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Questions still dog tainted pet food crisis

By STEVE DALE Special to the Times
Published May 24, 2007

Overnight, commercial pet foods turned from safe to suspect. But how safe have pet foods been all along, or at least since certain harmful ingredients have been imported from China?

Beginning in March, Menu Foods announced the recall of nearly 100 brands of pet food. Since then, about twice that many brands have been recalled by Menu Foods and other manufacturers.

Scientists believe that melamine used in fertilizer in Asia imported from China, combined with such elements as cyanuric acid (used in swimming pool chlorination), was used as "filler" in wheat gluten or rice protein in the tainted food.

According to Dr. Richard Goldstein, internal medicine specialist and assistant professor of Small Animal Medicine at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, this combination caused the unique crystals that formed in the urine of many pets who ate the tainted food, causing acute kidney failure.

At a recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration press conference, David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection for the FDA, said that melamine appeared in pet food samples as far back as early 2006. Before that, he said, no one knows, or will likely ever know, if it was present in pet foods.

So, is it possible that our pets' health was compromised for some time before the initial recall?

"We can't exclude that it (melamine) didn't make pets sick, " said Acheson. "All we can say is that it didn't make them as sick as in 2006 because it didn't come to anybody's attention. But we cannot rule out that it didn't make pets sick."

Dr. Kathy Michel, veterinary nutritionist and associate professor of nutrition at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, says that discussing melamine's impact before the initial recall is speculation. We don't know how much melamine was in pet food, if any, prior to 2006.

Although melamine in wheat gluten, wheat flour, or rice protein mimics protein when measured, it has no nutritional value. So, since melamine replaced at least some real protein source in the tainted food, could some pets have developed nutritional deficiencies from eating tainted food over time?

Angelle Thompson, a pet food nutritionist and chair of the national pet food commission created by the Pet Food Institute, says that "Pet food companies always exceed minimum requirements. So, while this nonprotein source is not a good thing, it's unlikely to have caused a nutritional deficiency."

Steve Dale welcomes questions/comments from readers. He will answer those of general interest in his column. Write to Steve at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207. Send e-mail to petworld@aol.com.

[Last modified May 23, 2007, 20:08:04]