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In March 2007, millions of concerned pet owners became aware of the massive recall by Menu Foods of 60 million cans and packages of contaminated, poisonous cat and dog food, in an effort to prevent the development of acute kidney disease and even death in the nation’s pets. This one company in Canada, Menu Foods Income Fund, produced over one billion containers of pet food in 2006. This compounded and processed food for dogs and cats was distributed to the major brand name pet food companies and mega-stores for sale under very different labels.

So which labels to trust? And how can one trust the industry when Menu Foods, after receiving many complaints about problems with its products, took 3 weeks to notify the FDA after running feed tests on some 50 cats and dogs that resulted in the unnecessary suffering and deaths even more animals. Noted in the press as a ‘horrible coincidence’, the CFO of Menu Foods sold about half of his stake in the company three weeks before the widespread pet food recall.

On March 19, The FDA notified the press that the manufacturer, Menu Foods, had performed tests on 40-50 dogs and cats on Feb 27, ostensibly one week after receiving reports of dogs and cats dying from kidney failure. Seven of the test animals died, cats being more severely affected than dogs.

This recall eventually involved around 100 different brand names and distributors, including major well known ones such as Iams, Eukanuba, Nutro, Hills, Nutriplan, Royal Canin, Pet Pride, Natural Life vegetarian dog food, Your Pet, America’s Choice-Preferred Pet, Sunshine Mills, as well as store brands such as PetSmart, Publix, Winn-Dixie, Stop and Shop Companion, Price Chopper, Laura Lynn, KMart, Longs Drug Stores Corp, State Bros. Markets and Wal-Mart, and a host of private labels of mainly canned (moist) cat and dog foods. Under each brand name are usually many different varieties of cat and dog foods, and this meant that hundreds of different types of pet food were recalled. When coupled with the soon to follow recalls of other pet food manufacturers that had bought the purportedly poisonous gluten themselves and did not contract with Menu Foods, notably other well known company brand names like Purina, Alpo, and Del Monte Pet Products, the quantity of food recalled must be in the hundreds of thousands of tons.

The FDA has no mandatory authority to demand a pet food recall. All recalls are ‘voluntary’, upon written request notification by the FDA. There is no mandatory requirement for pet food manufacturers to inform the FDA in a timely fashion, or any penalty for not doing so. Even so, upon request, IAMS recently recalled pet foods supplemented with Cadmium, and in early 2006 Royal Canin recalled some of their prescription-only dog food that contained toxic levels of Vitamin D 3, that is also, in high doses, used as a rat poison. Some people believe that this is the main problem behind the ‘melamine cloud’ that the FDA has set up, and that independent laboratory tests are called for. But at this stage of the investigation, I concur with others (see www.aplus-flint-river-ranch.com) that Vitamin D is not the issue in this massive recall. Testing for this would have been on top of the FDA’s agenda, and if problematic, impossible to ultimately hide from public knowledge.

This debacle of the commercial processed pet food industry puts us all on notice. Better quality controls, oversight and testing are called for, but one must be realistic. There have been recent massive recalls of human food commodities, including ground beef, poultry, onions, and spinach. Costs aside, no system of mass production can be fail-safe. The recycling of human food industry by-products, and products considered unfit for human consumption, into livestock feed and processed pet food presents a monumental risk-management challenge.

I began to receive letters from dog and cat owners thanking me for ‘saving their animal’s lives’ because they were feeding them the kind of home-made diet that I have been advocating as a veterinarian for some years. Other letters document the suffering and deaths of several companion animals, their care givers’ disbelief, outrage, and financial as well as emotional loss. These letters came during and after what turned out to be the largest pet food recall in the industry’s history. Many people had veterinary bills in the $ 3-6,000.00 range, many of whom, on fixed incomes, had to take out credit card loans and pay exorbitant interest.

On March 23, 2007 the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets announced that they had found ‘rat poison’ in contaminated wheat gluten imported from China initially thought responsible for the suffering and deaths of an as yet uncounted numbers of cats and dogs across North America. The poison is a chemical compound called aminopterin.

Veterinary toxicologists with the ASPCA and American College of Internal Veterinary Medicine shared my concern that there may be some other food contaminant (s) in addition to the aminopterin that was sickening and killing many pets. Experts were not convinced that the finding of rat poison contamination was the end of the story.

On March 30, the FDA reported finding a widely used compound called melamine, described as a chemical used in the manufacture of plastics, as a wood resin adhesive and protective, in the wheat gluten. The FDA claimed that the melamine was the cause of an as yet uncounted number of cat and dog poisonings and deaths. The FDA could not find the rat poison, aminopterin, in the samples it analyzed. However a lab in Canada, at the University of Guelph, confirmed the presence of rat poison.

The Environmental Protection Agency identified melamine as a contaminant and byproduct of several pesticides, including cryomazine. People began to question if there is also pesticide contamination of the wheat gluten. Was there a possibility of deliberate contamination, or was it the result of gross mismanagement and lack of effective food-safety and quality controls that account for levels of melamine reported to be as high as 6.6% in FDA analyzed samples of the wheat gluten?

The widely used insect growth regulator cryomazine is not only made from melamine. It also breaks down into melamine after ingestion by an animal. Wheat gluten is wheat gluten, fit for human consumption, so the question still remains, what was wrong with this imported gluten that it was only bought for use in pet food?

On April 6, 2007, FDA’s veterinarian Stephen Sundlof told CNN that the melamine found in the contaminated wheat gluten from China could actually have been added as’cheap filler’. Melamine crystal is a urea-derived, synthetic nitrogen product that is used as a fertilizer that could have been added to the wheat gluten, But in fact it is NOT cheap. Fine Chem Trading Ltd Special Offers lists China Melamine Price Indication for 1 metric ton at $1,130, while other sources list China wheat gluten at around $750.

How this melamine got into the gluten is still an open question, and some toxicologists still doubt that this is the main cause of so many dogs and cats becoming sick and even dying from kidney failure.

As for the actual origin of the melamine, this chemical is the parent of a widely used crop insecticide called cryomazine that is actually absorbed by plants after being sprayed, and is converted into melamine. This could be the source of gluten contamination, and was why the gluten was not considered fit for human consumption. But melamine, according to Dr. Sundlof “is not very toxic as a chemical.” Since it was found in some 873 tons of wheat gluten from China the dilution in the vast volume of pet foods being recalled must be considerable. So perhaps melamine is a smoking gun, a symptom and not the primary cause of so many animals becoming sick, and even dying.

Pesticides are used extensively on rice crops, and many varieties of GM/transgenic rice have been planted in Asia. This may account for the presence of melamine in rice protein identified in two of Natural Balance’s cat and dog foods that lead to a recall on April 16, 2007 after people reported that their cats and dogs were getting sick on the dry food.

The possibility of synergism of toxic pet food contaminants, where two or more harmful additives or contaminants resulted in this pet food poisoning pandemic, still remains open. The massive pet food recall in 2004 of dry cat and dog food manufactured in Thailand by Pedigree Pet Foods after reports of kidney failure in hundreds of pets, mostly puppies, in nine Asian countries is a matter of public record, but no toxic agent/s were ever reported to the public by this multinational pet food company.

On April 3 Associated Press named the US importer as ChemNutra of Las Vegas, reporting that the company had recalled 873 tons of wheat gluten that had been shipped to three pet food makers and a single distributor who in turn supplies the pet food industry. Close to 100 different brand labels of cat and dog food were recalled.

Until there is evidence to the contrary, the following concerns remain to be addressed by the FDA:

1. The wheat gluten imported from China was not for human consumption, because, I believe, it had been genetically engineered. The FDA has a wholly cavalier attitude toward feeding animals such ‘frankenfoods’ but places some restrictions when human consumption is involved (yet refuses appropriate food labeling).

2. The ‘rat poison’ aminopterin is used in molecular biology as an anti-metabolite, folate antagonist, and in genetic engineering biotechnology as a genetic marker. This could account for its presence in this imported wheat gluten.

3. The ‘plastic’, ‘wood preservative’, contaminant melamine, the parent chemical for a potent insecticide cyromazine, could possibly have been manufactured WITHIN the wheat plants themselves as a genetically engineered pesticide. This is much like the Bt. insecticidal poison present in most US commodity crops that go into animal feed.

4.So called ‘overexpression’ can occur when spliced genes that synthesize such chemicals become hyperactive inside the plant and result in potentially toxic plant tissues, lethal not just to meal worms and other crop pests, but to cats, dogs, birds, butterflies and other wildlife; and to their creators.

My initial suspicion was that the FDA had been aware that the gluten came from genetically engineered wheat that was considered safe for animal consumption. To admit that the gluten came from a genetically engineered food crop could harm the US agricultural biotechnology industry by raising valid consumer concerns: So better for the FDA to focus on the melamine question.

I could be wrong. But a greater wrong is surely for the pet food industry to use food ingredients and food and beverage industry by-products considered unfit for human consumption; to continue to do business without any adequate government oversight and inspection; and for government to give greater priority and support to agricultural biotechnology ( that requires far more food quality and safety tests and surveillance than conventional crops— all at the public’s expense)—than to organic, humane, ecologically sound farming practices.

Possibly glufosinate and glyphosate, herbicides that are liberally applied to crops across the US, and are absorbed by crops that are genetically engineered (transgenic or GM, genetically modified), so that they are not harmed by the weed killers while all else growing in the fields is wiped out, could be part of the problem. These widely used herbicides have caused kidney damage and other health problems in laboratory tested animals.

These and other agrichemicals are probably in the pet food that made so many animals sick and even die, and are in most of the crops and crop by-products currently being fed to beef cattle, pigs, poultry, and dairy cows whose produce is not Certified Organic.

Farmed animals, whose various produce non-vegans consume, are also fed corn and other feeds from genetically engineered crops that produce their own insecticide called Bt. High levels of Bt in crops have made farmers ill and poisoned sheep. Since pet foods show no labels to the contrary, and the FDA does not even permit the labeling of human foods when they contain GM ingredients, we have no way of knowing what we are really eating or feeding to our pets.

(For details see my books ‘KILLER FOODS: What Scientists Do to Make Food Better is not Always Best.’ The Lyons Press, 2004 and “EATING WITH CONSCIENCE: THE BIOETHICS OF FOOD. New Sage Press, 1997)).

While my theory that a melamine-like derivative insecticide like cryomazine could have been produced within the wheat plants as a result of genetic engineering may not hold up, and we are dealing instead with a simple chemical contamination, accidental or deliberate, one fact remains. Two independent laboratories found the chemical aminopterin in samples of the recalled pet food that they identified as a rat poison. And that it is, but rarely used, and costly. This chemical is used as a genetic/DNA marker, and is included in U S Patent 6130207, filed Nov 5, 1997 (Cell-specific molecule and method of importing DNA into a nucleus).

Although the U S has resisted the temptation of genetically engineering the staff of life—wheat, our daily bread, —China has forged ahead, in collaboration with the UK’s Rothamsted Agricultural Research Center to develop GM/transgenic varieties of wheat, as well as rice and other commodity crops.

So it is surely incumbent upon the FDA to determine if this imported wheat gluten from China was genetically engineered. It possibly was, since it was not bought for human consumption; maybe an experimental crop with anti -fungus blight and viral disease genetic insertions that could have gone haywire as a result of ‘overexpression.’ Other endogenous toxins not yet identified could well have resulted in so much sickness, suffering and death in companion animals across North America.

The ‘life science’ industry has convinced legislators that genetically engineered crops are safe, and ‘substantially equivalent’ to conventional varieties of food and animal feed crops. But the scientific evidence, and documented animal safety tests, point in the opposite direction. The US government even attempted to have genetically engineered seeds and foods included under the National Organic Standards.

While scientists and environmental health experts, along with the Sierra Club’s Laurel Hopwood, are pointing to agrichemicals and to the pollen of genetically engineered crops as being possibly responsible for the collapse of the honey bee population—that could mean an agricultural apocalypse, —veterinarians and toxicologists are unraveling the cause of the epidemic of food poisoning and untimely death of thousands of beloved cats and dogs across the nation. My theory awaits answer from the FDA, namely that the most probable cause was the source of the poison. It had been extracted from wheat genetically engineered to produce its own insecticidal chemical, or an as yet unidentified biopharmaceutical or other chemical that became concentrated in the gluten after it arrived in the US.

This latest pet food recall in North America should mobilize the public and their elected representatives to take control of how our food is produced, and where it comes from. Without labeling as to country of origin and method of production, with Organic Certification being the watermark, prepared human foods and manufactured pet foods (that should include no ingredients considered unsafe for human consumption) can no longer be considered safe and wholesome.

The FDA’s Dr. Stephen Sundlof, Director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine, (CVM) told a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on April 11 that the FDA had 16 reported deaths and some 9,000 complaints of adverse reactions. This figure of 16 deaths is curiously low since I have, as of April 19, 20 reported deaths—13 dogs and 7 cats— from readers of my syndicated newspaper column ‘Animal Doctor’ that is far from being in every city across the US. Now surely the FDA & CVM have better communication networks with consumers and veterinarians than I. And if not, then why not?

Or is the FDA down-playing the severity of this nation-wide pet food poisoning scandal? One major question has not yet been answered—why was the imported wheat gluten not intended for human consumption?

What is the pet food industry doing to compensate people for their veterinary expenses? Evidently nothing. They are just setting up yet another expert committee. Duane Ekedahl, head of the Pet Food Institute (PFI) that represents the pet food industry, told the senators at this hearing that the Institute had set up a National Pet Food Commission, as he held up a full page ad that the PFI had placed that day in major newspapers. He asserted that “Pet foods are perhaps the most regulated product on market shelves.”
When challenged by Sen. Richard Durbin, representatives for the PFI and the American Association of Feed Control Officials, whose AFCO labeling is standardized on most processed pet foods but can give no valid guarantees on quality or safety, became extremely defensive and contradicted themselves when it came to actual inspection and testing of ingredients. Dr. Sundlof cited a Federal inspection rate frequency of only 30% for the last 3 years for pet food processing facilities that was actually more than usual because of the mad cow disease issue.

This pet food recall is a wake-up call to every consumer as well as every pet owner. The FDA has questions to answer (go to www.fda.gov/cvm). Surely it is now incumbent upon the Pet Food Institute in Washington DC (www.petfoodinstitute.org) to coordinate with all the pet food manufacturers involved, and with agribusiness pet food subsidiaries for which it lobbies and represents, an emergency fund to compensate people for all veterinary expenses resulting from their animal companions becoming sick and even dying, and requiring life-long care as a consequence of this largest pet food recall in recent history.

Postscript.

There are many vested interests that would like to see this poisoned pet food pandemic forgotten because it exposes the unhealthful nature of industrial food production, processing and marketing that harm people and their animal companions, as well as wildlife and the increasingly dysfunctional natural environment. Mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, dioxins, and thousands of other industrial pollutants, and especially those highly toxic petrochemicals used ironically in the production and preservation of food—from fertilizers to herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, now contaminate our drinking water, our food, even the milk of human, polar bear, whale and elephant mothers: and lead to the untimely death, often after prolonged suffering, of our loved ones, including our animal companions. This need not be, but will continue so long as there is public apathy and indifference rather than outrage and political action.

ADDENDUM: As this saga is on-going, I must periodically update.

April 18, 2007, Wilbur Ellis Co. of San Francisco, that imported rice protein from China, is voluntarily recalling all lots distributed to date to pet food manufacturers, because of melamine contamination, and is urging all pet food manufacturers who have used this rice protein to recall any pet food that may be on supermarket shelves. Natural Balance was the first company to respond to this concern, recalling two of their dry foods for cats and dogs on April 18. This second recall epidemic spread as more pet food manufacturers like Blue Buffalo dry kitten food and several cat and dog dry foods manufactured by Royal Canin hastily recalled their products that contained contaminated rice protein/gluten.

Then corn gluten was found contaminated with melamine in S. Africa where Royal Canin withdrew its dog foods from the market.

A hog farm in California was under quarantine because, although the pigs were healthy, melamine was found in their urine. Their feed was suspect since Diamond Pet Food’s Lathrop CA facility that produces Natural Balance pet food had bought contaminated rice protein from China and had sold ‘salvage pet food’ to the farm for pig feed.

****According to an AP news release on April 20, the Chinese authorities had told the FDA that the wheat gluten was an industrial product not meant for pet food.****

This is the pivotal point. Was there any deliberate contamination by the Chinese, and if so, why? Melamine is more costly than gluten.

The FDA’s Dr. Sundlof stated at the onset of this debacle that melamine is used in the manufacture of plastics and may have been deliberately added as a cheap fake protein supplement to inflate the protein content. But gluten, be it of corn, wheat or rice origin, is used in the manufacture of new generation biodegradable plastic utensils, grocery bags etc.

This leaves me with the terrible thought that the multinational pet food industry, following the economistic mandate of lowest-cost feed formulation based on simplistic nitrogen/protein and other ingredient assays in their ‘scientific’ formulation of ‘balanced’ diets for pets, thought they could get a good deal by incorporating industrial grade product gluten in pet foods. But what they actually purchased on the world market was never intended for human or animal consumption, but for the manufacture of biodegradable food containers, utensils and plastic shopping bags. This is essentially what went into pet foods, causing untold numbers to suffer, and many to die. May be industrial grade soy with melamine, imported from China, is also in some manufactured pet foods, and these will be on recall next.

The high morbidity and mortality rate in dogs and cats associated with this largest pet food recall ever could well have been aggravated by other chemical contaminants in pet foods that can harm the kidneys, liver, digestive, endocrine, immune and other systems of our animal companions. And the industrial crops of corn, wheat and rice, and possibly soy, grown in China for biodegradable plastic manufacture, could well have been genetically engineered, raising additional health and environmental concerns. But the details of this may never be fully unraveled.
 

Dr. Fox writes the syndicated newspaper column Animal Doctor, with United Features, NY, and is author of the forthcoming two books on pet care, Dog Body, Dog Mind: Exploring Canine Consciousness and Well-Being, and Cat Body, Cat Mind: Exploring Feline Consciousness and Total Well-Being, published by The Lyons Press. His website is www.doctormwfox.org

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