Pet lovers grow more frustrated over food recall

Published 9:00 pm Friday, March 30, 2007

Angry pet owners are beginning to lose patience with health officials who are investigating pet food recalled earlier this month after dogs and cats died or became seriously ill.

“Some of us are seeing panic on the blogs and Web sites,” said Sandy Willis, president of the Washington State Veterinary Medical Association.

“People think they’re being lied to. I don’t think we know the answer” to what is causing pets to become sick, she said. “We’re still looking.”

On Friday, federal Food and Drug Administration officials said it found melamine in samples of Menu Foods pet food, as well as in wheat gluten used as an ingredient in its wet-style pet food products.

Cornell University scientists also found melamine – used to produce plastic kitchen wares and used in Asia as a fertilizer – in the urine of sick cats, as well as in the kidney of one cat that died after eating the company’s wet food.

However, the federal tests failed to confirm the presence of rat poison in pet food.

Last week, scientists at the New York State Food Laboratory identified aminopterin, a rat poison and cancer drug, as the likely culprit in the contaminated pet food.

Both findings follow the massive recall earlier this month of 60 million containers of cat and dog food made by Menu Foods. The recall was triggered by reports of animals dying of kidney failure after eating the Canadian company’s products.

The recall involved nearly 100 brands of “cuts and gravy” style dog and cat food made by Menu Foods.

The recall covered products carrying names of major brand-name and private-label products sold throughout North America, including Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba.

On Friday, one additional company announced a recall.

Hill’s Pet Nutrition Inc. of Topeka, Kan., announced a voluntary recall of its Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry food from the market.

This is the only company product affected by the recall.

The company advised consumers to stop using the product and return it for a refund.

In its announcement, Hill’s said during a two-month period in early 2007, wheat gluten for that product was provided by a company that also supplied wheat gluten to Menu Foods.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration tests of wheat gluten samples from this period show the presence of a small amount of melamine.

It is not clear how many pets may have been poisoned by the apparently contaminated food, although anecdotal reports suggest hundreds if not thousands have died. The FDA alone has received more than 8,000 complaints.

Charlie Powell, a spokesman at Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said the finding of a second contaminant in pet food “raises the specter of doubt in the public’s mind and destroys trust.

“That’s going to be very difficult to regain,” he said.

The recall will probably lead to increasing testing on pet foods by both the government and pet food manufacturers, Powell said, to ensure pet food safety.

Yet the finding of a second pet food contaminant leaves scientists facing more questions than answers, he said.

“The question is: What does this mean?” he said.

Acute renal failure is quite common in dogs and cats, he said, occurring with greater frequency as animals age.

So far, there’s been no increase in the rates of dogs or cats treated at WSU’s animal intensive care unit for renal failure, he said.

“We’re not seeing the same issues that other states are saying they’re seeing,” with problems linked to the recall, Powell said.

“A fearful consumer will say, ‘How do you know it’s not pet food causing that?’” Power said. “The answer is no one knows. There’s no way to confirm that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.