The Sunshine Mills Co. announced today that it's recalling some of its dog biscuits after learning the products were made with tainted wheat gluten imported from China.
The company said the dog biscuits involved in the recall were made at its Red Bay, Alabama, plant during part of March, 2007, and include such brands as Nurture Chicken & Rice, Pet Life Large, Lassie Lamb and Rice, and Pet Life People Pleasers Dog Treats.
The Red Bay, Alabama, company used wheat gluten that may contain melamine, the toxin blamed for a fast-growing number of animal deaths throughout North America.
"We still have a lot of work in understanding why melamine is involved," said Stephen Sundlof, the director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, at a news conference.
The company said no illnesses or deaths have been reported -- to date -- in connection with these dog biscuits. It also said none of its small and medium sized biscuits -- or its dry dog and cat food and soft and chewy treats for dogs and cats -- are involved in the recall. A complete list of the recalled products is available on the company's Web site: www.sunshinemills.com. Pet owners can also call the company at 1-800-705-2111.
In related news today, Menu Foods announced it's extending its original recall of 95 brands of "cuts and gravy" style cat and dog food to include a broader range of dates.
The company said it's expanding its recall to include all products manufactured with wheat gluten -- that was purchased from ChemNutra Inc. -- from November 8, 2006 to March 6, 2007.
Menu Food's earlier recall included products manufactured during a three month window-from December 3, 2006 through March 6, 2007.
Dry Food Implicated
Meanwhile, consumers who fed their dogs dry food say their pets are now becoming sick or drying. And their dogs' symptoms, they say, mirror those in pets who have eaten one of the recalled wet foods.
There are no dry dog foods on the recall list.
Hills Pet Nutrition recalled some of its dry cat food -- Prescription Diet m/d Feline Dry Food -- because the company that supplied its wheat gluten also supplied that same melamine-tainted product to Menu Foods.
But in the past few days, ConsumerAffairs.com has heard from pet owners across the country who say their dogs become seriously ill or died after eating dry food.
They're pet owners like John P. of San Diego, California, who fed his dog Nutro Max dry food.
"My Dobie died today," he told ConsumerAffairs.com on Monday. "And my Beagle has been throwing up. This problem (of tainted pet food) is larger than anyone is admitting yet. Please feed your pets human food until this is corrected."
 |
Ayden |
"He became very lethargic, was drinking a lot of water, and breathing heavy," she says of her dog, Ayden. "Then his belly began to swell ... it was really huge."
Cindy's veterinarian originally suspected heartworms because Ayden's belly was so distended. But those tests came back negative.
The vet then put Ayden on a diuretic and told her to bring him back in five days.
"During this same time, I took Ayden off the Nutro Max and started feeding him chicken and rice," Cindy says, adding her dog had eaten Nutro Max for about a year and hadn't had any problems. "When I took him back to the vet a second time, I had enough money for more tests. Those tests showed Ayden's creatine levels were high, so the vet said to take him off the diuretic."
Cindy says this occurred in February -- weeks before Menu Food announced its massive recall of 60 million containers of pet food.
That's why she didn't think twice about giving Ayden the Nutro Max dry food again.
"But his belly immediately began to swell up again," she says. "That same week, the news came out about the tainted pet food and I saw that Nutro Max was on the list. It was the wet food, but I thought I'm not taking a chance, and I took him off the dry food."
How's Ayden doing now?
"He's fantastic," she says, adding she now feeds him a brand of dog food that doesn't contain corn or wheat gluten. "Since I stopped feeding him the Nutro Max, his belly is back to normal, his breathing is fine, and he has his energy back. We took our first walk together this past weekend."
Cindy says she contacted ConsumerAffairs.com to warn other pet owners about potential problems with dry dog food.
"I'm convinced that the dry food was also contaminated with poison," she says. "It just seems so odd to me that when I started giving him the Nutro Max dry food again -- before I knew about the recall -- that he started getting bloated again.
"I don't want to start a scare. I just felt a responsibility to share my experience with others."
On its Web site, Nutro Products' President and CEO Dave Kravis states: "There are NO Nutro dry pet foods included in this recall, our dry pet foods contain NO wheat gluten and NONE of our dry pet foods are manufactured by Menu Foods."
He adds: "Nutro is preparing to implement additional guidelines that will ensure that the quality control measures used by our co-manufacturers and their suppliers are strengthened so that this deeply troubling situation never happens again."
Two California pet owners also contacted ConsumerAffairs.com this week with concerns about other brands of dry dog food. One of those pet owners says she had to put her dog to sleep because he became so sick after eating Iams dry food.
"My dog was 15, but very active and spunky," says Angela of Alamo, California. "He was fed Iams dry dog food and became very ill, very quickly ... he was lethargic, lost weight rapidly, was vomiting, urinating in the house, and could not walk."
Angela says her dog went into acute renal failure and she had to make the difficult decision to put him to sleep.
"It was horrible. I am still so upset and confused and saddened by his loss. I don't understand what happened. He survived a fall off of a 15' ledge, a hernia, and other things and was still spry and happy. "This renal failure took him by surprise and was so devastating," she adds. "He could not even lift his head when he was being taken to the vet."
Another pet owner, Joanne M. of Desert Hot Springs, California, says her dog became sick after eating another brand of dry dog food -- Stater Brothers.
"My mini-doxie can't keep his hind legs under him anymore and he is lethargic," she says. "My toy rat terrier threw up all the time and suffered from bloating.
"I believe Stater Brothers dry pet food reduced calorie for adult dogs should be tested," she says. "Someone needs to test the dry food."
ChemNutra
The FDA says that it has traced all of the foods containing melamine to wheat gluten imported from China by ChemNutra Inc. of Las Vegas. ChemNutra has recalled all the wheat gluten it received from the Chinese company that supplied the tainted product.
ChemNutra said it took the action after the Food and Drug Administration discovered the chemical melamine in samples of the wheat gluten it imported from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd. of China.
ChemNutra said it shipped 792 metric tons of the contaminated wheat gluten from its Kansas City warehouse to three pet food manufacturers -- and one distributor. Those shipments started on November 9, 2006 and ended March 8, 2007.
Sundlof said melamine is a "relatively non-toxic: substance and suggested it may be linked to another substance that has not yet been identified.
No Human Food
ChemNutra said it did not ship any of the melamine-tainted wheat gluten to facilities that make human food. It also said the distributor that received the contaminated wheat gluten only supplies products to the pet food industry.
ChemNutra said in a press release that one of its pet food manufacturers -- which it did not name -- notified the company on March 8, 2007, that the wheat gluten it sold them -- from Xuzhou Anying -- was one of the ingredients linked to the deaths and illnesses of cats and dogs across the county.
The company said it immediately quarantined its entire wheat gluten inventory.
The FDA did not find any other contaminants in the wheat gluten it imported from Xuzhou Anying, the company said. It also said the FDA did not find any impurities in the wheat gluten the company imported from two other Chinese suppliers.
The recalled wheat gluten came from China in 25 kg. paper bags and each shipment had the certificate of analysis information from the supplier, including batch number and the supplier's content analysis and test results.
"ChemNutra is extremely concerned about the purity of all of its products," the company said in its press release. "The company is particularly troubled that the certificates of analysis provided by the above-named supplier did not report the presence of melamine."
Vitamin D
The animal rights group People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) yesterday suggested that excessive amounts of vitamin D in pet food might be the cause of the growing number of kidney problems and deaths in cats and dogs across the country.
PETA also called for the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration to immediately resign for his "complete failure" in handling the Menu Foods recall of 60 million containers of wet dog and cat food.
PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich -- citing laboratory evidence -- today urged the FDA to refocus its investigation beyond wheat gluten and consider other possible contaminants in the pet food.
In his letter to Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinarian Medicine, Friedrich said: "Wheat gluten is used almost exclusively in wet foods. However, the mounting number of complaints of illness and death in cats and dogs who had eaten only dry food strongly suggests that there is a second source of the poisoning, another toxic ingredient.
"Evidence from reputable laboratories indicates that an as yet unnamed ingredient may be to blame, perhaps a form of vitamin D."
Friedrich cited the following examples to illustrate his contention:
• A manufacturing error last year in the production of Royal Canin pet food resulted in excessive amounts of vitamin D3 in the food. This caused hypercalcemia, an abnormally high level of calcium in the blood that caused animals' kidneys to malfunction;
• Research in endocrinology at Cleveland Clinic has confirmed that high levels of vitamin D3 in animals' blood causes kidney malfunction;
• Symptoms associated with excessive vitamin D3 appear identical to the symptoms now being reported in dogs and cats. This has led "us to believe that this vitamin may be implicated in this new horror," Friedrich writes.
Friedrich asked Sundlof to let him know if the FDA is testing a wide sample of implicated cat and dog foods -- both wet and dry -- for vitamin D3 levels.
He also implored Sundlof to "please tell the public what other measures you are taking to get to the bottom of this crisis."
Wheat Gluten
FDA officials said last week the wheat gluten in the recalled pet foods is contaminated with melamine, a chemical commonly used in plastics.
But the New York Department of Agriculture and an agricultural laboratory in Canada dispute that finding. They say the pet food is contaminated with a rat poison called Aminopterin.
The New York lab has 42 scientists and support staff and a $3.5 million annual budget. It tests about 20,000 samples of food annually. It has some of the latest high-tech equipment, some of it purchased with Homeland Security funds as a safeguard against bioterrorism.
The director of the New York lab, Daniel Rice, told USA Today that all of pieces of the poisoning puzzle have not yet been found.
"I guess we don't think this is a closed case yet," he said.
