Apparently an FDA press conference this morning gave some bad news on pet food.
The contamination may include dry food and other types of pet food than that originally reported. Initial reports were that only "savoury cuts" style wet food was at risk.
Almost 10,000 deaths have been anecdotally reported.
Unless someone does an "excess mortality" survey for Dec-Apr for pets, the true number will never be known.
eg our cat died in early feb, she was old, and she had been chronically ill for several months, but we had switched her to high protein food just before christmas, on vet advice, including "savoury cut" kitten food. We could do this because her kidney function was good despite her general declining health.
But then she suffered sudden and acute kidney failure.
She was cremated, and we of course do not have cat food tins from Jan/Feb lying around.
I expect there are a lot of cases like that, buried in backyards, lying dead under bushes after they crept out feeling ill, or cremated at vet offices.
The FDA can not confirm that the contaminated wheat gluten did not go into human food.
ie it may have contaminated human food but they are not sure.
A rumour now says that the contaminant was melamine, not aminopterin.
Must be more to that. No data on melamine being that toxic, and if it is I'd think pet food would be the least of our worries, that stuff is everywhere.
The FDA will not release the name of the responsible company.
It is hard to understand the rationale for this.
A lot of people must know it, leak it now.
There are three issues there: the chinese company which allegedly supplied the gluten, and the Kansas company which allegedly imported it and sent it on to manufacturers, and the FDA won't name the manufacturer of the dry food which may have been contaminated, so there is no info on what products are at risk.
The primary suppliers of wheat gluten within the US are MGP and Archer Daniels Midland.
One of those at least has considerable political clout.
Interestingly MenuFoods - the wet pet food manufacturer who first reported the problem, used to use MGP as a gluten supplier (according to a comment at petconnection.com), but switched suppliers over a year ago.
So who did they switch to?
MGP has a press release explicitly denying involvement
There are going to be some serious repercussions over this, a lot of people are going to be transiting from grief to anger real soon now.
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I tend to think Chutney's death from acute kidney failure is unrelated --- she was already suffering from kidney disease (fairly advanced), and her brother shared her food with no (apparent) ill effects. But I gotta admit the timing coincidence made some wheels start turning in my head.
I thought my puppy would be fine, because I only feed him dry dog food. Now I hear this, and Puppy didnt eat his breakfast this morning (show me a rescued street dog that turns down food, even if hes stuffed).
Hell, I havent even lost a pet, but all these weird delays in reporting/not releasing names/etc is infuriating me. If this 'we're not telling' game kills my dog, there will be hell to pay.
The link is good, Steinn, thanks. Just noticed the latest update is that Hill did a voluntary recall on the Feline prescription Diet M/D product (go to Pet Connection's blog).
I'm wondering why "gluten"is a neceassary ingredient in the first place.And I too, am concerned that some of this contaminated stuff has found its way into people food.Yikes!!
texture
In the wet food it is primarily used as a gravy thickener, I believe
in the dry food it presumably makes it less crumbly.
I note that last I heard Hill's Prescription Diet (dry) and Purina's Alpo wet dog food have partial recalls.
I wouldn't be surprised to see more Purina recalls.