In thinking of what to write this week, I have all kinds of outrages whirling in my head.

Men, women and children dying at an alarming rate in Iraq. Veterans being neglected when they are no longer useful in Iraq due to disability. A president that lies to Congress. An attorney general that lies to Congress. White House staffers that lie to the FBI. 47 million Americans without any access to medical care.

The dwindling water sources in America's heartland. All that precious water wasted to build ethanol plants in water challenged areas instead of building the plants in areas where water is plentiful. Even more of the precious water draining off between the rows of corn being grown for ethanol in areas of the country that require irrigation - even though it would be more environmentally sound to make ethanol from wheat straw or other agricultural refuse.

Good people losing their homes by the thousands because they've lost their jobs and their incomes. Jobs continuing to disappear - only to reappear overseas. Pay scales declining and more people entering poverty.

An American economy that is no longer measured by how it serves the greater population or the people as a whole, but now measured only by how it profits the smallest minority at the top. Women being starved, raped and ignored in Darfur and the Sudan because they are either of the wrong skin color or have no coveted natural resources in their possession.

An American president still huffing, puffing and strutting around the school blacktop like a bully with his fists at his side and an abrasive "bring it on" attitude, while everybody else, embarrassed, patiently waits for him to just go away.

The poisoning of wheat.

What?

The recent nationwide poisoning of US pets by a Canadian pet food manufacturer that makes pet food in Emporia, Kansas, with ingredients shipped in from China.

Even though I dearly love my own golden retrievers (who are all pictured here for your immense enjoyment), I have felt a little pang of guilt about my recent preoccupation with the safety of American dog food.

It sort of seems silly to focus on dog food - while so much disaster and horror is happening elsewhere and to large numbers of human beings.

Yet, you know what, this dog food story is still important.

It isn't just about dog food. The same ingredient that is poisoning dogs (wheat gluten from China) could also be poisoning people anywhere.

In fact, this dog food story shines a bit of sunlight on issues that have everything to do with our safety and quality of life. And it raises many critical, and yet unanswered questions.

It's important to understand how it happened and whether or not it can continue to happen. This is possibly only the tip of an iceberg.

Let's examine what we know.

On Friday, March 16th, an obscure company named "Menu Foods" (a company few of us ever heard of) issued a "precautionary recall" of pet foods because it had received complaints that its food may be causing illness. So, with an "abundance of caution," the company issued warnings that an unnamed ingredient it used in its foods, during a specific period in time, may have tainted the foods.

We all wondered what that (mysteriously unnamed) ingredient was.

One week later, on Friday, March 23rd, we learned that 14 cats and dogs had died by eating pet food manufactured in Menu Foods' Emporia, Kansas plant. Over 60 million pouches and cans of pet food were recalled. On that day, we were also told that there were upwards of 200 cases of pet illness and that it was likely that thousands of deaths would result from the poisoned food, causing kidney failure in effected animals.

It turns out that Menu Food produces food for almost all of the best known pet food companies and labels, as well as many store brands. The list of pet food recalls was enormous, including over 90 brands, such as Hill's, Science Diet, Eukanuba, Iams, Nutro, Ol' Roy, Alpo, and Authority.

The next day, on March 24th, news reports told us that the mysterious ingredient causing the deaths was wheat gluten from China.

Food from China is cheaper.

My first reaction was, "What's a manufacturing plant in Emporia, Kansas doing importing wheat gluten from China? Isn't Kansas the bread basket of the world? Isn't Kansas the best source for all wheat ingredients? Why bring wheat from China to Kansas, of all places?" Of course, my immediate answer to myself was obvious. It's cheaper for a buyer in Kansas to buy wheat from China than to buy wheat from Kansas.

Since I'm a bread baker, I made a mental note to myself. Next time I'm buying my wheat flour at my Kansas grocery store, I want to read the label and see if my Kansas wheat comes from Kansas, or from China.

News reports said that the wheat gluten seems tainted with "aminopterin." Apparently, aminopterin was developed as a cancer drug and used in the US as chemotherapy in the 1950s and 1960s for the treatment of pediatric leukemia. It was also used off-label to treat psoriasis. By about 1964, aminopterin was discontinued as a cancer chemotherapy drug because newer and better compounds replaced it.

Most of the media outlets said that aminopterin was used as a rat poison and that it had probably tainted the wheat gluten in China because rat poison is often placed in granaries.

The link between the Chinese wheat gluten, the chemical aminopterin, and pet deaths was confirmed by several laboratories in March, including New York State Agricultural Commission and Cornell University.

How did chemotherapy drugs end up in wheat?

The laboratories did not, however, actually claim that aminopterin was used in China as a rat poison, the labs only confirmed that aminopterin was present in the pet foods and that aminopterin could cause the kind of kidney failure the pets had suffered.

In fact, there is little to no evidence that aminopterin was ever used as a rodenticide either in the US or anywhere else in the world. The chemical aminopterin is primarily an outdated chemotherapy agent.

Although Menu Foods subsequently announced that aminopterin was at the "root" of the contamination issue, the FDA, the agency leading this investigation, did not corroborate this finding.

A few days later, on March 27th, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center expressed concern that the poisoning problem may not yet be fully understood and that other contaminants may be involved, noting that "clinical signs reported in cats affected by the contaminated foods are not fully consistent with the ingestion of rat poison containing aminopterin."

This is a human problem.

At this point, it should be clear that this is not just a pet owner's problem. The questions that arise have far reaching ramifications.

Why are Kansas based companies buying wheat products from China?

What exactly is causing the illness in pets? Are we sure that there's something wrong with the Chinese wheat gluten?

Yesterday, the FDA concluded that melamine, a chemical used in fertilizers in Asia and forbidden in pet food, had been found in some wheat gluten used by the Canadian company that owns the plant in Kansas.

Most of us know melamine as a plastic. Any trip through Walmart aisles can uncover plastic dishes, bowls and kitchen utensils manufactured from the substance called melamine. So, now we are learning that the FDA believes that China may use melamine as a fertilizer?

We still don't know what has poisoned the wheat.

The FDA did NOT conclude that melamine is the substance that has caused the pet deaths - only that melamine was present in the wheat gluten from China.

In fact, the FDA is still trying to figure out if melamine has anything whatsoever to do with the pet deaths. Let's summarize what we know, to date:

1. Hundreds of US pets have died or fallen ill due this month by eating a wide variety of pet food manufactured by a Canadian company that produces pet food in Kansas.
2. A large number of US pet foods have been recalled.
3. That pet food company buys its wheat gluten from China.
4. The Chinese wheat gluten found in the pet food has been shown to contain two harmful ingredients - melamine (a plastic) and aminopterin (a chemotherapy drug)
5. Neither the plastic nor the chemo drug found in the pet food has been definitively blamed for the pet illnesses and deaths
6. Other harmful substances may be found in the Chinese wheat gluten, as well
7. We still don't know why the pet foods are poisonous or what the lethal tainting agent is or how it got there - all we know is that the food has more than one "contaminant".
8. The FDA has NOT ruled out the possibility that the contaminated wheat gluten could have made it into human food.

So many unanswered questions.

So, to protect my own health and the health of my beloved dogs, I still have so many unanswered questions! Who else has purchased that Chinese wheat gluten? Will the government give us a complete list of all those who have purchased wheat gluten from the unidentified Chinese company?

Has that same shipment of Chinese wheat gluten ended up in any products meant for human consumption? How could we find out? Can we even ever find out the truth?

As I said earlier, I bake bread. I've been doing it for years the old fashioned way - kneading and rising and punching and rising and shaping and baking. It's a wonderfully rewarding activity.

Just yesterday, I was purchasing some bread making supplies at my local grocery store. Ordinarily, I don't buy wheat gluten unless I'm making really heavy breads, like bread with oat bran or bread with rye flour. In those cases, it's important to use a really glutinous bread flour additive, or add some wheat gluten. I had a hankering for a nice heavy loaf of rye bread, so, I paused at the grocery store to read all the small print on the box of wheat gluten.

Where did the wheat in the grocery store come from?

I decided not to make my oat bran and rye bread this week and left the box of wheat gluten on the grocery store shelf.

Homemade bread is the ultimate healthy, wholesome food - yet we can't even be sure of that now. Not being able to trust the healthfulness of my own home baked bread makes me feel sad and wistful for the past.

Like I've lost an old and trustworthy friend.

Pam's Homemade Bread Recipe #2:

2 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons table salt
2 tablespoons non-fat dry milk
3 tablespoons oat bran
2 tablespoons oatmeal
4 tablespoons unsalted sunflower seeds
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1 5/8 cups warmed water
2 tablespoons dark molasses
1 2/3 teaspoon yeast
2.5 tablespoons unsalted softened butter
2 teaspoons instant coffee (optional)

Dissolve yeast in part of the warmed water in a very large bowl. Froth it up with a spoon. Stir in the rest of the water and the molasses. Add the softened butter. With a strong spoon, continuously stir while adding the whole wheat flour, oatmeal, dry milk, sunflower seeds, salt, flax seed, and oat bran. Combine these ingredients well.

Begin adding the bread flour, one half a cup at a time, incorporating by stirring or by kneading. In order to incorporate all of the bread flour, you will knead the dough vigorously for 10 minutes. If after a few minutes of kneading, your dough seems too dry (it tears or breaks easily), then, add a tablespoon of warmed water and let soak in. Knead some more. You can add another one or two tablespoons of water, as needed, but, don't let it get too soft. If the dough seems too gooey and sticks to your hand, then, sprinkle a little bit of bread flour on it and knead some more. (I'm usually not too quick to add more water, because kneading itself makes the dough more moist. I will, though, add flour if the dough gets too sticky because stickiness prevents kneading - and, kneading is important!) Total kneading time = 10 minutes.

When you are through kneading, you will want to find a warm place to let your bread rise. I usually turn the oven on for 5 minutes and then turn it off and leave the door cracked. Form a nice round shape with your dough and place it in an oiled bowl (ceramic or wood is best). Stretch a clean damp cloth over the top and place the bowl in the warm place. Let rise until dough doubles in size. Time will vary from 30 minutes to 60 minutes.

Take your bowl of dough and place on a counter or table. With your fist, punch the dough down in the center. The air should escape and the dough will collapse some. If your bowl is large and oiled, you can knead the dough in the bowl. If not, turn it out on a clean oiled counter top or board and knead for about 4 minutes.

If you are making a loaf, you can now shape your it by rolling into a cylinder shape and turning the ends under. Placing your shaped dough in your oiled bread pan. Let the dough rise again, in a warm place until doubled in size, again. Don't punch it down this time.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake your bread from 25 to 45 minutes, give or take 10 minutes. It is not necessary to over-bake bread. Some people thump the loaves and listen for a hollow sound. I just take them out of the oven after I have been smelling that wonderful aroma from the oven - for about awhile. Promptly remove from pan and let the bread cool for about 30 minutes or more.

If you have dogs in your family, give them some loving hugs (and bread) for us.