Vets have only been able to confirm fraction of claims!
According to a Rueters article last week, U.S. health officials received thousands of complaints earlier this year about pets killed by contaminated pet food, but veterinarians said they had been able to confirm just 224 deaths.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it received 17,000 complaints of related pet deaths, although it had confirmed just 16.
A survey posted on the Internet, and widely publicized by the American Veterinary Medical Association, attracted just 500 responses and of those, only 348 cases of pet sickness met the criteria for kidney failure caused by the contamination, the team at Michigan State University found.
“It is easy to think that every death or every sickness is occurring because of the pet food problem,” Wilson Rumbeiha, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
But when strict criteria were applied, it appears that far fewer deaths could be blamed on the pet food.
The deaths from contaminated pet food may have been caused by mixing two compounds —
melamine and cyanuric acid, Rumbeiha said.
“Separately, those two compounds are pretty harmless,” Rumbeiha said.
“But when combined, they form crystals which can block the kidneys. And, unfortunately, these crystals don’t dissolve easily. They go away slowly, if at all, so there is the potential for chronic toxicity.”
Rumbeiha and colleagues designed a questionnaire to determine how many animals had become ill or died from eating bad food. They found 348 cases that met the criteria for what he called kidney disease caused by the compounds — 235 cats and 112 dogs.
Almost all the cases were in the United States, with the other 2 percent from Canada.
The first analysis covers responses received through June — more vets submitted cases through October, and Rumbeiha said his team is now analyzing those. He said vets in all 50 U.S. states and from across Canada had filled out the survey.
“The good news is we are not seeing any new cases,” Rumbeiha said.
5 comments:
My two cents - At least there are no new cases is the best part of this article. The fact that the protests and voices of the pet community has helped stop this from happening again is great news. Hopefully the government will find ways to force the pet food manufacturers to be upfront, honest and responsible when it comes to making the food.
I think the trust we put in the food manufacturers is gone. And that is a good thing if we demand more accountability and information on what we are buying.
I will never go back to kibble. The betrayal was too deep. The lives and well-being of my pets are too important to me to risk giving them crap. No matter what the pet food manufacturers say, there will be more incidents because, HELLO, the almighty dollar is what is important and cheap ingredients mean more profit.
I know what you mean about the betrayal. I'm in the same boat. I could never buy those so-called premium brands again after it came to light that they are using a lot of the same ingredients as the commercial (less expensive) brands.
I want have to know more and more, on your blog just interesting and useful information.
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