More Pet Food Recalls

[Jenny]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17967533/

Dog biscuits added, along with more varities of food (no new brands, just varities of the same brands). No updated list yet, but...

The biscuits include the ones in the Ol'Roy brand from Walmart, which is what my parents get, I believe. eek.

[Napoleon54]

oy vey!

[DarkFury]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17967533/

Dog biscuits added, along with more varities of food (no new brands, just varities of the same brands). No updated list yet, but...

The biscuits include the ones in the Ol'Roy brand from Walmart, which is what my parents get, I believe. eek.


Here is the lists so far...

For Dogs...
http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_dog.html

For Cats...
http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_cat.html

[Jenny]

Does that include dog biscuits?

[fillup0215]

this is terrible...hope everyones pet is okay!

[DarkFury]

Does that include dog biscuits?
Guess not, but I suppose that so far that is the "most updated" list that we have.


Personally, I'm glad that I feed my cat only dry food that we've had at the house for the past 2 months (it takes awhile for a cat to go through a 19lb bag of Purina Cat Chow - Indoor Formula)

I don't forsee buying anymore cat food for at least a few months. :D

[zippyjuan]

Tainted Pet Food Could Be Sold in China

A Chinese dog owner walks her dog dressed in a Santa Claus suit along new residential and commercial developments under construction in Beijing, China Thursday April 5, 2007. ELIZABETH DALZIELBy ALEXA OLESEN (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
April 05, 2007 6:57 PM EDT
BEIJING - A Chinese company accused of selling chemical-tainted wheat gluten linked to the pet food deaths of cats and dogs in the U.S. said Thursday that most of its sales are domestic, raising the possibility that people or animals in China might have been exposed to the chemical.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week blocked wheat gluten imports from the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou, saying they contained melamine, a chemical found in plastics and pesticides.

Anying produces and exports more than 10,000 tons of wheat gluten a year, according to its Web site, but only 873 tons were linked to tainted U.S. pet food, raising the possibility that more of the contaminated product could still be on the market in China, or abroad.

Li Cui, director of Anying's foreign exports, told The Associated Press on Thursday the United States is the company's only overseas market for wheat gluten, although it wasn't clear if the company had more than one customer in the U.S.

Most of the company's wheat gluten is sold to domestic Chinese buyers, Li said, refusing to say whether the allegedly contaminated batches were sold in China.

There has been no reaction among the Chinese public to the tainted wheat gluten, and Beijing authorities have not said whether they are investigating the matter.

An official at the Chinese Ministry of Health, who refused to give his name, said the case was not an issue for the ministry and directed questions to the Ministry of Agriculture. An official there, who also refused to give his name, told The Associated Press to stop calling.

Both ministries also did not respond to faxed questions on whether they had concerns about tainted gluten in China.

The tainted wheat gluten underscores China's dismal food-safety record. Mass food poisoning cases are common in the country, many blamed on cooks who disregard hygiene rules or mistakenly use industrial chemicals instead of salt and other ingredients.

Last year, seven companies were punished for using banned Sudan dye to color egg yolks red. In 2004, at least 12 infants died from malnutrition after drinking formula with little or no nutritional value in eastern China's Anhui province.

Other recent cases include 30 high school and primary students who became sick this week after eating beef soup at a small restaurant in Zhejiang province in eastern China.

Last month, 57 people were hospitalized in Zhejiang after eating food laced with rat poison, while nearly 400 people were hospitalized with possible food poisoning after a wedding banquet in Yunnan province in southern China.

ChemNutra Inc., the Las Vegas-based company that imported the wheat gluten and shipped it to companies that make pet foods, said Tuesday that Xuzhou Anying had never reported the presence of melamine in the content analysis it provided.

Earlier this week, another official at the Chinese company said the gluten was not manufactured by Xuzhou Anying, but was bought from companies in neighboring provinces.

Melamine is used to make plastic kitchenware, glues, countertops, fabrics, fertilizers and flame retardants. It also is both a contaminant and byproduct of several pesticides, including cyromazine, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The FDA has confirmed about 15 pet deaths, and anecdotal reports suggest hundreds of cats and dogs may have died of kidney failure from the tainted food.

Nearly 100 brands of cat and dog food made with wheat gluten have been recalled.

[Markel]

I give up. Time to eat my dog. :P

[johnnymk]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/us/06petfood.html?th&emc=th

A recall of pet food tainted with melamine, a chemical used to make plastic products, has been widened to include 22 types of dog biscuits, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday.

The biscuits, made by Sunshine Mills Inc., contain wheat gluten imported from China that contained melamine, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the F.D.A.

Sunshine Mills, of Red Bay, Ala., manufactures branded and private label dry pet food and biscuits. The recalled biscuits include Nurture Chicken and Rice Biscuit, Ol’ Roy Peanut Butter Biscuit and Pet Life Large Biscuit.

Conrad Pitts, a lawyer for Sunshine Mills, said 80 percent of the tainted biscuits were sold by Wal-Mart, under the Ol’ Roy brand. Mr. Pitts said that the company had produced about 24 truckloads of biscuits with the contaminated gluten, and that the majority of the product was large biscuits. He said wheat gluten accounted for less than 1 percent of the total weight of the biscuits.

Until last week, when moist cat treats, dog jerky and a type of dry cat food were added to the recall, it had been limited to wet pet food sold under a variety of brand names.

Menu Foods, which last month recalled more than 90 brands of its “cuts and gravy” pet food, said yesterday that it had extended the period of time covered by its recall to include food made after Nov. 8, 2006. The company, based in Ontario, initially recalled only food made from Dec. 3, 2006, to March 6, 2007.

The company also added 20 additional varieties of those brands to the recall list yesterday. Information about the recalled pet food can be found at www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html.

Menu Foods said it acted after a supplier, ChemNutra of Las Vegas, recalled all wheat gluten it had imported from the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company of Wangdien, China. ChemNutra said Wednesday that the F.D.A. had found melamine in the gluten. The agency said it was now testing all wheat gluten from China.

The Chinese government said yesterday that no wheat gluten had been exported to the United States or Canada. Xuzhou Anying denied it had ever shipped wheat gluten to either country.

“We are a trading company and don’t manufacture the product,” added Mao Lijun, the company’s general manager. Michael Rogers, director of the Division of Field Investigations for the F.D.A., said records showed that the tainted gluten came from China.

“We fully expect the Chinese government’s cooperation and assistance in our further investigation,” Mr. Rogers said.

Mr. Rogers and Dr. Sundlof said the gluten did not enter the human food supply. The agency said that it was still investigating how the melamine got into the gluten, and that it had notified all companies that had received it.

Though melamine has been found in the food and in the urine and kidneys of pets that have eaten the food, officials and scientists are not sure whether the chemical actually caused pets to get sick.

Melamine, which is also used as a slow-release fertilizer, is generally not known to be toxic. Some theories are that it might act as a marker for another unknown toxin that causes renal failure in pets, Dr. Sundlof said, or that cats and dogs are extremely sensitive to melamine.

“We still have a lot of work to do to understand why melamine is involved, as it is a relatively nontoxic substance,” Dr. Sundlof said. “We are relatively certain that there is a connection here someplace.”

The F.D.A. said it had received more than 12,000 complaints about pet food since the recall, as many as it usually gets in a two-year period on all topics combined. It has confirmed 16 deaths.

“We have no good information what that final number might be,” Dr. Sundlof said. “It will take a while for us to get there.”

The College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University is investigating 43 suspected cases of pets that died from eating tainted food; the deaths of 18 are consistent with ingestion of a toxin, said Patrick Halbur, executive director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at Iowa State.

Dr. Halbur and Grant Maxie of the University of Guelph in Ontario, which is also investigating the cause of the illnesses and deaths, said it would probably take months to determine what made the pets sick.

In Chicago, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, called for a hearing to question F.D.A. officials. He also called for standardized federal regulations and inspection requirements for pet food.

[oblongmelon]

I have a good recipe for homemade dog bisquits if anyone would like it.