Pet Food Recall

There’s been a big pet food recall in North America, some brands of which are sold in Taiwan:

Lists for dog and cat foods/recall info here:

menufoods.com/recall/

The recall is limited to “cuts and gravy” style pet food in cans and pouches…

The food is suspected to cause renal problems.

[color=green]Menu Foods makes food for other companies, so check your labels. All of the food affected by this particular event was produced at certain factory. It’s canned food or food that comes in the little foil pouches. I have several different brands and found that all of them are produced in Thailand. Of course, it’s always good to keep track of news. A few years ago, we had a problem in Taiwan with dry dog and cat food produced in Thailand. Check all your labels, regardless of brand or price. [/color]

What’s really in pet foods

Some very interesting reading for those of you feeding highly processed food unfit for human consumption cleverly marketed as convenience food for pets. :wink:

This part of the tale is sickening
Tainted pet food poisoned 1 in 6 animals in test: FDA

[quote]As many as one in six animals died in tests of Ontario-based Menu brand pet foods suspected of poisoning pets in the United States, a U.S. government official has said.
Menu Foods has now issued a North America-wide recall of 91 different kinds of dog and cat food, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration received complaints the food was causing kidney failure in animals.
The investigation is focusing on wheat gluten used at two U.S. plants as the likely source of contamination.
The FDA first learned of a potential problem after receiving complaints on Feb. 20 and followed up by feeding the “cuts and gravy” product to 40 to 50 cats. Of those, seven animals died, said Stephen Sundlof, the FDA’s top veterinarian. He added the contamination appeared more deadly to cats than to dogs.[/quote] It’s like “let’s test if this stuff kills cats by feeding it to cats.” Despicable.

Pet food companies do not care about our four-legged friends; they care about profit.

I haven’t fed processed commercial convenience food to my cat and dogs since 2002, and I never will again. Garbage in a bag/tin - that’s all it is. ‘Take the food unfit for humans, process it to high hell so we can store it on shelves longer, even though it kills many of the nutrients, and then sell it as pet food! We’ll make a killing!’

Despicable.

Interesting update:

slate.com/id/2163235?GT1=9330
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070403/hl_nm/petfood_dc_3
bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= … M&refer=us

“The import alert was issued March 30 to detain shipments from Xuzhou Anying without physical examination, the FDA said. The company’s wheat gluten was found to contain melamine, a substance used to make plastic kitchen utensils and fertilizers”

Food for thought: iht.com/articles/2007/04/03/ … s/pets.php

For a “safe” list: thepetfoodlist.com/

For options:

"On Amazon.com, the cookbook “Real Food for Dogs” moved into the list of top 200 best-sellers this week. Other authors were finding instant success, too.

Dr. Donald Strombeck said the Amazon.com sales rank for his book “Home-Prepared Dog & Cat Diets: The Healthful Alternative” jumped from below 60,000 to about 1,000 after the recalls.

The retired professor of veterinary nutrition at the University of California, Davis, challenged the common assertion that owners should not feed their pets table food.

When he began practicing veterinary medicine in the 1950s, he said, most pet owners fed their pets scraps from the table, keeping the risk of contamination low.

“The pet food industry doesn’t want people competing with them,” Strombeck said. “An animal can basically eat the same things we eat. They’re not going to develop a deficiency.”

Robert Van Sickle, co-owner of the Polka Dog Bakery in Boston, said he has received many inquiries from customers on advice for making their own dog food. For his German short-haired pointer, Van Sickle blends carrots, spinach, salmon oil, apple cider vinegar and whatever meat is in his freezer.

“What this scare has shown me is that it’s amazing how many people don’t know what they are feeding their dogs,” he said. “The bright side, for me, as someone interested in animal wellness, is people are asking questions now.”

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070404/ap_ … pet_food_5

I am currently using a brand of cat dry food made in Canada, but I wonder about its suppliers. How about Taiwan and Thailand?

There really is no need to feed your pet commercial, highly processed waste unfit for human consumption, other than for convenience - though how convenient is it to watch your beloved fur friend dying of kidney failure or having to endure dental work or the pain of having anal glands expressed, or to have to bathe the animal more often? And how inconvenient is it to buy meaty bones every three days and the supplements once a month?

Last night I watched a young lady crying her eyes out and pleading with our vet to do something for her much-loved dog who has renal failure from consuming processed commercial pet foods. Poor girl; poor dog.

Commercial pet food is made for profit, not for the benefit of your pet. The oldest dogs in the world thrive/d on randomly fed table scraps and raw meaty bones from the butcher. ‘Scientific’ diets (if you believe that crap) cannot compete. Our pets die younger now and we accept it (my mum’s cat when she was young dies at 22 and never saw a vet, and lived on scraps; the two cats she had when she was older were fed ‘the best food money could buy’ (if you believe the marketing) and both died with multiple problems, from loss of teeth, renal failure, liver problems and even cancer … at the young age of 17.

We really must wake up to this: fresh food minimally processed is the healthiest way to go - for our pets and ourselves - and the one guaranteed to promote longevity. Just ask the Japanese.