Tom Waits is tempted by 3 meaty tastes

Nestlé Purina PetCare Company announced on March 30, 2007 a precautionary measure to voluntarily withdraw its 5.3 ounce Mighty Dog brand pouch products that were produced by Menu Foods, Inc. from December 3, 2006 through March 14, 2007. This withdrawal was in response to the recall initiated earlier by Menu Foods, a contract manufacturer that does limited business with Purina as well as with other pet food manufacturers. At that time, only Mighty Dog 5.3 ounce pouch products are being withdrawn by Nestlé Purina; however, on March 31, 2007, the recall was expanded to “all sizes and varieties of its Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy wet dog food with specific date codes.” To date, nearly 60 million containers of pet food sold under 100 different brand labels have been recalled.

Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by one critic as sounding “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car.”

Waits has steadfastly refused to allow the use of his songs in commercials and has joked about other artists who do. (“If Michael Jackson wants to work for Pepsi, why doesn’t he just get himself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it.”) He has filed several lawsuits against advertisers who used his material without permission. He has been quoted, “Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad – ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car,” he said in a statement, referring to Mercury-Lincoln’s “Cougar” automobile. “I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor.”