By Judi McLeod
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
In the unsolved mystery of contaminated commercial pet food comes yet another riddle.
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating a Texas laboratory's finding of acetaminophen in dog and cat food, an agency spokesman said Monday." (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).
"We're very interested in being able to test these samples ourselves to determine the levels of those contaminants," said FDA spokesman Doug Arbesfeld. "What's significant is these things are there. They don't belong there."
Neither was melamine-laced gluten, Mr.Arbesfeld. Nor aminopterin. Neither was the corn-gluten contaminated with both melamine and cyuranic acid. That deadly combination was significant as lab doctors at Guelph determined it was the presence of both agents together which caused kidney crystals fatal to mammals.
Acetaminophen, a pain killer, is the fifth chemical to be found in commercial pet foods, the same ones sold in bright packaging that we see advertised in television commercials showing finicky cats and tail-wagging dogs coming on the run when they hear the sound of the food filling their bowls.
With vacillations as prolific as vaccinations at the FDA, pet owners are paying for their own lab tests and who can blame them?
The pain medication is the fifth contaminant found in pet foods during the past worrisome 2-? months and can be toxic or even lethal to pets, especially of the feline category. It is not known if any animals became sick with acetaminophen poisoning, or died from it.
"We were looking for cyanuric acid and melamine, and the acetaminophen just popped up," Donna Coneley, lab operations manager for ExperTox Inc. in Deer Park, Texas, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Monday. "It definitely was a surprise to find that in several samples."
But when China exports seafood raised in raw sewage destined for the human dinner table, can anything really be a surprise anymore?
The medication discovered in Texas was found most often with cyanuric acid, a chemical used in pool chlorination. Varying levels of melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, also were found among the hundreds of samples ExperTox tested.
The findings bring more worry for already anxious pet owners: The latest discovered contaminants were found in foods that are not among the more than 150 brands recalled since March 16. The highest level of acetaminophen was found in a dog food sample submitted by a manufacturer. Coneley declined to identify the company but said its officials were given the results "well over a month ago."
That company should have--but did not--notify the FDA, which first learned of the acetaminophen findings after pet owners posted lab reports on the Internet, Arbesfeld said.
What this translates to is that average pet owners and not the FDA are sounding the alarm to consumers at large.
"With any poison, it's the amount that matters," said Dr. Wilson Rumbeiha, a Michigan State University pathologist who is working with the FDA on the pet food contamination investigation. His lab has screened for acetaminophen but found none, he said.
However, a 20-pound dog would have to eat more than 6.5 pounds of food in 24 hours to be poisoned, unless it ate the same contaminated food daily, Rumbeiha said.
Pet owners often feed their animals their favourite brand. Why would anyone stop feeding a pet from the bag of food specifically purchased for the pet?
Meanwhile, a still-unmeasured amount of acetaminophen and cyanuric acid were found in cat food submitted by Don Earl, 52, of Port Townsend, Wash., whose 6-year-old cat, Chuckles, died in January.
He said he was suspicious of two flavors of Chuckles' Pet Pride food because his other two cats refused to eat it and because Chuckles, strictly an indoor girl, had been healthy.
The ongoing contaminated pet food scandal continues to erode public confidence.
Pet owners should form a collective and manufacture their own pet food. The new collective, of course would not do business with suppliers who import ingredients from China.
Ironically, the FDA likely would be more watchful of the Collective than they ever were of the pet food manufacturers that poisoned thousands of pets.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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