More Pet Food Recalled After Discovery
Posted on: Friday, 4 May 2007, 06:00 CDT
By Julie Schmit
The pet-food recall expanded after two companies discovered that contaminated raw ingredients may have spread to pet foods that weren't supposed to contain the ingredients at all.
The cross contamination most likely occurred at manufacturing plants, where the same equipment is used to make many varieties of pet foods, the companies said Thursday.
Menu Foods, which launched the recall seven weeks ago, has now recalled 131 dog and cat food brands, up from more than 90 originally. Menu's recall has expanded numerous times, and Thursday's boosts the volume less than 5%, it said.
SmartPak Canine, a pet-food maker based in Massachusetts, also said that one of its foods may have been contaminated at the Chenango Valley Pet Foods plant in New York. Like Menu, Chenango makes pet food for multiple companies.
More cases of cross contamination are possible because other pet-food manufacturing plants also received wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate from China that were later discovered to be contaminated with melamine and related compounds. Melamine, an industrial chemical not allowed in food, is suspected of interacting with related compounds in the products to cause kidney failure in dogs and cats that ate contaminated food.
Wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate were used to add protein and texture to the pet foods. The FDA has said it believes melamine was deliberately added to the ingredients in China to make the ingredients look more protein-rich than they actually were.
Menu was tipped off to the possibility of cross contamination by a consumer, who had non-recalled pet food tested for melamine and found it. SmartPak discovered the melamine when it tested its five dog food brands. Only one was positive, and that food, LiveSmart Adult Lamb & Brown Rice, was recalled, says CEO Paal Gisholt. He says a Chenango official told him Thursday that the food may have been contaminated because it was made after a product for a different customer that used the suspect rice protein concentrate.
Calls to Chenango were not immediately returned. Chenango last week recalled some pet foods made with rice protein concentrate before the melamine problem was found, including a different SmartPak product.
Menu's new recalls include products made at its New Jersey, Kansas and Ontario, Canada, plants.
Menu makes foods for dozens of companies. For similar products, say two with chicken, production lines sometimes are not fully rinsed between runs, says Menu spokesman Sam Bornstein.
That is typical industry practice, says Greg Aldrich, a consultant with Pet Food & Ingredient Technology. He says Menu and its customers decide how rigorously equipment should be washed between products. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Source: USA TODAY
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