Jay’s Life

I’m in Tokyo now. Looks like I can pass the time on my layovers with World of Warcraft. I already played in Chicago for a while. I’m getting really tired, it was weird flying all this way and following the sun. Also made it really difficult to sleep. That coupled with being stuck in the middle row and not having much legroom.

Part way through my flight, as I was fiddling with my remote for my video, the chinese woman next to me took my remote. She then started changing the channels and making me miss my movie. She then called over a flight attendant. I realized at this point that from her angle she couldn’t see that my monitor was on, and she was trying to help me turn it on so that I could watch something. The flight attendant cleared it up and many apologies where given by the helpful old lady.

So I’m getting ready to go on my trip, and all great trips need a great camera. Enter my new Nikon D80. Here are a few of my first shots, I need to read the manual on this thing. These are converted to JPEG, the originals are in RAW, at 3888×2600 pixels (10.2 Megapixels).

I’ve got to say I’m absolutely shocked by this MASSIVE pet food recall happening in Canada and the US. Not shocked because its happening but shocked because OVER 40 BRANDS of cat and food sold in North America are all made by the same contract company Menufoods.

Here is the complete list of recalled foods. http://www.menufoods.com/recall/

What I thought was really interesting and made my quite angry is that some of the most common brands of dog and cat food are on this list. Iams and Eukanuba, both owned by Proctor & Gamble, are made by Menu Foods. According to one press release, Menu Foods produces 17 of the top 20 brands of pet food in North America. Thats a little scary. Not just because dogs are dying of kidney failure but that the foods we carefully select to feed our pets are all coming from the same place anyways.

In an earlier entry I talked about how we moved Happie over to Merrick dog food, Merrick is an independent company who makes their own food in their plant in Texas. We’ve really been happy with it and Happie has been happy with it. He’s been eating it for over a month now and he’s really shown an improvement in his skin and GI system. He was already a healthy dog but we still see improvements with the better food. We fully recommend it. After reading all of the recall information today I’m more than happy to pay the steep price tag for Merrick food from now on. Check out http://www.merrickpetcare.com/

Another company not involved in this recall who produce dog food right here in Mississauga is Purina. Purina owns 26 of their own manufacturing plants and doesn’t contract out their food production. If you’re looking to switch pet foods check out http://www.purina.ca/home.asp We’ll be switching the cats to Purina food until Merrick releases their dry cat food line in the spring. The cats Science Diet food is one of the brands produced by Menu Foods, its not part of the recall but I was unaware Science Diet wasn’t an independent company with their own manufacturing facilities.

Nutram is another brand I was made aware of this weekend. Nutram is owned and operated by Maple Lodge Farms and the food is made from the left-over chicken from their processing plant in Brampton. I don’t have any other information about them other than that, but there is one manufacturing facility and they are using ‘human-grade’ chicken. Its not perfect but Maple Lodge is a respectable Canadian company and at least you would know where your dogs food was coming from.

So those are some options for pet owners, like me, now wanting to switch pet food brands to something we can trust.

This is our completed time-lapse of our kitchen renovation. Pretty cool.