Almost one month ago, fellow Murdok writer Jason Lee Miller covered the Menu Foods pet food scare.  To date, his article has garnered 47 responses – a Murdok record, as far as I know, and that proves a point: various recalls have become a very big deal in recent days.

Take another example.  I just performed a search for “recalls” on Google News, and got 17,338 results (the top story, by the way, is about some high-tech Japanese toilets that have been known to catch fire).  For the term “Yahoo,” I got only 16,908 results.  Something is definitely happening, and Yahoo’s Gordon Hurd has taken note.

“When a well-known product is pulled from the shelves it can cause concern for consumers everywhere,” Hurd wrote on Yahoo’s Buzz Blog.  “[W]e saw new surges inspired by a Listerine recall (1,435%), as well as a recall of a half-million Ford Escapes.”  I should note that those Fords’ brakes can go up in flames . . . but perhaps comparisons between them and bathroom fixtures are best saved for another day.

In any event, consumers need not blindly wonder what unsafe products are lurking out there – Hurd compiled a list of them for everyone’s benefit (or, to be more accurate, a list of Yahoo’s top twenty recall queries).  Of those, exactly ten are pet food-related; the others are a bit scattershot.

Yet as these recalls pass and others crop up, consumers will need to stay up-to-date.  To that end, you can keep an eye on Recalls.gov and the official FDA site.  Alternatively, you can putter around your favorite search engine – while I’m sure its owners regret the implications of all these recalls, they’re not going to turn away the extra traffic.