...pet food recall. They found WHAT?

[kyrielle]

Thanks to geordie for linking to this story at cnn.com about the Menu Foods pet food recall.

They found a rat poison called aminopterin in the affected food. I don't know which makes me feel more sick - the fact that there was rat poison in the food, or the fact that by the time the recall was first announced, Menu Foods hadn't been able to identify the tainting. For all I know it would be hard to spot, but it SEEMS like you should be able to catch something like that, even if that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Either way, I'm horrified by the fact that it happened. Those poor animals.

Comments

[mandydax.livejournal.com]

It's not even rat poison, at least not in the US. It used to be a chemotherapy drug. It might have been used as a pesticide on wheat before it was imported, but I thought we had checks and standards for that. From what I read, the levels at 40 ppm in the food suggest that the wheat was intentionally tainted. It may go a lot further than we originally thought. I'm starting to wonder if someone (terrorist or home-grown nutjob) was trying to poison human food supplies (wheat gluten goes into a lot of what most Americans eat) and the stuff just happened to end up in pet food. It makes me thankful that we only feed dry food to our cats, but it does get my paranoia up. :(

[kyrielle]

It's rat poison abroad, yes, but still rat poison. Come down to that, warfarin, which is used as an anti-clotting agent to deal with deep vein thrombosis today, was also a rat poison. (It's a question of quantity to body weight.)

Apparently, the stuff that tainted the pet food was also used to encourage abortions at one time.

[katbyte.livejournal.com]

It sure makes you wonder how it got into the food in such quantities.

I am very thankful that we do not feed our dogs that type of wet food.

Whatever law suits happen, I hope the company learns a good lesson from this. I also hope whoever is responsible is found and punished.

[ladywraith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I followed the link from the article to Menu Foods' website, followed to the cat food list and thankfully, my cat food brand is NOT on that list. Phew. We only feed them dry food usually anyway, unless it's a special occasion (their b-day, Christmas, etc.). I don't believe we /currently/ have any wet food in the cupboards but I'll be checking when I go home.