04/17/2007: "Recall update"

Hey Everybody!

Sawyer here, on the prowl. Wanted to update you cool cats (and OK dogs) about this whole food recall thing. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little frustrated with it all. When we last chatted, I told you that a rat poison, aminopterin, was the cause of the problems. Well, unfortunately only one laboratory was able to find this compound in the food. So now the “experts” are saying that the problem is a contaminant of the wheat gluten called melamine. Melamine is a chemical used to make some plastics and fertilizers. What’s confusing about this is that melamine is not really toxic to cats; it doesn’t cause the kidney failure that’s been seen in affected pets. We don’t know if the melamine is causing the problem, or if it is a marker of the contaminated food and something else in it is causing the problem.

You may have heard that some additional foods have been added to the recall list, including some dog and cat treats, Alpo prime cuts in gravy canned food, and one of the prescription diets, Hill’s feline m/d dry. Another prescription formula made by Royal Canin was recently added to the recall, but this particular food was only sold in Canada. Websites with complete lists of the recalled foods are www.menufoods.com and www.fda.gov. If you have trouble finding a food in question, give us a call and we’ll be glad to help you.

So as you can see, we have a lot more questions than answers right now. So far, the doctors tell me my food is OK. A survey on VIN (a veterinary information source) has shown that veterinarians have seen over 1000 cases of animals with acute renal (kidney) failure. Most of these cases responded to treatment. The majority of affected animals have been cats.

The most common question we’ve been hearing from people here is “what do I feed my pet?”. Because we still don’t know exactly what caused this, we cannot tell you that a food is perfectly safe. For now, you may want to avoid foods with wheat gluten in them. Some people want to cook for their pets. This can cause problems if the food is not balanced (dogs and especially cats have special vitamin and mineral needs). If you want to make a balanced home-made diet for your dog or cat, the website www.balanceit.com can help you. If you enter the promotional code “VIN” you can download a free recipe. We don’t recommend this for long-term feeding, but this may help you with peace of mind until we get more answers.

All this talk of food has made me hungry. I think I hear an unattended food bowl calling me, so I’ll have to be going. Safe eating!

Sawyer