Menu Foods Agrees To Settle

From the time the Menu Foods Income Group quietly announced their pet food recall back on March 16, 2007, they tried to keep the upper hand when it came to everything related to the recall.

Their initial recall was not to be released over US newswires. They tried to harass some people into keeping quiet, and now they are trying to rewrite history by claiming that only "dozens" of pets died because of the recall.

Canadian pet food manufacturer Menu Foods, blamed for the deaths of dozens of cats and dogs in North America, has set up a 24-million-dollar settlement fund to deal with a slew of US legal suits.

Dozens? Are they fracking mad? On April 10, 2007, it was estimated that 39,000 pets had died from the tainted food. I guess if you are a P.R. guy, you could truly claim that "dozens" of pets died. That is, if you figure that dozens = 3,250 dozen to be exact.

In March 2007, the company recalled 60 million cans and pouches of food made in the United States and sold under 95 different brand names after reports that house pets were falling sick and dying after eating their products.

The recall cost Menu Foods between 30 and 40 million dollars, and was prompted by the deaths of five company pets and nine laboratory cats of renal failure. Veterinarians in Canada and the United State subsequently reported similar cases.

Remember, the Menu Foods Income Group had no intention of informing US consumers about this recall, at least not at the time the news broke anyway. The evidence of this is in their very own press release.

Hundreds of people have filed for compensation from Menu Foods, and the company announced Friday that it was setting up a fund to meet the claims.

The fund would "allow a potential recovery of up to 100 percent of all economic damages related to the pet food recall that were incurred by pet owners and persons who purchased recalled pet food in the United States and in Canada."

Hundred of owners have file for compensation? I bet the majority of US consumers whose pets were affected by the recall have no idea that this fund has been set up. Seriously. Why would the Menu Foods Income Group announce this fund in traditional media outlets when they were trying to keep their initial press release from making it to the US newswires?

Let's look at the settlement itself. Menu Foods has set up a $24 million fund to compensate pet owners for up to 100% of their financial losses. Based on their own figures, and the number of pets that were poisoned, it wouldn't surprise me that they didn't want this to hit the mainstream media. Let's presume that 39,000 pet owners were affected by the recall. That's a pretty fair number since 40 to 60 million cans of food were pulled from the shelves. If every pet owner filed a claim, the average settlement would be just $615.38. Veterinarian costs alone could have exceeded that amount.

Once again Menu Foods is proving that they do not care about the pets, or the pet owners. This is no surprise to me.

You can find more about his recall here on my site by searching for the term melamine.

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