Rat Poison in Pet Food: As Recall Expands, Experts Try to Understand the Contamination

By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Mar. 24–Rat poison has been found in the recalled pet food believed responsible for dog and cat deaths around the nation, but experts cautioned Friday that the contamination isn’t fully understood and could be more complex.

As multiple labs, including a toxicology facility at UC Davis, continued to probe the Menu Food products, the company widened its recall beyond the original dates, and anguished pet owners reeled from the latest news.

“Rat poison in dog food? To me that’s horrible,” said Harry Butler of Tahoe Park, who fears — but can’t be certain — that he gave his already ailing little black schnauzer some of the tainted food.

While no one knows the full scope of the problem, a Web site kept by Sacramento-based pet expert Gina Spadafori tallied 1,188 deaths by midday Friday, including two dozen in Sacramento and four in Roseville.

Spadafori stressed that the site, www.petconnection.com, hasn’t attempted to verify the reports from grieving owners, but did request data about their pets’ food and health care.

Around the country, “just the sheer numbers of vets reporting one or two in their clinics suggest thousands” of pets may have died, Spadafori said.

The Canadian-based Menu Foods has received more than 200,000 calls, company president Paul Henderson said.

Both Henderson and the FDA declined to speculate how the chemical aminopterin, uses of which have ranged from inducing abortions to treating cancer to killing rats, might have gotten into the food.

The company said it doesn’t suspect tampering, but declined to confirm reports that aminopterin could have contaminated wheat grown in China that made its way into Menu kitchens.

Menu does use wheat gluten imported from China, Henderson said, but the company wants to test other ingredients and perform more analyses.

That caution was echoed by Stephen Sundlof, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.

“While we are very interested in the discovery of this compound, we want to make sure that all possible causes have been ruled out before confirming any one particular cause,” Sundlof said.

Bill Kleyla, a south state pet owner whose vet sent food to the UC Davis lab after Kleyla’s cat died, said his vet told him multiple factors might ultimately be involved.

Tainted pet foods can be maddening, sometimes unsolvable puzzles, said Brigit Puschner, a UC Davis clinical veterinary toxicology professor who is among those examining Menu products implicated in the deaths.

“It is a real challenge,” Puschner said. “A lot of labs are working on this together.”

Meanwhile, amid reports that recalled products remain on some store shelves, Menu said it is asking stores and customers to return all cans and pouches of products implicated in the crisis instead of only those made between Dec. 3 and March 6. The recall involves cans and pouches of “cuts and gravy” style foods for cats and dogs, sold under about 90 labels.

Both the company and the FDA said they don’t believe dry food is involved.

The official death count, provided by Menu, has risen only slightly, to 15 cats and two dogs. Those who’ve tried to extrapolate deaths nationwide have leaned in part on FDA statements that 40 to 50 pets were fed affected food in palatability tests, and nine died — which would be roughly a 20 percent fatality rate.

However, an e-mail obtained by The Bee that has circulated on veterinary data sharing lists raises the prospect of potentially higher fatalities and broader kidney damage.

The e-mail, from Cornell University’s Animal Health Diagnostic Center, outlined that in one test of 20 cats, only four escaped apparently unscathed. A Cornell expert who reportedly visited the test site did not return phone calls from The Bee.

While the e-mail describes the same overall number of deaths as the FDA, it indicates that one test in which cats had access to the food the longest ended with a 35 percent death rate and kidney damage in another 45 percent.

As described in the e-mail, the 20 cats were given a choice of two foods, including a product not yet on the market, to see how well they liked each one. That test ran for four days, Feb. 27 to March 2. The first cat died March 2, the second March 5, and later five more died. Of the 13 survivors, tests showed nine had impaired kidney function.

A separate test of another 20 cats, this time given only the unmarketed food for just two days, ended with two deaths and one survivor with kidney damage.

In a later test of 10 dogs, the e-mail said, all ate the food the first day, but afterward most refused to eat it at all, and vomit was found in one kennel.

Household pets who ate suspect food and survived could have suffered life-shortening kidney damage, veterinarians say, and might need sophisticated kidney function tests and special diets.

“This could potentially be an issue for years and years for some of these animals that didn’t get sick,” said Jay Griffiths, who has six veterinary centers in the Sacramento area, including Sunset Animal Medical Center in Fair Oaks. “I’m very concerned that some of these pets are going to pop up with kidney failure down the road.”

His centers have done basic kidney function tests on about 100 animals in the past week, and found three he considers “highly suspicious.”

Griffiths expects that as more is learned, vets will be discussing whether more sensitive kidney screening should become an annual routine for exposed animals. That test costs around $30 to $60.

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.