Pet Foof Recall Nervous Owners Seek Answers

Dog and cat owners, after frantically switching pet foods and scrutinizing their animals for signs of kidney distress for over two weeks, have lots of unanswered questions:

Are foods not on the Food and Drug Administration's recall list really safe? After all, the recall has expanded a couple of times after reassurances.

How many dogs and cats have died -- in the country and in Maryland, Virginia and the District? How many are sick?

Pet owners might not get answers soon. There is no centralized database for veterinarians to report sick pets, no way to report sudden or perplexing series of deaths. As the investigation proceeds, further recalls are possible.

"What people shouldn't be doing is panicking, and that's what they're doing," said veterinarian Jerry Goldfarb of Fairfax Animal Hospital. "There's a lot of misinformation out there."

The FDA, responsible for enforcing the safety of the food supply for pets as well as humans, has struggled with the scope of the tainted pet food issue, which began when Menu Foods reported March 16 that a number of cats and dogs that ate its foods had died and issued a recall. Since then, the FDA has been swamped with more than 10,000 complaints -- almost twice as many as it got on all topics last year. The agency, headquartered in Rockville, has assigned more than 400 employees, three field labs and 20 district offices to tracking suspect shipments, fielding phone calls and testing pet food samples, an FDA spokesman said.

Although the FDA is confirming just 16 pets dead, some state veterinary associations have collected far higher numbers: Michigan's reports 46, and Oregon's reports 35. Neither Maryland nor Virginia's veterinary associations collect that sort of data and instead refer callers to the FDA.

The Veterinary Information Network, a group of 30,000 veterinarians and students, is doing a nationwide survey after its members sent in unsolicited reports of more than 500 illnesses and 104 deaths.

Gina Spadafori, a syndicated newspaper pet columnist who contributes to the popular PetConnection.com, noted that the Web site has received almost 3,000 unconfirmed reports of pet deaths. Although acknowledging that that number is probably too high, she said, "Even if a fraction of these can be confirmed, we're talking about hundreds of dead pets. The problem is there is no coroner for pets."

In her upcoming column, she said she will urge the FDA to set up a system for veterinarians to send and receive information about animal health, which she called a "canary in the coal mine" for public health. She also urged improved labeling on pet food packages, so consumers know who makes the food and its ingredients and how to reach those suppliers.

The issue first came to public attention when Menu Foods of Canada announced a recall of its "cuts and gravy"-style dog and cat food. The company sold the pet food under nearly 100 brand names through popular supermarkets, pet specialty stores and mass merchandisers. (For a complete list of recalled products, see http://www.fda.gov.) Dry foods were considered unaffected.

The FDA said in its official statements that any commercial pet food that had not been recalled should be safe.

Then other manufacturers began issuing recalls, including one of a dry cat food brand. The New York State Food Laboratory reported finding aminopterin, a rat poison, is some samples of recalled cat food. Days later, the FDA said it was unable to duplicate the findings and identified the contaminant in wheat gluten as melamine, a substance used to make plastics and in other industrial uses. The FDA barred a Chinese company from shipping any more tainted wheat gluten to the United States.

"First, it was rat poison; now, it's some kind of plastic," cat owner Kathleen Thompson of Fairfax said yesterday. She took her previously healthy 5-year-old cat, Matilda, to the vet as a precaution after the first recall was announced. Matilda showed no symptoms but had eaten some of the recalled pet food. The vet discovered that Matilda had kidney failure. "If it could happen to our pets, it could happen to us," Thompson said.

But none of the contaminated wheat gluten that led to the U.S. recall of pet food went to manufacturers of food for humans, the ingredient's importer said yesterday. Stephen Miller, chief executive of ChemNutra of Las Vegas, told the Associated Press that the Chinese wheat gluten his company imported all went to companies that make pet foods, although he would not name the companies.
business mortgage real estate revenue foreclosure investment invest stock exchange forex forex trading