UPDATE: Cause of Pet Food Recall Finally Known

FDA and Menu Foods Both Have Conferences to Break the News on March 23rd

The recent recall of 60 million containers of pet food was enough to scare American pet owners, but now they are in complete shock at what was found in their pet's food. After scientists at the
UPDATE: Cause of Pet Food Recall Finally Known
New York State Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell and at the New York State Food Laboratory tested the recalled pet food they found Aminopterin in two out of three tested containers. What is Aminopterin you maybe asking? Aminopterin is rat poison, but how did rat poison end up in pet food? Menu Foods who has produced the 60 million recalled containers has no idea. They were first claiming that a new supplier of wheat gluten maybe the one to blame, but scientists say that wheat gluten couldn't have these affects on pets. Also there would be no reason for Aminopterin to be found in wheat gluten. Even if crop owners were using Aminopterin to rid their crops of rodents there would be no need to cover the entire crop. Many farmers may have sections of their farm that contain poison, but it shouldn't have been all over the crops in question.

This also brings up another good point. Aminopterin has not been registered for American use. Another interesting fact is that Aminopterin is also a cancer drug and any amount is deadly to pets and will cause kidney failure. High doses of Aminopterin are deadly to anyone, so why was this drug in pet food and how did it get there? These are questions that will have to be answered, especially now that Menu Foods is facing lawsuits from pet owners who recently lost their pets, due to the pet food manufactured by Menu Foods.

Menu Foods is working hard to ensure that Americans know which foods have been recalled. At their website (http://tinyurl.com/2pn6mm), you will find a complete list of the 95 brands of pet food that have been recalled. Once you click on a brand you will find the code number and description of the product that has been recalled. Do not take this recall lightly. It has been reported that 15 cats and one dog have already died of kidney failure. Do you really want to take that chance with your pet?

Related information
  • Aminopterin will cause kidney failure.
  • Aminopterin is not registered to be used in the US.
  • Wheat gluten would not have caused the kidney failure on its own.
 
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I still can't believe all that has happened with this. It's a shame that we have to worry so much about what to feed our pets.

Posted on 03/31/2007 at 5:03:00 PM

It is interesting how different government agencies are finding different poisons in their testing samples. Think about what could be in the trash at an industrial plant. 1. Wow, caught 10 rats today - toss the dead rats and traps in the trash. 2. New supplies arrived today, toss the plastic covers in the trash. Man, its so expensive to haul our trash to the dump, look at that big (meat/wheat) grinder over there, nobody will be able to tell if I just toss the trash in the grinder...

Posted on 03/31/2007 at 7:03:00 AM

Yeah, actually I am looking for homemade pet diets. I'll try it. This fiasco has really gotten me shaken up

Posted on 03/27/2007 at 3:03:00 PM

If you're looking for a homemade diets, go to balanceit.com. They have recipes developed by board certified veterinary nutritionists. You can get a FREE RECIPE by entering the promo code "homemade" at the check out.

Posted on 03/26/2007 at 5:03:00 PM

Margo - I, too, was feeding my dog in one of those brands, only in the dry form. I switched to a precription food just before this story broke because my dog was getting sick. I can't help wonder if there is a problem with the dry as well.

Posted on 03/26/2007 at 7:03:00 AM

I almost had a heart attack when I read the list of cat food that had been poisoned. I have bought some of those in the recent past and in fact have one of the brand names in my house as we speak but it is the dry food and not the canned cat food but that still does not make me feel very well knowing something could be there in that companies cat food, to harm my cats. Thanks so much for this updated article! Excellent!

Posted on 03/26/2007 at 6:03:00 AM

I hate to break this to you, but most drugs are a poison in some respect. The effects of most of the drugs have not even been completely confirmed yet, but there's a lot of bad stuff going around as "drugs" at the moment. I'll be posting some supporting documents soon too

Posted on 03/26/2007 at 6:03:00 AM

Hiya Amy, Yes. I'm with Jean I hope they find out what caused this and fix it quickly. This is really horrible. I didn't know Rat Poison was a cancer drug, either. I hope this is resolved soon with a happy ending. Great follow up Amy and great reporting. Bye

Posted on 03/23/2007 at 11:03:00 PM

This is very scary. This story just gets worse. Good article.

Posted on 03/23/2007 at 9:03:00 PM

It makes me so angry that rat poison got into the pet food chain. It reminds me of when the fire retardate got in cow chow killing thousands. I hope they find out how this happened. Thanks for the info.

Posted on 03/23/2007 at 7:03:00 PM

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