Melamine-tainted pet treats sold at Wal-Mart might have been responsible for the death of an Ohio woman’s Yorkshire Terrier. Now, Dolores Cole is blaming slow action by the retailer for the illness that killed her beloved pet.

Wal-Mart announced last week that Chinese-made Chicken Jerky Strips from the Import Pingyang Pet Product Co and Chicken Jerky made by Shanghai Bestro Trading were both tainted with melamine. Wal-Mart had removed the contaminated pet treats from stores on July 26 following complaints from customers who said the food had made their dogs sick. But the company waited to warn consumers about the dangerous dog treats until test results confirmed the melamine contamination. Cole told a reporter from the Ohio television station WKYC that Wal-Mart’s delay might have cost her dog its life. The 5-year-old Yorkshire Terrier developed sudden kidney failure after eating the Bestro Chicken Jerky Treats, and died soon after. Though there is no way to confirm that the melamine in the treats were to blame for the dog’s sudden illness, such symptoms have been connected to other melamine-tainted pet foods.

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American Pie, LLC of Syosset, New York is recalling more than 1,400 cases of frozen pies that have the potential to cause food poisoning. The Marie Callender Turtle Pies, which were sold in 15 states, are being recalled due to an unspecified bacterial contamination.

American Pie said that the turtle pies had tested positive for levels of bacteria higher than company standards allowed, but were mistakenly shipped from its warehouse. The pies were sold in Kroger, Giant Eagle and Hy-Vee supermarkets in Ohio, Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota. The recalled pies have a UPC code of 12781 10280, and a production code ending in 143. Only Marie Callender Turtle Pies with the code ending in 143 are included in the recall.

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Two years after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast, thousands of families are still living in toxic trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Despite receiving information that the trailers were emitting dangerous formaldehyde fumes in 2006, FEMA did not stop using the structures as emergency housing until earlier this month. Now, thousands of families in Mississippi and Louisiana are waiting anxiously to be moved out of the toxic FEMA trailers.

On August 1, FEMA stopped using, buying and selling the trailers in order to allow the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security to test their air quality. Around 120,000 FEMA trailers had been distributed to families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Fifty-six of the toxic trailers had also been sent to Oklahoma earlier this summer to house people who lost homes to flooding. The agency has offered to move trailer residents into other housing, and promised refunds to anyone who purchased the toxic FEMA trailers. So far, FEMA has received requests for relocation from 1,000 Louisiana families and 436 Mississippi households. Close to 60,000 families in both states still live the FEMA trailers.

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Six months after a Salmonella outbreak forced ConAgra to issue a massive Peter Pan Peanut Butter Recall the food giant is putting Peter Pan back on the shelf. Once the number one selling brand in much of the United States, ConAgra is hoping that former fans of Peter Pan Peanut Butter will give it another chance even though it was linked to more than 600 cases of Salmonella poisoning earlier this year.

In February, ConAgra’s Peter Pan and Great Value Peanut Butters were recalled after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) linked those brands to a Salmonella outbreak. The peanut butter Salmonella eventually sickened 628 people in 47 states. ConAgra faulted a leaky roof and malfunctioning sprinkler system at its production facility for causing the Salmonella contamination. The plant in Sylvester, Georgia was closed due to the recall, but reopened earlier this summer.

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This month’s Mattel Toy Recall was unsettling news for American consumers, as it became apparent that thousands of children were exposed to the toxic lead paint and dangerous magnets used in the recalled Mattel toys. The Mattel toy recall has sparked consumers and even the Senate to take a closer look at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and whether or not the resources needed to prevent these dangerous products from hitting the shelves are available to the safety group. Today, a Senate committee will attempt to answer that question at a hearing to investigate the recent Mattel recall scandals.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government affairs will be hearing from officials at the CPSC and other consumer advocates about what more should be done to insure that children’s toys and clothing are safe from hazards. This month, Mattel issued two separate recalls for millions of toys that contained hazardous magnets and lead paint. But Mattel was far from the only company to issue toy recalls this year. Last week, children’s jewelry and Spongebob Squarepants notebooks and journals were recalled for a lead paint hazard. And earlier this year, the RC2 Company recalled millions of Thomas the Tank Engine toy trains for the same reason. All of the recalled toys were imported from China.

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The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is being criticized by members of Congress for considering a plan to outsource more than 300 jobs. Last week, the FDA announced that it was reviewing the positions in more than 20 cities to determine if it would be more cost-effective to contract the jobs out to private companies. The initial list of jobs the FDA was considering for outsourcing included lab technicians and field office workers who were involved in the safety testing of food and medical products. But the FDA later revised that list to include only administrative jobs not involved in testing and inspections.

Now, Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak, both Michigan Democrats, have launched an investigation into the FDA’s outsourcing proposal. The Congressmen have called the plan “hasty and injudicious”, and have urged the FDA to wait for the recommendations of the Import Safety Working Group formed by the White House. The Congressmen have also requested that the FDA provide them with all documents connected to the outsourcing plan.

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Patrons of a Jamba Juice Store in San Jose, California may have been exposed to hepatitis A after one of the store’s employees tested positive for the disease. According to a warning issued last week by the Santa Clara County chief medical officer, about 4,000 customers visited the Jamba Juice store while an employee with an active hepatitis A infection was working there. Today, the medical officer is also warning that attendees of a USA Gymnastics National Congress and Trade Show could also have been exposed to hepatitis A because the Jamba Juice employee had also helped prepare complimentary smoothies that were given out at the show.

Hepatitis A is a rare disease that can cause liver problems. The virus shows up between 15 and 50 days after exposure, and symptoms include jaundice, fatigue, abdominal pain, fever and loss of appetite. Hepatitis A can be transferred from person to person if something that has become contaminated with an infected person’s stools makes contact with another person’s mouth. Though most people will recover from hepatitis A, in rare cases it can lead to death. The Santa Clara County medical officer said that while Jamba Juice encourages good hand washing procedures among its employees, the only way people who visited that store can be sure they did not contract hepatitis A is by seeing their doctor. The disease can be prevented by administering a vaccine or immune globulin within 14 days of exposure.

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An outbreak of Salmonella that sickened 66 people around the country has been traced to a Southwestern Pennsylvania factory. The Mars Petcare U.S. manufacturing plant in Everson, Pennsylvania made the two brands of dog food that had been implicated in the Salmonella outbreak. Both of those dog foods, Krasdale Gravy Dry Dog Food and Red Flannel Large Breed Adult Formula, had been recalled by the company last week.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has linked the factory in Pennsylvania to the Salmonella strain Schwarzengrund that has sickened 66 people in 18 states over the last year-and-a-half. Ironically, no pets have become ill from the tainted dog food. According to the CDC, the Schwarzengrund strain of Salmonella has been appearing more often in the United States. It is related to imported chicken products from Thailand, and is known to be drug resistant.

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In the wake of the Mattel toy recall, two US senators are asking the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to begin a “detain and test” program for all toys imported from China. All of the toys recalled by Mattel were imported from China, as were many toys involved in other recalls this year.

On August 15, Mattel recalled more than 9 million toys for magnet and lead paint hazards. The recall applied to Polly Pocket, Barbie, Batman and Doggie Day Care toys that contained small magnets that can cause serious injury to children if swallowed. When more than one of the powerful magnet is swallowed, they can become attracted to each other through the walls of the intestinal track, causing intestinal perforations, obstructions and other dangerous injuries. On the same day, the company recalled 253,000 die cast metal toy cars because they were made with lead paint. It was Mattel’s second such recall in as many weeks. On August 1, Fisher-Price, a division of Mattel, recalled more than a million toys for a lead paint hazard. All of the recalled toys were made in China.

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World Trade Center rescue workers have much higher rates of asthma than the general population. That conclusion comes from a recent analysis of the World Trade Center Health Registry by the New York City Health Department, which found that 3.6 percent of World Trade Center first responders have developed asthma in the years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That’s 12 times higher than the rate of asthma in the normal adult population.

About 71,000 rescue workers are enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry. The Health Department surveyed the health records of 25,000 people on the Registry between 2003 and 2004. The study found that asthma rates were highest among rescue workers who arrived at Ground Zero the soonest and stayed the longest. Seven percent of first responders who arrived at the site on September 11 and worked more than 90 days have developed asthma since 2001. The Health Department also found that a World Trade rescue worker’s occupation had little effect on the risk of developing asthma. Fire fighters, police officers, EMS workers and volunteers all had about the same asthma rates. The survey did find that a worker’s location at Ground Zero affected asthma risks. World Trade Center rescue workers who were caught in the dust cloud when the buildings collapsed or worked directly on the debris pile had asthma rates as high as 4.9 percent.

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