The recent pet food recalls have prompted me to write about two things I
have collected for years- hard plastic dish ware and additional pets.
Although my cats and dogs have not been subject to any of the suspect foods
so far identified on the MenuFoods and FDA lists, they have routinely eaten,
as have I, on melamine dish ware. I have had two cats and one dog with
mysterious kidney ailments. They eventually died. The were old-many things
could have been the cause.
In theory resin based melamine dishes should be safe, because the resin
would keep any ammonia, thought to be the link, from escaping. But what
happens when an old Boonton or Mel Mac is brown or scratched? Wikipedia says
that ammonia is released when melamine is heated. Well, how about a
dishwasher? What happens when dog saliva, with all those enzymes, or the
prickles on a cat's tongue repeatedly abrades those plates. How long until
a new TexasWare dish from a place like Smart N' Final is no longer safe? Or
how often should they really be used?
Even if we have no pets, I believe that we should follow carefully this news
story and consider for ourselves what is best.
For myself all our animals will now be eating from stainless steel. I will
continue to collect, and I will use melamine dish ware, but only
occasionally, like many of us do with lead glazed china. Linda
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