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Author Topic: IMPORTANT: U.S. Pet food recall due to toxin and kidney failure in pets  (Read 10656 times)

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linnea

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If you live in the United States, please check the food that you are feeding your pets.
The company's website is here, and it lists the brands that are recalled under "Cat food" and "Dog food" http://www.menufoods.com/recall/
Recalled Cat and Dog Product Information        1-866-895-2708

UNION, N.J. - Pet owners were worried this weekend that the kibble in their cupboard may be deadly after the recall of millions of containers of dog and cat food sold at major retailers across North America.

Menu Foods, the Ontario-based company that produced the pet food, said Saturday it was recalling dog food sold under 46 brands and cat food sold under 37 brands including Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba. The food was distributed throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico by major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger and Safeway.

An unknown number of cats and dogs had suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, the company said.

Many stores that sold the affected brands frantically pulled packages off shelves.

At a Petsmart store in Union, Silviene Grzybowski became worried when the four types of Iams products she buys for her cat, Smokey, had vanished from shelves. The cat was very sick and had not been eating for days, she said.

"The vet told us to buy her her favorite food, but I'm going to call the vet right now," Grzybowski said, looking at an announcement Petsmart had taped to shelves announcing the recall.

A complete list of the recalled products along with product codes, descriptions and production dates was available from the Menu Foods Web site — http://www.menufoods.com/recall — and consumers also could call (866) 463-6738.

Menu Foods' chief executive and president Paul Henderson told the Associated Press on Friday that the company was still trying to figure out what happened.

He said that the company had received an undisclosed number of owner complaints that dogs and cats were vomiting and suffering kidney failure after eating its products.

The recall covers the company's "cuts and gravy" style food, which consists of chunks of meat in gravy, sold in cans and small foil pouches from Dec. 3 to March 6.

In Omaha, Neb., Susan Balvanz said she sometimes feeds her five cats packets of sliced meat and gravy sold by Nutro Products, one of the brands affected.

"I've done so much research on pet food. It didn't surprise me but it scared me all the same," said Balvanz.

She said her 9-year-old cat, Boots, was especially fond of the food but seemed to have lost its appetite in the last few days.

At the Missouri Valley Veterinary Clinic in Bismarck, N.D., veterinarian Jacob Carlson has been referring worried pet owners to the Menu Foods web site.

"We've had a lot of calls," Carlson said, although none of his patients were sick.

The company said it makes pet food for 17 of the top 20 North American retailers. It is also a contract manufacturer for the top branded pet food companies, including Procter & Gamble Co.



You can read the company's press release here: http://www.menufoods.com/recall/Press_Recall_03162007.pdf
« Last Edit: March 19, 2007, 02:05:05 am by linnea »
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theinevitable

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Re: IMPORTANT: Pet food recall due to toxin and kidney failure in pets
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2007, 01:58:38 am »

so, this only effects "wet" foods, correct?
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linnea

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I totally freaked out and picked up all the food dishes and hid them in a cupboard.

I don't know. Of the brands that are affected, I feed my dudes Iams dry food and I just bought some Priority wet food last week. However, according to the website neither of my products are affected. I put the food dishes back down, but I am really shaken. I mean, I know that pet food is made from "slaughterhouse by-products" but I guess I always assumed that it was safe to feed them pet food. What did people feed their animals before pet food? Like, table scraps or something?

Anyway, even though the codes that I have on the Priority food isn't marked as "affected", I'm going to throw it away. I put their dishes of dry Iams back down at their food stations. Scary. Yargh.
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wombat

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They say it's only one kind of wet food but if I had any product from any of those brands in my house they'd go straight in the trash.

What freaks me out about this is seeing how many brands are really made by the same company - so that any mistake they make is so widepsread. Like when there was that hamburger recall and they described how hamburger is made at these big plants so that any one burger might have bits of hundreds of cows in it or something.

I think I will be sticking to my little boutique brand of natural dog food. I felt kind of silly about it, but now I am hoping that at least at a small company someone is paying attention to what's going in the food.
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linnea

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I wish that they sold boutique pet food up here. :( Mega sadface. Like I needed one more thing to worry about.
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AugustWest

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All our animals only eat dry, so it's not an issue.  But I was struck by the same thing as Wombat.  Looks like one company makes every single generic, store or private label brand out there.  And they're not using hosss anymore either.
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So out of the millions of dogs who ate this food 10 got sick and no one can find anything actually wrong with the food? Uh what?
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AugustWest

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So out of the millions of dogs who ate this food 10 got sick and no one can find anything actually wrong with the food? Uh what?
 

Excellent point.  This could easily be a statistical anomaly, or swamp gas, or something.  The manufacturer does seem to have a guilty conscience, but that could just be an abundance of caution.
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linnea

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No, hundreds have gotten sick and at least ten have died so far. The point is that this is a brand new development, people still don't know the extent of the damage. It's distressing because the food supply is supposed to be SAFE - including pet food.

They're still running tests to find the culprit.

I got some Priority tinned food for the boys last week, and even though it's not on the list of recalled products, I got my receipt and it's going STRAIGHT BACK TO THE STORE.
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AugustWest

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Hate to admit it, by A-CAP may be convincing me here.  Let's say we can document that 1000 dogs got sick during the last week.  1000 out of 1,000,000 = 1/10 of 1 percent.  How many dogs out of 1,000,000 get sick in a week?  How many out of 1,000,000 die?  How have they connected these illnesses/deaths to this particular food?  Since it appears that the company is a huge producer of food, probably way more than 1,000,000 dogs/cats have eaten their food in this time period -- exactly how many pets ate the food?  It could easily be 10,000,000 or even 100,000,000.   If so, 1000 sickened animals becomes an even tinier percentage.

I'm not trying to be hard hearted here in the least.  But I don't want to jump to conclusions either.  It could be something entirely different that killed those animals.  If we jump to conclusions, we could ignore the actual cause of the problem.  Have we ever heard exactly what it is in the food that's supposed to be harmful?  I haven't.  How did they determine that the food is what killed the animals?
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AugustWest

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Re: IMPORTANT: U.S. Pet food recall due to toxin and kidney failure in pets
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2007, 05:03:10 am »

On the other hand, if any of the listed food was in my house, my animals would not be eating it.
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Re: IMPORTANT: U.S. Pet food recall due to toxin and kidney failure in pets
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2007, 05:16:26 am »

I on the other hand will be buying it at firesale prices and stocking it to feed my cats and my aunt's dog. No joke.
I read the AP feed and at least 5 other stories on the google news feed and couldn't find any evidence of how this is all connected. My cats  drink water from the toilet bowl and eat vomit among other things. I am completely confident that they will die from something other than suspicious wheat gluten in their cat food from a brand they've been eating all their lives.
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theinevitable

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Re: IMPORTANT: U.S. Pet food recall due to toxin and kidney failure in pets
« Reply #12 on: March 19, 2007, 05:50:07 am »

ChucklebotA-CAP's working some rough chuckles these days.
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linnea

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Re: IMPORTANT: U.S. Pet food recall due to toxin and kidney failure in pets
« Reply #13 on: March 19, 2007, 05:52:49 am »

Hate to admit it, by A-CAP may be convincing me here.

How many people DIED from the infected Spinach? Or the salmonella tainted peanut butter? or the unpasteurized Odwalla juice?

The point is that there are supposed to be safety mechanisms in place to protect consumers.
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Re: IMPORTANT: U.S. Pet food recall due to toxin and kidney failure in pets
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2007, 05:57:43 am »

I'm with L-Money on this one.

No way I'd introduce even the slightest extra risk to my pets just for the sake of proving a point.

I am not in the business of Proving Points, especially when it comes to the lives of my friends.

I don't have any pets out here, because the complex doesn't allow it, but my pets were my BUDDIES, man. Lily, Somebody nice, Spot, Poppy, Suzie, Bill... I would have sooner slightly risked poisoning people I knew in high school than my pets.

My pets were my buddies. You don't prove points with your buddies.
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