GUEST  COMMENTARY

We invited Ann Martin, the author of the book, Food Pets Die For, which was written ten years ago, to provide her prespective on the latest food recall.

Recalling Commercial Pet Food

By Ann Martin

We are in the midst of the largest recall in the multibillion-dollar pet food industry since its humble beginnings in the early 1950s, but this present recall is not the first, and it certainly will not be the last.

Over the years, a number of pet foods have been recalled after various contaminates were found in the foods, but rarely did they get much media exposure. Two of the larger recalls in recent years involved dry pet foods that were contaminated with Aflatoxin B1, a fungus found in moldy grains, which resulted in the death of about 30 dogs. In 1999, the Doane Pet Care Center in Temple, Texas, recalled 53 brands of food, totaling 1,362,516 bags of dry food. In late 2005 and early 2006, Diamond Pet Food of Gaston, South Carolina, recalled 34 million pounds of dog and cat food made at their plant in Lexington County. Again, the source of contamination was Aflatoxin B1, which this time, poisoned more than 100 dogs.

Just one year later, on March 16, 2007, Menu Foods, a Canadian-based company with plants in Emporia, Kansas, and Pennsauken, New Jersey, began what has become the largest pet food recall the industry has ever known. As of April 1, this recall included 60 million containers of wet food, canned and in foil pouches, for dogs and cats. The dirty little secret that has been revealed in this latest recall is that the same pet food manufacturer, Menu Foods, makes products for low-end, private label store brands distributed by companies like Wal-Mart, Safeway and Kroger, as well as for supposed high-end, "quality pet foods" such as Iams and Eukanuba. During the first week of April, Hill's Pet Nutrition, Nestle Purina Pet Care and Nutro issued voluntary recalls on a number of their wet foods, which are also made by Menu Foods. Consumers are shocked to learn that the same company that produces grocery-store brand foods also manufactures the pet foods touted as "nutritional and balanced pet foods."

As of early April, the precise cause for these massive recalls continues to be a mystery. In December 2006, Menu Foods began to receive reports from customers whose animal companions were getting sick on the company's "cuts and gravy" products. Menu announced on March 19 that the problems seemed to coincide with a new supplier's introduction of a new ingredient, wheat gluten, which can be used as a source of protein or filler in pet foods.

A week later, Menu Foods announced that aminopterin, a rat poison, banned from use in the U.S., was found in samples of wheat gluten that were imported from China. It was not ruled to be the only contaminate in the food, and many experts in the field of toxicology think that contaminated wheat gluten would not have caused the symptoms displayed by the animals who have died. On March 30, the FDA announced that it had found melamine in the wheat gluten used in the suspect foods, and melamine in the urine of cats who had died or were ill. Melamine is used to produce kitchenware and countertops, and is also used as a fertilizer. Although melamine use in pet foods is considered a low-toxicity risk, minimal literature is available on acceptable toxicity levels in dogs and cats.

As of this writing (April 9, 2007), FDA testing continues, looking for other contaminates that might also be found in the wheat gluten. And now, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), the Majority Whip, has announced that Congress will hold a hearing April 12 on the FDA's investigation into the contamination and the deaths of the companion animals. report on hearing Congress's decision to get involved reflects the public's outrage about the lack of reliable independent scrutiny of pet-food manufacturers.

While the FDA scrambles to find a specific ingredient or cause, a much larger problem looms over the entire commercial pet food industry. Bottom-line, the pet food industry is a multibillion-dollar, self-regulated business. Corporations make huge profits by rendering garbage and selling it in attractive cans and bags as food for our pets. Then they have the audacity to call it "balanced and nutritious." The inferior ingredients in most commercial pet foods and other legally acceptable-yet potentially harmful-fillers are causing untold health problems for pets. This translates into pain, suffering and sometimes death for millions of animal companions, and billions of dollars in veterinary care.

Without a doubt, pet food recalls will continue until there is some kind of reliable, independent regulation of the pet food industry. Though it may be too late to rein in the pet food industry and its questionable products,the good news is that this most recent recall is a wake-up call for pet owners to take matters into their own hands and educate themselves about how to best meet their animal companions' nutritional needs. Some of you may make the extra effort to cook for your animal companions, which means that you'll know exactly what goes into their food bowls. And for those of you who cannot cook for your dogs, you can learn to read labels and purchase pet food from small, responsible companies that can assure you that their foods only contain human-grade ingredients. What ever route you take, consider this as the final taste test: If you wouldn't eat the food, don't expect your animal companion to eat it!

Ann Martin is considered an international authority on the problems with commercial pet foods. Her investigations into the commercial pet food industry are included in her bestselling books, Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts about Pet Food (NewSage Press, revised 2003) and Protect Your Pet: More Shocking Facts (NewSage Press 2001).

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