Mass recall of dog and cat food after pets die

glad someone posted this...

not surprising. the meat they put in that stuff is crap. very scary though that so much of this has hit the shelves. there's a going to be a lot of sick pets out there.

as far as cats are concerned: raw or lightly baked, boneless, chemical-free, free-range chicken breast is a great alternative although expensive. fish (as noted above), fit for human consumption will also make your cat happy and healthy.

its the wheat gluten in the food apparently the plant in question switched suppliers and thats when the problems started happening hopefully an investigation will be launched after this is over

of course i could be wrong but they are focusing on the wheatgluten that was used because as stated earlier the plant switched to a new supplier and thats when the problems started happening. The plant has since dropped the supplier but there will probaly be an investigation after this is over

Originally posted by thehumbleone
What I don't get is what the heck did they put in the food that could kill your animal? :shk:

Possible nicotine poisoning?

I can remember a conversation I had several years ago with an independant 'organic' pet-store owner about additives in cat-food which left me shocked.
He told me that the leading brands would put trace amounts of nicotine in the food to keep kitty addicted to that particular brand...which makes sense to the 'Whiskas' advertising tag-line '8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas'...because they're li'l addicts to the stuff.
I switched my cat from the Whiskas to an organic brand as advised, and he displayed all kinds of withdrawal symptoms (from nicotine, or what exactly, I dont know) and it was only through 'starvation' that I was able to get him to eat the new feed.

Perhaps these poisoning cases could be due to nicotine poisoning from a faulty feed-overdosing as this would cause the mentioned liver/kidney failure in the animal?

Originally posted by xiphiidae
as far as cats are concerned: raw or lightly baked, boneless, chemical-free, free-range chicken breast is a great alternative although expensive. fish (as noted above), fit for human consumption will also make your cat happy and healthy.

Glad someone posted this thread. I don't feed my cat wet food, so apparently that's not tainted? (By this, anyhow...)

And . . . my cat is odd. Anything except dry cat food she attempts to 'bury', making her feelings on it known. I've never seen a cat reject tuna, but . . . she's an odd one.

I don't know if you guys are aware of this but we recently had a similar problem here in South Africa:

www.woolworthsholdings.co.za...

And, yep, it was glycol!!

As said in previous posts, I hope that you pets are all okay. I know that I would lose my mind if my two babies were harmed (2 cats).

Thanks for the tip! I had meant to check this out. Luckily my kitties are fine.

For now...

Here is a good article to check out about petfoods and the crap that goes into them:

The true horrors of pet food revealed: Prepare to be shocked by what goes into dog food and cat food

If you check the labels on grocery store foods, you've probably already begun to see that the list of ingredients doesn't always tell the whole truth about what's in your food. The same goes for your pets' food. Behind innocent-sounding words like "meat byproducts" and "meat meal" are horrific manufacturing practices that would turn your stomach. The nutritional considerations of pet foods go beyond the sources of meat in them. Pet food manufacturers add dangerous preservatives and vitamin fortifications that actually make your pets' food less healthy.

Right now I have two things to say about my pets:

1. My cat who is about 12 years old started having kidney failure about a year ago. The vet wanted to put her on meds and prescription pet food. Instead, I started adding homeopathic dandelion root extract into her regular food and now she's doing great. Very healthy and happy.

2. My dog is a little 5 year old shih tzu and he is allergic to ALL dog food. He gets icky yeast infections on his skin when he eats any of it. I met with a holistic vet and we came up with a homemade recipe of boiled chicken, brown rice, broccoli, green beans, flaxseed oil and bone meal. He's very healthy and happy on that. I recently changed it up and added wheat germ and coral calcium. He's like a little speed demon now. Lots of energy and loves the new recipe.

Manufactured pet food is EVIL crap that should NEVER be fed to any animal.

Here's the best part:

Pet Food Co. Knew Of Problem Last Month

As many as one in six animals died in tests of suspect dog and cat food by the manufacturer last month after complaints the products were poisoning pets around the country, the government said Monday.

"That's a huge number, considering when you feed pet food no animal should die," says CBS News The Early Show veterinarian Dr. Debbye Turner.

So in other words...they knew and sold the stuff anyway.

Originally posted by loam
Here's the best part:

Pet Food Co. Knew Of Problem Last Month

As many as one in six animals died in tests of suspect dog and cat food by the manufacturer last month after complaints the products were poisoning pets around the country, the government said Monday.

"That's a huge number, considering when you feed pet food no animal should die," says CBS News The Early Show veterinarian Dr. Debbye Turner.

So in other words...they knew and sold the stuff anyway.

Those slimy mother effers. That just burns me up. What goes around comes around. They're gonna get what's coming to them.

Originally posted by loam
Here's the best part:

Pet Food Co. Knew Of Problem Last Month

As many as one in six animals died in tests of suspect dog and cat food by the manufacturer last month after complaints the products were poisoning pets around the country, the government said Monday.

"That's a huge number, considering when you feed pet food no animal should die," says CBS News The Early Show veterinarian Dr. Debbye Turner.

So in other words...they knew and sold the stuff anyway.

The b@strds! May they all rot in hell for torturing our animals. Indeed, what goes around comes around.

Words do not adequately express my feelings about this gross misconduct by these companies.
But, let's please remember to curtail our words and keep within the T&C. Do not circumvent the automatic censors in an attempt to express your disgust.



Personally, I think this is inexcusable. 7 animals out of less that 50 died eating the food before it's on the market and they still release it

I am a dog lover myself and just dont get this callousness. :shk:

I'd say it's time for pet owners to learn about Bone Appetit!



[edit on 23-3-2007 by DontTreadOnMe]

They have found that the wheat that these companies imported from China had rat poison in it. They had us feeding rat poison to our pets!

abcnews.go.com...

[edit on 3/23/2007 by Jessicamsa]

Menu Foods told the FDA it received the first complaints of kidney failure and deaths among cats and dogs from pet owners on Feb. 20. It began new tests on Feb. 27.

During those tests, the company fed its product to 40 to 50 dogs and cats and some seven animals -- the mix of species was not immediately known -- died, Sundlof said. The contamination appeared more deadly to cats than to dogs, he said.

www.hemscott.com...


The company tested the food suspected of killing pets on cats and dogs to see whether or not it was toxic. So the animals died painful deaths for experimentation.

America has a love affair with their pets. Just go to Beverly Hills and you'll see doggie spas. If this is an act of terrorism, it would create a huge fear factor. I, like many other pet owners, love my pets as if they were my biological children. With this and many other news stories of human food being contaminated with bacteria, it makes me wonder if terrorist attacks have been ongoing for quite sometime now.

Just to add extra names have been added to the recall list,

edition.cnn.com...

*One type of Alpo wet dog food recalled on Saturday
• Hill's Pet Nutrition recalls Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry food
• FDA says chemical used in plastics found in recalled pet food, sick animals
• Scientists not sure melamine was cause of pets' deaths

Seems Dry food also is now a problem,

www.reuters.com...




[edit on 31-3-2007 by asala]

Here's an interesting article that details the timeline involved in reported deaths, Menu Foods testing, Menu foods test animals dying and then a month later issuing a recall. It also details the lack of coordination among Federal, State and local agencies when it comes to notifying pet owners and vets and tracking a large pet issue such as this.

SF Gate Article on Recall

Most critically, it turned out that the initially reported tally of dead animals only included the cats and dogs who died in Menu's test lab and not the much larger number of affected pets.

This is one of the interesting comments for me, that the #'s of deaths the FDA kept giving the public was not the # reported to them by the public but one's who had died in the companies testing. They don't say how many animals the company tested but later in the article they mention a 35% percen death rate with another 45% suffering kidney damage.

The article also mentions that the FDA had been notified by pet owners of an additional 8,800 deaths suspected after the recall began but they never released that number because they were "unconfirmed" and there is no agency available to confirm pet related deaths.

Instead, pet owners were encouraged to report deaths and illness to the FDA. But when they tried to file reports, there was no place on the agency's Web site to do so and nothing but endless busy signals when people tried to call.

Veterinarians didn't fare much better. They were asked to report cases to their state veterinarian's office, but one feline veterinary blog, vetcetera, which surveyed all official state veterinarian Web sites, found that only eight had any independent information about the recall, and only 24 even mentioned it at all. Only one state, Vermont, had a request on their site for veterinarians to report pets whose illnesses or deaths they suspect are related to the recall. And as of today, there is no longer a notice that veterinarians should report suspected cases to their state veterinarians on the Web site of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The lack of any notification system was extremely hard on veterinarians, many of whom first heard about the problem on the news or from their clients.

Vets were asked to report related deaths to their regulating state agency but many vets found about the recall and that request on the news or from their clients. Apparently most of the State agencies didn't have any information on the recall or a method for vets to reported suspected related deaths. I'm guessing this is due to a lack of funding for state agencies that regulate vet offices

At Pet Connection, we received a flood of stories from owners whose pets became ill with kidney failure, and who took them to the vet. The dogs or cats were hospitalized and treated, often at great expense -- sometimes into the thousands of dollars -- and then, when they were finally well enough, sent home.

For some, the story ended there. But for others, there was one more horrifying chapter. Because kidney failure causes nausea, it's often hard to get recovering pets to eat. So a lot of these owners got down on their hands and knees and coaxed and begged and eventually hand-fed their pets the very same food that had made them sick. Those animals ended up right back in the

This is the saddest part of the story ... some of the pets had survived the 1st round of attacks only to be nursed back to "health" on the same foods that made them so ill in the first place.

It would seem a number of deaths could've been prevented if the company had done a more expeditious recall. The began testing and within 3 days had their 1st death ... but it's a full month to any recall begins. That seems excessively long to me.

I guess this brings up the question of whether we want more government monitoring and intervention in the pet food world; and whether we want a more structured Federal/State vet oversight in order to coordinate responses to possible future contaminations or disease outbreaks.

It seems like a good idea but is it really neccessary? Is this just a horrible but isolated incident? Or is this just the case of one bad company taking too long to perform a recall? Can we trust the other companies to self-police themselves adequately?

Personally I think maybe some better coordinated notification system for the vets would be enough. It can't be too hard since they all have to register with a state regulatory agency. Maintain a database of all their address / ph #'s and use an automated phone system to call out a notice of what to watch for and where to report it; follow up with a form letter. Doesn't seem to me like it would cost all that much for the FDA to have a system like that in place.

You can add this to the list of recalled food(s)

Wal-Mart dog treats join pet food recall

(YahooNews)-WASHINGTON - The recall of pet foods and treats contaminated with an industrial chemical expanded Thursday to include dog biscuits made by an Alabama company and sold by Wal-Mart under the Ol'Roy brand.

news.yahoo.com...

The Food and Drug Administration said the manufacturer, Sunshine Mills Inc., is recalling dog biscuits made with imported Chinese wheat gluten. Testing has revealed the wheat gluten, a protein source, was contaminated with melamine, used to make plastics and other industrial products.

news.yahoo.com...

Also Thursday, Menu Foods, a major manufacturer of brand- and private-label wet pet foods expanded its original recall to include a broader range of dates and varieties. Menu Foods was the first of at least six companies to recall the now more than 100 brands of pet foods and treats made with the contaminated ingredient.

news.yahoo.com...

The recall now covers "cuts and gravy"-style products made between Nov. 8 and March 6, Menu Foods said. Previously, it only applied to products made beginning Dec. 3. In addition, Menu Foods said it was expanding the recall to include more varieties, but no new brands.

news.yahoo.com...

Full story here
news.yahoo.com...

My cat died from liver failure in January. Since he was 14 years old, neither me nor my vet felt it was due to anything other than age. Now I'm starting to wonder. So far I haven't seen his food on the recall list. I fed him IAMS dry and Friskies moist choice cuts. Did I inadvertently kill my own cat?

****UPDATE****

(MSNBC)-Chemical found in second pet-food ingredient Nationwide recall expands to include rice protein, FDA says Updated: 9:40 a.m. CT April 18, 2007

www.msnbc.msn.com...

WASHINGTON - An industrial chemical that led to a nationwide recall of more than 100 brands of cat and dog foods has been found to contaminate a second pet food ingredient, expanding the recall further.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

The chemical, melamine, is believed to have contaminated rice protein concentrate used to make a variety of Natural Balance Pet Foods products for both dogs and cats, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. Previously, the chemical was found to contaminate another ingredient, wheat gluten, used by at least six other pet food and treat manufacturers.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Natural Balance said it was recalling all its Venison and Brown Rice canned and bagged dog foods, its Venison and Brown Rice dog treats and its Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Full story here
www.msnbc.msn.com...


Full recall list can be found here
www.msnbc.msn.com...