The PET FOOD RECALL began because pets were sick and many had died.  The offical explanation was that pet food was contaminated with melamine and cyanuric acid.

This official explanation wanted us to believe that if melamine and cyanuric acid could be eliminated from pet food, the pet food supply would be "safe".

However, questions continue to be raised concerning the safety of US pet food.  Pet owners have submitted foods samples to testing labs, and lab reports indicate the presence of cyanuric acid, acetaminophen, and/or melamine.

See the results of food testing at Pet Food Products Safety Alliance:
http://www.pfpsa.org/news.html

Darling National, LLC, a rendering company in Wichita, Kansas, completed the recall of 682,600 lbs of dry rendered tankage due to melamine contamination.  Dry rendered tankage (also known as "crax") can be used as a filler in low cost pet food. 

Although some US pet food companies are now testing for melamine, the threat is not over.  Pet owners are concerned about the LONG TERM effects of feeding food that may be contaminated with low level toxins, and food that may have poor nutritional value. 

Consequently, pet owners are developing new diet strategies and making new food choices.  Real Food, either raw or home cooked, is now on the menu for many pets.   

Is the pet food supply contaminated with low levels of toxins?  Are nutrients in pet food inadequate?

WHAT'S KILLING OUR PETS? 

What do you think?


---------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Laboratories Identify Toxin [Aminopterin] in Recalled Pet Food
http://www.agmkt.state.ny.us/AD/release.asp?ReleaseID=1598

FDA report shows how company [Diamond] missed toxin that killed dogs
http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/mar06/060315b.asp

The 2006 Aflatoxin Recall
Dogs keep dying: Too many owners remain unaware of toxic dog food
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan06/dogs.dying.ssl.html

US House Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F3sXXwSVWE&mode=related&search=

Harvard Law School Student, Re:  Pet Food Industry
http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/784/Patrick06.html

Chronic Heavy Metal Poisoning - Silent Killer in Pets, Dr. Gloria Todd
http://www.byregion.net/articles-healers/HeavyMetal_Pets.html

The Dog Food Project's Ingredients to Avoid
http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=badingredients

Animal Protection Institute:  Get the Facts:  What's Really in Pet Food
http://www.api4animals.org/facts.php?p=359&more=1

May 10, 2007:  USA Today:  Pet food probe: Who was watching suppliers?   
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/2007-05-10-pet-food-cover-usat_N.htm

March 17, 2008:  A year after pet food recall, still buyer beware
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23505218/

May 13, 2008:  Another website dedicated to victims:
http://www.petfoodnightmares.com/

August 19, 2008:  See Food Testing Results at Pet Food Products Safety Alliance
http://www.pfpsa.org/news.html

August 20, 2008:  Dr. Michael W. Fox:  Why Most Manufacturered Pet Foods Should Not Be Fed to Dogs & Cats
http://tedeboy.tripod.com/drmichaelwfox/id81.html

Offy,

You're right.  Even if any toxins are removed, and what remains has poor nutritive value, pets still don't get what they need for good health.   

Over the long run, poor nutrition can kill 'em too.

5CatMom

I agree. I think there are toxins,drugs,etc in all food & supplements & vitamins.Human & pet. Probably the more processed a food is,the more nutrients it loses. It's a pain & time consuming to try to make everything from scratch but worth it health wise.I figure if most of what we eat is safe; a few takeout meals won't kill us. It also seems like every lab that succeeds in lowering test parameters & finding toxins immediately gets slammed by the PFI or FDA. Funny that the state & fed gov't's[USA & Canada] still use them. My neighbor buys lg bottles of water for her dispenser & her cat & dog all of a sudden won't drink it. She clorinated the dispenser, changed the bottle & their water bowl & the placemat its on. Still no.Makes you wonder what they smell or taste in it that she & her husband can't.

And why did the pet food recall happen in the USA?

Don't people in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and many other countries feed their pets? 

What's different here?

5CatMom

By definition the FDA/USDA ALLOW levels of all kinds of things in food, human, pet whatever.

So to answer your question, YES, there are levels of all kinds of toxins THAT ARE ALLOWED. Not counting the toxins that shouldn't be there.

You started this topic with a very interesting premise, that 'if melamine and ca are removed then the food should be safe'

Do you think that was the intent of the FDA in the beginning?

Are they focusing on these relatively harmless compounds to draw us away from the real danger?

hmmmmmmm

db

I think the human and pet food chain is contaminated, full of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, preservatives and other pollutants. I think that we have depleted the soil so that foods today don't have nearly the nutritional value that they had fifty years ago. I think corporate North America has bought into genetic engineering, monocultures and factory farming and further introduced allergens, chemicals, and unknowns. As consumers, our greed has encouraged greedy corporations to sell us lower quality and cut corners. We've largely lost sight of earth's bounty, except maybe at Thanksgiving.

I look at what an average North American family has in their shopping cart, and so much of it is over-processed, shipped from halfway around the world, and has sat on a supermarket shelf for ages.

Now add to that the fact that pet food is made from what isn't good enough for humans. Garbage, additives, preservatives, with nutrients baked out, and extruded into homogeneous pellets that bear no relation to anything except maybe the processed garbage that humans eat.

Why is it different in (parts of) Europe? Perhaps a love and respect for food that is lacking in North America, where we feed our faces without tasting what we're eating? Perhaps higher food standards? Perhaps a resistance to what we do here?

Oh, Great Britain excepted (I'm from there) where food can be as appalling as it is here.

THe melamine didn't go away . The FDA/USDA and rest of the government just changed their regulations on it. Remember they fed it to hogs and chickens and  said they were safe for humans?

YL

I am going to venture into what I hope does not become a firefight.

The fda didn't change regulations, they stated risk factors.

Risk assessment, whether we like it or not, is a very real way things are done, in our modern society.

Borrowing from shiba's post, we have become greedy, and the corps are even greedier.

Dilution factors are real, so is risk assessment. That is just how it is done.

by definition many things that we wouldn't eat normally are ALLOWED in food from the fda/usda, eg

insect parts, rodent hairs, low level toxins. WHY because that is how things are processed today. IN mass quantities, so if a rat runs by the processing mill and a few hairs get tossed into a 10,000 gal vat, that is acceptable by the fda/usad standards, What they are saying to us is, basically get over it, there is no way to make food CHEAP and CLEAN. You can have expensive food that is clean but not cheap food.

another example, years ago when I worked in Chicago, grain trucks would come into huge processing mills, the truck would back up to a lift and the whole truck would be raised in the air about 45 degrees and the grains would fall into the hopper, this hopper is open and the workmen standing there are smoking, they toss their cigarette butts in the hopper, no one cares, one cigarette butt, in 50,000lbs of grain, ACCEPTABLE.

Until we the people of North America, notice not just the US, decide that what is important to us is healthy clean food, it isn't going to change, of course it will cost substantially more but that is going to be our choice.

Back to shiba's post, I really think the vast majority of gmo is there BECAUSE the food has no nutrition anymore. I believe the corps have engineered the food to make up for the very low nutrition levels. When they say the bread has this much protein it has to come from somewhere.

So before we stab the big corps in the back for poisoning us, maybe we should look in the mirror and ask, am I a part of this.

Like mentioned above, what do you see at the supermarket, people buying crap because it is cheap. Eating healthy is expensive, eating crap isn't.

the mentality of the public needs to change from buying the latest of everything out there, wide screen tv, ipod, iphone, etc  to getting safe food for us and our pets.

Until the PUBLIC decides it wants good clean food the corps will not follow.

db