Pet Food Scare
posted by Alfred Yen
Pet owners have understandably begun suing Menu Foods over the deaths of pets from tainted pet food. Rat poison has apparently been discovered in the food, but it’s a mystery how the poison got there. Aminopterin, the poison in question, cannot be used for killing rats in the U.S. The FDA had apparently been investigating whether wheat gluten in the food had been contaminated, but spraying rat poison on wheat doesn’t make a lot of sense.
So, taking license to speculate, let’s assume that a good explantion is never found. What happens to these lawsuits? Will this become the res ipsa case that replaces Byrne v. Boadle (the man hit on the head by a barrel of flour that apparently fell out of a building)? Or, will this case test whether (or come to exemplify that) strict products liability is (or is not) truly strict? If we conclude the defendant wasn’t negligent, the only possible action will be strict liability. Recent case law seems to have pushed strict products liability into a form of negligence, but will courts really deny pet owners recovery?
March 24, 2007 at 7:31 am
Posted in: Tort Law
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Responses (6)
tortlawyer - March 24, 2007 at 7:53 am
Products liability has been moving towards a negligence standard for design defects, but this is a manufacturing defect, where strict liability is still the norm.
Eric @ New York Personal Injury Law Blog - March 24, 2007 at 11:38 am
I think the road ahead will be quite difficult for claimants, as I discussed in response to your posting here: Tough Legal Issues In Pet Food Cases Against Menu Foods
–Eric
chester - March 25, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Our Westie is in the hospital for 3 days getting his kidneys flushed. He was drinking a lot, like a large bowl full each day of water.That was the only symptons he had. Took him to vet.Blood test show he has dangereous levels of the aminopterin. We’re hoping that flushing his kidneys out will save his life but they’re not sure if it will or not……….
Steve Janke - March 26, 2007 at 12:33 pm
The FDA had apparently been investigating whether wheat gluten in the food had been contaminated, but spraying rat poison on wheat doesn’t make a lot of sense.
No it doesn’t. Indeed, it sounds irrational. And look here, a report from the Xinhua News Agency dated October 2006 complaining that “the irrational spraying of pesticides by farmers while storing grain could lead to high chemical residues, posing serious health risks.”
margaret stoddard - March 30, 2007 at 9:11 pm
I’ve been making my own dog food for twenty years and that’s almost as long as my pets live. Anyone want my recipe email me. Margaret, pet lover of the world.
Richard Klugman - April 1, 2007 at 9:27 am
We should all be cognizant of the fact that as Korporate Amerika strives to fatten the bottom line they are importing more from China – China has no protections what-so-ever for the consumer as we are now seeing with the contamination of our pet’s food. Remember this the next time you purchase something with “made in China” on it. This race to buy “cheap” products from the Communist Chinese is hurting our country in more ways thatone. Now we have a demonstrable example of who we are doing business with.
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