Return of the Recall

Just when I thought perhaps there was a grip on the recalls and there wouldn't be much of anything new to report they are back with a vengeance. I originally posted my concern for the fish food I was feeding Lucky (one of my goldfish) back in April. I was afraid that a lot of the ingredients in my fish food were similar to ingredients in dog and cat food. My suspicions have been proven correct not only last month by the commercial fish food products that were contaminated but as recently as this week by
ornamental/pet fish feeds being contaminated. The brands are Atlantis by Sargeant pet food products and Zeigler.

I never fed either of the brands above, still, I contacted the brands that I do feed and have so far received one response. That response was from Hikari and they wrote:

Monika - Hikari has always stood for superior quality and the recent scare in no way will impact that. We constantly test our product raw ingredients before use to verify no unwanted items are included and since we are the only fish food maker that controls our entire production process we can be assured what we want in the food is actually what is. Others, as the dog food companies have found out, are at the mercy of the product producer. All our wheat-gluten is from sources that are not impacted by the Chinese problem. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us and your interest in your aquatic pet's well being!

I will continue to feed my fish Hikari as well as the ProGold stuff I got from goldfishconnection.com (waiting for a reply from them) because I haven't seen any adverse reactions in my fish while they've been on this food.

UPDATE 6/7/07: I heard from goldfishconnection.com. I was feeding their two products called Pro Gold and Color Enhancer Flakes. I contacted them and the response I got was this:

Hi Monika,
All of our food is made in an USDA inspected plant under very strict
regulations. Many of the same foods we use are used to feed fish for human
consumption and are tested for any toxins.

Rick

I wrote back that that wasn't very reassuring considering that in the previous months it was the fish feed used in fish for human consumption that came back with the melamine. I sent him a link to that news article. He wrote back "Thank you for the info." I followed up with an email asking specifically if they use/used Uniscope as their binding agent supplier. I have received no follow up response from him. To me, that's suspect. (UPDATE 6/8/07: Communicated again with Rick and he said they do not use UNISCOPE and we had a few more email exchanges and I believe the man to be sincere. I did say I will not be using the pellets until this clears up and he understood. He did mention there was expensive krill in the food and that is what is causing my white comet to start turning yellow here and there. Maybe one day she'll turn gold again! haha..)
Previously, before the dog and cat food recalls, I was using a little of the Wardley line but after comparing ingredients and seeing 'glutens' and 'protein concentrates' and meals of sort in the fish food I threw out the Hartz produced Wardley line (knowing they were made by Hartz sooner would have produced the same result - I hate Hartz).

In other news.. Cavs are in the finals (yeah!) and poor Kucinich (the only one making sense) is either ignored or lumped together with Gravel and Biden (ugh!)