From the LazyDaze Yahoo Group:
Fears grow on pet food
New findings expand the threat beyond wheat gluten.
Carrie Peyton Dahlberg - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:08 am PDT Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1
The month long pet food recall expanded Tuesday with a troubling
twist, for the first time involving foods that do not contain wheat
gluten but still tested positive for a potentially lethal chemical.
The finding makes it much tougher to tell people what to safely feed
their pets and fuels suspicions that the chemical melamine is being
deliberately added to some pet food ingredients to bolster apparent protein.
Natural Balance, a Pacoima-based company, is "99.9 percent sure" that
a rice protein made in Asia is responsible for the melamine detected
Tuesday in some of its venison-based pet foods, company President
Joey Herrick said.
"It was pretty shocking," he said in a phone interview after the
company recalled several of its venison foods. "I was livid."
Herrick declined to name the supplier of the rice protein or the
country it came from, saying only that a large American company
acquired the ingredient for Diamond Pet Foods, which makes some
Natural Balance products.
Because both wheat gluten and rice protein enhance the protein
content of pet food, "it certainly is suspicious" that melamine now
is associated with both, said Bob Poppenga, a UC Davis veterinary
toxicology professor.
Melamine isn't an edible protein, but it has plenty of nitrogen,
which can be used as a marker for protein in chemical analyses.
So, if someone wanted to use less of the relatively pricey sources of
vegetable protein, such as wheat gluten, and throw in cheaper
starches instead, adding melamine to that mix would still make it
look like a protein-rich product, numerous veterinary nutritionists
and toxicologists have said. With such speculation swirling, the rice
protein-melamine link further alarmed pet owners as it began
appearing on Web sites Tuesday, said Gina Spadafori, a
Sacramento-based author who runs a pet Web site.
"I see people who are being almost panicky," she said. "Last week, it
was easy for veterinary associations to say if you want to feel
better, just avoid wheat gluten," Spadafori said. "Now for this
expansion to be an entirely different protein source ... I don't
think right now anybody can say, 'Go feed this, it's safe.' "
Natural Balance President Herrick was so shaken by the melamine
finding that he imposed a new policy Tuesday to hold all company
foods in a warehouse until an offsite lab tests each batch for
melamine. He won't ship anything until it has tested clean, he said.
Local veterinarians who've tracked kidney ailments nationwide have
tentatively identified five more foods, not at this point under any
recall, that they plan to have tested as soon as possible.
The Veterinary Information Network, used by about 16,000 of the
estimated 35,000 U.S. veterinarians, noticed the five foods kept
recurring in vet-described disease reports, said Paul Pion, the Davis
vet who co-founded the service. Pion said it would be premature to
name the foods.
He hopes to get suspect food samples to the California Animal Health
and Food Safety Laboratory at UC Davis to start testing as early as
today. As the recall expands, "my sense is it's time for every
manufacturer to go testing for melamine," Pion said.
The notion that melamine could be a deliberate additive -- not an
industrial mistake -- arose as early as April 5, when Stephen
Sundlof, head of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said that
the pet food recall could turn into a criminal investigation if
investigators find that melamine was added deliberately.
Later, the New York Times reported that the Chinese company that
supplied tainted wheat gluten to Menu Foods sought to buy large
amounts of melamine through Internet trading sites.
More than 4,000 pet deaths have been reported on Spadafori's
petconnetion.com site. Others have estimated recall-related deaths at
hundreds to thousands of pets nationwide.
All the 100 or so products recalled previously had involved wheat
gluten, the vast majority of them dog food, cat food and treats
manufactured for many labels by the Canada-based company Menu Foods.
Amid complaints that the multiple recalls were hard to follow, the
FDA tried to assemble all the recalled foods on a single list, now
over 5,000 items long, on its Web site at
<
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/script...a.fda.gov/scr\
ipts/petfoodrecall/
As of Tuesday evening, the Natural Balance recalls hadn't appeared
there. Natural Balance recalled two products Monday and added more
Tuesday after learning of the melamine test results. It has pulled
back Venison and Brown Rice canned and bagged dog foods, Venison and
Brown Rice dog treats and Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.
For pet owners, vets said, the important thing to be aware of is any
behavior change that seems linked to either a new food, or even a new
bag of the same food. Symptoms could include loss of appetite,
vomiting, lethargy and excess drinking or urinating.
»
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