Dry foods may be affected too?

CoAl-s-Mom said:

I heard on the 5:00 news on my way home from work that Hills has recalled some dry cat food.

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Hills recalled one and only prescription food. It is MD which would normally be used for diabetic or greatly overweight cats. It is the only food in their prescription line which uses wheat gluten. For a period of two months they bought wheat gluten from the source that has been implicated in the kidney problems in wet food. It is a precautionary measure.

The contaminate found is melamine--this is the base plastic used in a ton of ordinary articles found around your house. If it is actually capable of causing kidney failure we are probably all in trouble. It was the first plastic used to make durable plastic dinner ware. Goes back to before plastic everythings were common. It is a very inert plastic (one of the reasons it's been used so widely.

The FDA has already said that they can't find a reason that melamine would cause kidney failure but are still testing.

And there is evidently now some information out (from the FDA and another health organization--but I don't know which one) that they have not been able to duplicate the findings that there was a rodenticide found in the contaminated wet foods.

Even though I know a lot of people have been bashing the pet food companies who provide the ingredients to Menu foods to make their labeled brands and of Menu foods themselves for not having caught this problem sooner the fact is they did the recalls very promptly--no one--certainly not the guys who make the food wants to see your pets or anyones pets die because of something that is in their food.

Contamination occurs in human food as well--not long ago it was spinach--it caused a fair number of illnesses and a couple of deaths. Before that it was lettuce which wasn't as big a disaster since it was fairly localized to crops from one specific area. Before that it was strawberries.

CoAl-s-Mom said:

Last week they said it was caused from a rodenticide. Can't remember the name of it, but it's one that is banned in the states. The agrigulture dept. held a news conference, but I didn't get to see it.

Then I heard it was from a fertilizer, now plastic.

After talking diets with my boss, (vet, I know you work for one too bug),he talked me onto feeding the Iams. Told me he "knows" where the ingredients come from. He was quite shocked to find out the wheat gluten was imported from China.

Although Peaches did quite well on the Iams, I am not comfortable feeding her a kibble that is produced by a company that buy it's ingredients from whomever is cheapest.

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I read an AP story yesterday that mentoned that something like 60% of the wheat used in both animal and human food is imported.

The NY state dept. of agriculture is the one who said they found aminopterin in the wheat gluten..the FDA and other entities like Cornell and Guelph University are unable to replicate those results. My understanding is while aminopterin can cause kidney failure in both dogs and cats, it would have to be present in much higher concentrations to have that effect than was found in the samples the NY Dept. of Agriculture was working with.

There isn't very much research on the effects of melamine on dogs and cats. so no one really knows what levels would be considered unsafe.

IOW-I think at this point in time no one still has conclusive proof what agent caused all these illnesses and deaths. Clearly it was something in that wheat shipment, but I think that's about all anyone knows.