#499 Nose Knows

Recently there was a story in the news that, depending on how you looked at it, showed the best or the worst side of human nature. How compassionate we can be or how just plain stupid. It had to do with the recent pet food-tainting scare. Here’s the path of poison as it stands now. Warning: do not trust this source of information.
There’s a type of pet food put out by Canadian company Menu Foods called “Cuts and Styles.” It is a wet pet food. Wet means it has gravy and comes in cans and pouches¾too many to have been tampered with and resealed. The investigation centered on the gravy. An old mystery novel plot device, when in doubt, question the gravy. Butlers always have access to gravy. The sickening gravy was thickened by gluten. Or possibly the thickened gravy was sickened by gluten. In either event, the poisoned gluten appears to have been imported from China. Which is an interesting little sidebar on world commerce. North American farmers are paid not to grow wheat because if they did the price would plummet and the world market would be flooded with wheat and wheat products. A glut of gluten as it were. So apparently, in order to provide competitively cheap thickener for our pet gravy, companies import wheat gluten from China. And it is this economically problematic gluten that is the source of pet agony from Victoria to Sheboygan. Need I say it? This takes that gluten allergy thing to a whole new level.
But here is the story of incredible empathy, or possibly, egregious stupidity. A Canadian woman was sickened by the pet food as well. When her little doggie turned up his spoiled gourmet nose at her offer of Cuts and Styles—the pet food named after a hairdressing salon—the lady did what some humans do to baby humans. Put some of the food into her own mouth to demonstrate how good it was. Mmm mmm. I haven’t had thick gravy with rat poison gluten this good since the Woolworth’s coffee shop closed. So...think the dog smelled something the lady didn’t?
America, ya gotta love it