TIP-OFFS. In...

TIP-OFFS. In a story that would be utterly hilarious were the consequences less lethal, agricultural giant Wilbur-Ellis has submitted to a national recall of their rice protein concentrate, which has been tainted with Melamine and is poisoning the pet foods. From their press release:

Last Sunday, April 15, Wilbur-Ellis notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that a single bag in a recent shipment of rice protein concentrate from its Chinese supplier, Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd., had tested positive for melamine. Unlike the other white-colored bags in that shipment, the bag in question was pink and had the word �melamine� stenciled upon it.

As David Goldstein snarks, you'd think the word "Melamine" might have been a giveaway that the food was tainted with Melamine. Goldstein also mentions the obfuscations and foot-dragging of the underfunded, and increasingly underused, FDA. Indeed, the decline of our food safety system is a story that the quasi-omniscient Rick Perlstein is digging into over at his new blog, the Big Con, which is doing the lord's work in tracking the infrastructure wreckage and regulatory chaos wrought by decades of conservative misrule. Check it out.--Ezra Klein