story to people who would examine it- the lack of witnesses to a production plant that made the weapons or to transportation operations or storage of the weapons during Hussein's regime of them. 2) If the story fell apart upon inspection or the CIA tried not to hoax it at all, imagine the loss of credibility they would suffer. The CIA, it is safe to bet, does not want to be known to the American people as a group that lies to them to send them to war. Even within the CIA there could be disagreement among people about how involved they should be in promoting the war or the neo-con agenda more broadly, so the CIA would have to worry about lying to and managing its own people after trying so hard to get them to trust their superiors in the agency, and perhaps there simply might be too many people in the agency who knew enough about what was going on in Iraq to know if someone was deceiving people to promote this war.
So there is a lot of reason to be cautious against being seen as endorsing what they knew was false intelligence even if they were very strong supporters of going to war.
Good, that's better; much harder numbers. I really can't stand squishy statistics.
Incidentally, in your first big-sized block of text, that should be affected, not effected.
okay, that math in the story has been bugging me all day but I was in a conference and I just got access to a calculator.
The story says that Banfield says 3 out of every 10,000 of the one million animals it treated.
Banfield, The Pet Hospital, said an analysis of its database, compiled from records collected by its more than 615 veterinary hospitals, suggests that three out of every 10,000 cats and dogs seen in its clinics developed kidney failure during the time the melamine-contaminated pet food was on the market. There are an estimated 60 million dogs and 70 million cats in the United States, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
The veterinary hospital chain saw 1 million dogs and cats during the three months when the more than 100 brands of now-recalled contaminated pet food were sold.
That's 300 animals.
It's 39,000 only if you extrapolate out from the 130 million pets in the US and assume that they were all eating contaminated food.
(I'm not trying to underestimate because I don't believe it but because I want to know which is actually true.)
Interrobang said...
Of course you hate squishy numbers!
And I did it as effected on purpose to trap all the searcher who will get it wrong! (Nah, you are right I was wrong. Busted. Never question a Canadian writer with a red pen!)
Virgotex. Your calculation question might be the reason that they changed things, it was unclear and no one wanted to get behind the numbers.
That is the simple answer. But that might not be the only answer.
After I reread the other version, I understood what the AP writer was doing. (I too often read - and post- in too much of a hurry).
I don't think that the extrapolation is completely unfounded- but if the AP wanted to make that extrapolation, they should have made it clear that they, their reporter, whoever, was making it.
And it's that lack of doing so that does make me agree with you and question whether they were "leaned" on to back off of it.
Yes, my friend's Seeing Eye Dog was a victim of this horrid tragedy. He depended on his dog for three years and was extremely devistated about the loss. I wrote a book in tribute to him. You can check it out at www.protectmansbestfriend.com. Thanks for being honest about the stats as some would rather fudge the numbers making it seem less serious. After being through this with my friend, both him and I wil never again trust the pet food industry. Both the pet food industry and the FDA failed us.
Very useful and excellent information..
You may also find it useful to visit my website: http://www.petsmanners.info
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