Cool Website Review

Announcing the Launch Of Zootoo.com

NEW YORK, July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Zootoo.com, the nations' first unbiased, user-generated Web site designed to review and rate pet products and services, went live today.

Richard Thompson, founder of Zootoo.com and ex CEO / Top Cat of Meow Mix Company, said: "Zootoo will create an entirely new proactive pet community. We intend to raise the bar for the pet industry and help pets and the people who love them by rating and reviewing products and services. Users will help other pet lovers make the right choices for their pets and Zootoo will identify issues -- like tainted pet food -- before manufacturers announce a recall."

Zootoo participants will earn valuable Zootoo Points that can add up to big cash awards for users and big contributions to pet shelters. All this leads to a really exciting event to be announced in August 2007. Zootoo also registered Zootoo House Inc. a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation dedicated to aiding needy animal shelters.

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Yet Another Use For Your Dog!

Earthquake Predictors

Since 373 BC when the ancient Greeks first noted that rats, weasels, snakes, and even centipedes fled the city of Helice days before the earth violently shook, people have believed that animals are able to predict earthquakes. When the Tsunami of 2004 devastated the countries along the Indian Ocean, it took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, but animals faired remarkably well. The Chinese have long believed dogs and cats are able to predict quakes. In 1975, the city of Haicheng was evacuated days in advance of an earthquake based on the behavior of dogs and cats. An estimated 150,000 lives were saved. Stories like these lead many to believe that animals have some kind of sixth sense.

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Another wrinkle in the great Chinese food scandal…

The new "China Syndrome," part one

You may remember the hit 1979 movie called "The China Syndrome," starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas. It was about cover-ups of safety violations at an American nuclear power plant.

Ironically, the movie was released just days before the real-life partial meltdown at Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In the film, the phrase "china syndrome" referred not to anything as insidious as faulty Chinese materials the reactor core was built from, but to the facetious notion that, should a "total meltdown" occur, the plant would have burned clear through the Earth to China. (And, actually, the plant responded exactly as programmed and shut down with no injuries at all - but you know Hollywood.) But as usual, I digress…

Today, there's a different deadly threat to the safety of American citizens that really DOES center on China: The flow of tainted foodstuffs and other ingestible products for both animal and people.

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Pet Shop Heist

Dogs aren't the only ones that should be neutered.

CCTV shows family stealing dog

Wednesday Jul 4 13:00 AEST

By ninemsn staff

Security cameras have captured a family of four stealing a $700 pure-bred puppy from a pet shop at a Melbourne shopping centre on the first day of the school holidays.

The puppy, known as Coco, was returned to Pets At Home in Fountain Gate Mall about 12.30pm today — two days after it was stolen, the shop's managing director David Herman said.

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Update on Protein-gate

More Gold from the good doctor...


The scandal that won't die…

As you may recall, a few weeks ago, I regaled with a 3-part series about the recent bulk dry pet-food scandal that involves, among other elements…

• Vast quantities of vegetable-based pet foods that are contaminated with a toxic fertilizer and by-product of the plastics manufacture industry (melamine)

• The collusion of the Chinese government in the exportation of raw food ingredients intentionally "fortified" with protein-mimicking melamine

• The ridiculously lax U.S. inspection process that allowed these ingredients to find their way into pet foods (and other places, as you'll discover momentarily)

• The knowing complicity of bulk pet-food manufacturers AND big-box retail pet supply outlets that peddle these products under dozens of different brand names.

As if this weren't intrigue and conspiracy enough for you, I ended up that 3-part series with a reference to how some of this pet-food may have seeped into the livestock food supply - which could end up threatening us humans.

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The Pet-food Protein-gate, part two

By William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

.....poisonous melamine was being added to these victuals. The purpose: To sell more pet food by deceiving pet owners into believing the dry vegetable junk food they're feeding their cats and dogs is protein-rich and good for them....

....As it turns out, like everything else in this country nowadays, the raw ingredients for ALL of the banned varieties of pet foods came not from hard-working American grain farmers......But from communist CHINA, where pollution and environmental waste is rampant, regulation scare, and where the jack-booted government values nothing (not even life) so much as the influx of American dollars.

....According to FDA sources (like their Chief Veterinarian, for one), raw melamine has been found - not just in the U.S, but in other nations, too - in rice protein concentrate, wheat gluten, and corn gluten supplies earmarked specifically for pet foods. All of these tainted stockpiles were imported from China.

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Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, M.D on Pet-food Protein

Dr. William Campbell Douglass is a doctor to notice. He is known as medicines' most acclaimed Myth Busters and "the conscience of modern medicine". Dr. Douglass has done pioneering work in natural medicine, set up a clinic in Uganda, Africa to treat the sick, invited to work at the renowned Pasteur Institute, flown with U.S Navy crews as a flight surgeon, traveled the world to add to his vast knowledge of alternative medicine and hailed today as an authority second to none, giving a fresh perspective on different treatments for people to make informed decisions. And as a bonus, he is also an animal lover! Here's a summary of his thoughts on pet food protein. So fire away Doc;

The Pet-food Protein-gate, part one

....recommendations on how to safeguard your kitties and pups against this fate: To feed them ONLY raw liver, chicken necks (most other uncooked meats are OK as well), and at least one daily raw egg - including the shell - rounding out their diet with cut vegetables added to the bowl.

.....this advice of mine directly contradicts not only everything you'll hear down at your local PetSmart store (or Petco, whatever), but also what several mainstream books recently published in wide release have to say about canine and feline diets. Believe me, though - I'm right and they're wrong.

....More information has surfaced about exactly WHY our precious pets are dying. And as usual when it comes to nutrition - human or animal - one thing lies at the root of all the evil...

Vegetarianism.

......the U.S. FDA is all but certain the source of the contamination that's sickening and killing our cats and dogs is melamine, a toxic chemical used in the manufacture of plastics, pesticides, and as a fertilizer. Melamine is high in nitrogen

....Though deemed safe in low concentrations....direct ingestion of the substance can be deadly. Yet according to the FDA, melamine poisoning is likely what's sickening and killing so many of our pets nowadays. This kind of contamination would be VERY DIFFICULT without somebody adding melamine directly to pet foods, or to their ingredients.

...most brands of modern pet foods - especially the dry varieties - are made almost entirely of vegetable ingredients. There are several reasons for this, foremost among them being cost. It's far cheaper to make pet foods from soy this and wheat gluten that than it is to use real meats (which is impossible in the dry foods anyway)...

But since the average pet owner is at least aware of the fact that animals, like people, need PROTEIN to survive, pet food makers are big on adding things to their food to boost the appearance of nutrition. And in this case, that "additive" was very likely poisonous melamine.

.....According to a recent USA Today article, the agricultural industry typically gauges a raw grain's protein content by measuring its nitrogen content. Nitrogen levels generally correspond quite closely with protein levels...

...That's right. The FDA and other groups strongly suspect that nitrogen-rich melamine fertilizer was added in raw form to large quantities of ALREADY HARVESTED wheat and rice earmarked for pet foods in order to create the illusion that these worthless grains were higher in protein that they actually are.

Adamant about killer additives,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.