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Pet Food Companies Should Help Feed Pets During Hard Times LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 6, 2008

Pet Food Companies Should Help Save Abandoned Pets

As we are all aware, families within our communities are suffering terrible hardships due to the loss of jobs. Homes are being foreclosed, gas and oil prices are skyrocketing and inflation is causing the price of food to increase tenfold.

Families are losing their livelihoods, their homes and can't afford to feed themselves. Through all this, these families can no longer afford to feed their pets. Difficult choices are being made when pet owners have to decide to feed their families before their pets.
Food shelters have noticed an increase in requests for canned tuna not because families want it but because people need to feed their pets and can no longer afford to buy canned pet food.

As a community, it is our responsibility to help our neighbors, friends and fellow human beings. More importantly, it is our obligation to be the voice for so many that cannot speak.

During this economic crisis, families have no other choice but to give up their pets because they can no longer afford to care for them. They are making the difficult choice not because they want to but because they can't afford to keep them. Animal shelters are overflowing with families begging them to take their pets. No-kill animal shelters are turning families away because they are filled to capacity and families are being forced to send their pets to shelters that will most certainly euthanize them. Whether the animal is healthy is not a determinant for if they will be put down. Their precious lives will be shortened, merely because there is no other place for them to go.

I believe that it is the responsibility of those that have the means and opportunity to help. Yes, there are funds and grants being created in order to help alleviate the no-kill shelters but that's just a Band Aid. We need to begin by helping the families that are going through these critical times.

What better way to help them than have the pet food companies that we have supported all these years by purchasing their products all these years, to turn around and give back to their customers. I'm asking, not for myself, but for the thousands upon thousands of pets that will be abandoned, discarded, left homeless and, worst of all, euthanized, because there was no one to help them.

They are our joy and they are our comfort when times are tough. They love us unconditionally and ask for nothing in return so Let us be their voice. Let us be their advocates. Let us be there for them, like they have been for us every single day of our lives.

Start today by e-mailing pet food companies and asking them to set up funds to help these families in need. Ask them to donate to the local food banks and to help provide these families who in their own way have supported them over the years, with enough food to provide for their pets, so that at least they will have one less thing to worry about during these difficult times.

Heather Alexakis

Spring Hill

Solar Heating, Wind Power

Solutions To Oil Crisis

My family has owned a home in Weeki Wachee for almost 30 years and we have watched with interest the sudden increases in gas prices, state taxes, etc. We visit, on average, two times each year and with four to six months between visits, we have seen large price increases between visits.

I have to agree that if reasonable deposits are likely to exist in the Gulf of Mexico, exploration should go ahead. My belief, however, is that alternative sources of energy are much more likely to stop our reliance on imported oil - I include the U.S. and my home country of the U.K. You might be interested to know that we have already reached $12 a gallon in the U.K.

What I see in Florida is very little use of solar water heating or photovoltaic panels to generate electricity. Considering the amount of sun in Florida, most homes could be self-sufficient very easily. In Spain, which has a similar climate, a law has been passed that all new properties are required to be fitted with solar water heating and the government provide a grant for existing properties.

In the U.K., we are seeing an expansion of all sorts of heat pumps, ground to water, air to water, air to air, etc. Also, solar water heating panels, photovoltaic solar panels (with government grants available ), and domestic wind turbines. We also drive smaller cars (and get 60-70 mpg). Surely the U.S. could benefit from a similar strategy, rather than continuing to worry about importing oil.

Ian Willis

Weeki Wachee

Report Would Turn

Americans Against Israel

June 8 was the 41st anniversary of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty by Israel. I didn't see anything about it in the media - not even in the newspapers except one.

This independent national paper had the full investigation about the attack, according to the survivors and officers in charge. It was no accident. Every veteran should get a copy of this report by contacting the American Free Press in Washington, D.C. The address is 645 Pennsylvania Ave S.E., Suite 100, Washington, D.C. 20003.

Ex-President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted the ship sunk. Sen. John McCain went along to cover it up. It will make you angry at our government. I wish every American would read this report and all the veteran organizations would demand our government and politicians to be accountable. I am a veteran and will never vote for John McCain. This report will turn America against Israel if they would send for a copy of this report.

Israel has our nation fighting their wars. Our military men and women are dying, not for America but for Israel, while she protects her soldiers at home.

This was the plot for attacking the U.S.S. Liberty and sink it with no survivors and blame it on the Arabs so the people of the U.S. would go to war against the Arabs while Israel sat back and watched. It would result in a nuclear war and, in the end, Israel would take over all the territories.

And we are dumb enough to go along with this plot. Americans, the only one candidate that will stop this is Ron Paul. He is not out of the race yet.

Vernon A. Carles

Spring Hill

The Fabric of American Society must be Broken

Recently the head of the AAA proposed the possibility of gas costing $5 gallon. Israel proposes bombing Iran's reactors before the year end and Iran threatens to close the shipping lane out of the Persian Gulf where 40 percent of the world's oil tanker traffic is. We will have world depression if that happens. Remember Mel Gibson's movie "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?" It was set in a future Australia with roving gangs fighting over fuel.

The rest of the developed world is experiencing protests from all members of their society over the excessive cost of fuel and food. Even Iraq now has gas shortages to run their generators and they reportedly have more oil than the Saudis, but not the refining capability.

For my entire life, and most of my parents' generation, we have had the ability to take a ride in the country or go to a beach, no matter how bad things were in the economy. It was a fact of life for everyone to have a family outing - a major part of our American fabric for at least two or three generations.

For two generations this country has abandoned its cities for the ideal of suburbia moving all forms of shopping and services with it. That cycle needs to reverse itself and there needs to be an exodus from the country back into the cities which have mostly been turned over to the nation's poor who are trapped there in ghettos.

Remember that your grandparents left the farms in the 1920s and moved to the cities to get better wages in factories. A 40-acre farm was no longer capable of sustaining a family. Cities thrived for one generation with everything close at hand, including the factories many walked to. They even had small lots as no one wanted to mow large tracts with a push mower or walk a long distance to the parents/grandparents who lived nearby.

It won't be the same as then. It never is when you try to go back to what you once had. The aging infrastructure in the tax-poor cities of today who have all lost their industries to China and India have to reinvent themselves.

We are nearing the time when America, once the Beacon of Light for oppressed people, is now going to be a developing Third World nation begging for new investments.

Doug Adams

Spring Hill

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