Attention, pet owners: You are the beneficiaries of an extraordinary gift.
Five acres of serene, forested land in Oklahoma have been donated for a memorial sanctuary where, at no cost to owners, every pet that has fallen ill or died due to dangerous pet food will be remembered with a personalized memorial stone. The sanctuary, named "Vindication," is located at Keystone Lake in Oklahoma and is expected to open this June. The donor hopes that Vindication will comfort grieving owners.
They all mattered to someone,
They all matter in Vindication.
Vindication will Never Forget Them; Nor why They Died.
TruthAboutPetFood.com
Plants, benches and memorial stones, will line pathways winding through wooded acres - all a gift to you from an anonymous donor, a family of modest means who lost six pets to melamine-contaminated pet food and decided that "enough is enough."
Susan Thixton, at TruthAboutPetFood.com, who also knows the pain of losing a pet to dangerous food, is leading the effort to spread word to every owner of a pet sickened by petfood. Considering that many thousands of pets may have died from the melamine incident alone, this is a daunting goal. Your help, gentle readers, will be critical to success.
What you can do
1. Go to TruthAboutPetFood.com and read more about Vindication.
2. Register the names of pets you may have owned that were sickened or killed by pet food.
3. Pass along word of Vindication to other pet owners.
Cross-post this diary (in its entirety if you wish) to other websites. You have my permission in advance. Tweet and email the news to others and post it on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Print out the flyer posted at TruthAboutPetFood and post it wherever pet owners gather in your community--animal hospitals, groomers, doggy daycares, dog parks and pet supply stores--as well as general gathering spots, like coffee shops and dry cleaners. Fax or email the Vindication press release to media outlets, particularly those in your hometown, and bloggers. (Don't forget freebies like City Paper.)
Check back at TruthAboutPetFood.com/Vindication for updates. A donation page should be available there, soon, to accept voluntary contributions toward the perpetual maintenance of Vindication.
Never forget
What happened to pets in 2007--and continues to happen--is a national disgrace. Both food manufacturers and government officials betrayed hundreds of thousands of beloved family members for company profits. Then, after witnessing a flood of illnesses and deaths, manufacturers failed to destroy the contaminated food. Instead, they sold recalled pet food to farmers to feed to livestock meant for human consumption and continued to mislead consumers about the threat from melamine. For more on that, see my series of diaries exposing the deceptions.
Sadly, those responsible for this deadly debacle received only a slap on the wrist - a modest fine and probation. But, that need not be the end of the story.
Vindication is ours. As you read this Vindication is being sculpted by the donors into flowering gardens with handmade stones lining the cascading pathways. Careful selections of flowers are being chosen; flowers will bloom both day and night. At the very front of our land will be 16 handmade stones circled into the pathway beginning. These 16 stones signify the 16 “official” pets that died at Menu Foods testing laboratory long before the deadliest recall in world history was announced.
From the Remembered 16 Circle will be pathways that cascade over our land. Each stone lining each pathway will be handmade and personalized with the name of a pet killed or sickened by pet food. Each innocent victim will be remembered. Thousands of pets – each with their own personalized pathway stone will be honored here.
In closing
Of the many diaries I have written, none has given me more satisfaction than this one. The creation of Vindication, possibly the first memorial related to food safety, is a deeply touching and generous act; a loving hug to grieving pet owners. It is also an important message in the making that will put food manufacturers and regulators on notice that wrongdoing will not be forgotten.
Vindication logo
Photo Credits
Kitten: CarbonNYC at Flickr.com
Dog: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent) at Flickr.com
Cross-posted from Daily Kos
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