Employees at Mars Petcare kibble manufacturing facility exposed to pesticides on pet food ingredients?

This is an extraordinary story. A group of employees at a Mars Petcare kibble manufacturing facility are suing the company in negligence in exposing them to pesticides and other toxins in the preparation of pet food.

How can employees of a company manufacturing dry pet food (kibble) be exposed to pesticides and other toxins? Well, what they're saying is that the raw materials coming into the factory from which the dry cat food was made had been fumigated. But the raw material was not listed as having been fumigated. It went straight into making the pet food.

The word “fumigated" in this instance refers to being treated with phosphine gas. Phosphine is a pesticide.

So pesticides were being introduced into the facility. There are monitors in the factory to detect these pesticides. This by the way proves that it is commonplace to have carcasses treated with pesticides.

The employees claim that the monitoring of the presence of pesticides was illegally or fraudulently tampered with to hide the high levels of phosphine. The records were incomplete.

In addition some records indicate levels of phosphine at 30 times the safe upper limit at 5.85 parts per million.

Further there appears to have been high levels of mould.

One Facebook visitor commented that the factory had killed his/her father.

“I always said that placed killed my dad…”

There appears to have been quite a lot of chat surrounding the hazardous nature of working at this facility.

The hazards were reported to the authorities and no action taken.

There was also a hole in the roof. I am guessing but this is also claimed to be a source of contamination.

The Missouri Department of Agriculture says the plant is now closed.

The law suit is in court on January 2nd 2017.

Clearly interested parties to this legal action are concerned about the rights and welfare of the factory workers. However, all cat and dog owners are also concerned at the claim that pesticides went straight into dry pet food. An astonishing claim.

Not only were the employees in danger of being poisoned so are pets in the long term.

The case may blow the lid on the opaque practices of the pet food industry. It may shed some light on the murky methods employed by the big pet food manufacturers.

We know that animal welfare is not their first concern. It may be worse than that.

This is a heavily summarised post. The source is the Truth About Pet Food.

Two photos of Palmerston the house cat at the UK's Foreign Office

They are not great photos; more snapshots. But it was all I could get on a recent visit to this vast, ornate building near the Palace of Westminster. Palmerston is named after a former Prime Minister. His job is to keep down rodents. He has caught 22 mice since being hired not long ago.

He wanted some peace a quiet so slopped off to a quiet corner where the public could not go. He is very laid back. As you can see he is a random bred black-and-white; a tuxedo cat.

Were recent terrorist bombs in America organised by Russia's foreign military intelligence agency?

There has been a spate of terrorist activity in America, most recently the pressure cooker bomb exploding in New York City's Chelsea district wounding 29 people.

Law enforcement is trying to find out who is behind it and the reason for it. It occurred to me that the reason for it could be to ensure that Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States of America. If that is the reason and it might sound far-fetched then the organisation behind these bombs could be Russian intelligence as directed by Vladimir Putin. This is because Putin believes that if Donald Trump becomes president there will be a rapprochement between the two nations which will lead to the lifting of financial sanctions against Russia.

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Sorry for temporarily putting on hold posts about cats. I only do this very rarely.

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Russia is in dire need of financial assistance. They are burning through their reserves very quickly. There is no likelihood of a price rise in oil in the near or medium-term future. Russia is dependent upon all revenues for its balance of payments. There is increased poverty in Russia. Putin remains popular but his popularity is waning due to the financial crisis.

Donald Trump has made it known to the world that he admires Putin. They could readily enter into a dialogue on the lifting of sanctions and even the acceptance by America of Russia's invasion of Crimea.

The Russian state has a history of criminal activity including assassinations and murders in other countries and in Russia. Dissidents who emigrate from Russia and settle in other countries such the UK sometimes end up dead at the hands of highly skilled assassins employed by Russia's foreign military intelligence main agency which is commonly called the GRU.

I'm simply putting out this suggestion as an idea because law enforcement in America is struggling to find the reason for the recent bombings. The likely suspect would be Muslim extremists inspired by ISIS but bearing in mind the imminent election of the new president of the USA in 49 days it is timely to create chaos with terrorism in order to make Donald Trump more popular and therefore more likely to win because he has consistently presented to his supporters a hard line towards law and order, immigration and terrorism.

Only recently, in fact shortly after the New York pressure cooker bomb, he said that terrorism must stop giving a clear signal that if he became president he would do all could to heighten and make more rigourous the fight against terrorism in United States of America.

Terrorism now will make it more likely that Donald Trump makes it to the White House and Putin wants him there.