Q&A: Pet Food Recall, Finding Better Foods for Cats and Dogs
(Page 2 of 3)
April/May 2007
By John Rockhold
Q: Is melamine allowed as a fertilizer in the United States?
No, I'm positive it's not.
RELATED CONTENT
AP Poll: Most pet owners would perform CPR on pets, but few are prepared for emergency...
Lifestyles Food Digest...
UN food agency says 1 billion people hungry, poor paying more for food despite recession...
Here’s a new way to bring together coalitions that are working toward the promotion of locally grow...
Food Co-ops: Good Food and Good Prices September/October 1979 A "New Wave" of grocery outlets can g...
Q: So with all this in the news, what's the first thing a pet owner should do?
The most rational thing to do is to check the ingredients list on the food, see if it lists wheat gluten. If you see wheat gluten, don't feed it to them.
Q: If you see your pet's food on the recall lists, what's the first thing you should do?
Immediately stop using it. Stop, it's not worth the risk.
Q: Soon after the recall news first broke, there was suspicion of a rat poison as the cause?
Yes, a rat poison called aminopterin. That was a mistake ? I believe an official in New York was the first one to identify that, but then no one could duplicate his findings. They analyzed it in three different laboratories and no one could find aminopterin. That didn't help the situation. That's when they started looking for something else.
Q: So what's next? There's still plenty of confusion about whether the melamine is the actual cause of the problem, and how exactly it ended up in the wheat gluten. Does this speak to a larger problem of what we're putting into pet foods?
It's not much of a different problem than the recent spinach and lettuce recalls. What I'm still confused about is the actual cause of death. They found melamine in the wheat gluten and in the deceased cats' urine. But it's not supposed to be toxic in the amounts the animals got. I feel comfortable that what caused this is melamine that was used as a fertilizer and got into the wheat gluten. I would feel more comfortable if I knew how it caused the few animals to die. At the end of the day, we still don't have a definite answer on how melamine affects an animal's physiological system.
Q: Have you seen any animals affected by this?
I haven't. I know a lot of vets are busy doing kidney tests because the signs are pretty nonspecific. Only 16 deaths have actually been attributed to this, but I'm sure there are thousands that believe their animal is sick because of this.
