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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: May 2007

Cracking the case of the pet food killer

 

PORTLAND, Oregon--As many as 39,000 American dogs and cats may have been injured or killed by pet foods contaminated by melamine, a chemical formerly considered safe, during the three months or longer that the tainted food was in distribution.

Banfield Pet Hospitals, operating 615 veterinary clinics around the U.S., produced this preliminary estimate from information on client visits, from December 2006 through mid-March 2007. During that time the Banfield hospitals handled more than one million animal visits, and saw a 30% increase in cases of cats suffering from kidney failure.

The data suggests that three out of every 10,000 cats and dogs who ate the contaminated pet food developed kidney failure, Banfield told Associated Press.

Receiving consumer complaints about pet foods allegedly poisoning healthy dogs and cats, Menu Foods Inc. ordered test feedings. After 16 cats and dogs died from kidney failure during the laboratory test feeding, Menu Foods on March 16, 2007 recalled 60 million cans of dog and cat food. A Canadian firm with U.S. plants in Emporia, Kansas, and New Jersey, Menu Foods supplied products to at least seven different companies, who sold Menu-made pet food under more than 100 brands.

Other pet food makers were soon implicated in a nationwide investigation and series of recalls that swiftly went international. Pet food contaminated with the same chemical was discovered in South Africa and Puerto Rico--and the source turned out to be China.

Receiving more than 15,000 calls about pet food believed to be contaminated during the first 30 days after the initial recall, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration assigned 400 employees to find the suspect shipments, respond to callers, and test 430 samples of potentially contaminated wet and dry food, FDA director of field investigations Michael Rogers told media. More than twice as many people called the FDA about the pet food recall, spokespersons said, than normally call in a year about all issues combined.

The 30,000-member Veterinary Information Network reported receiving unsolicited reports of more than 500 pet illnesses and 104 deaths.

While Menu Foods became convinced by the test results that it had sold tainted product, identifying the contaminant perplexed toxicologists for weeks.

The New York State Food Laboratory on March 23 identified traces of a chemical called aminopterin as the likely culprit, and began trying to identify which specific component of the recalled pet food had become contaminated.

But American SPCA senior vice president Steven Hansen, DVM, was skeptical. Hansen, a veterinary toxicologist, manages the ASPCA's Midwest office, including the Animal Poison Control Center.

"Aminopterin," now used in some nations as a rat poison, "has been used to treat cancer in people, since it is able to disrupt rapidly-growing cells," Hansen explained. "In animals, it should result in effects that mimic this function, including bloody diarrhea, bone marrow suppression, abortion, and birth defects. Renal damage-seen in the affected animals-can occur at high doses.

"However," Hansen said, "to be consistent with the effects of aminopterin, we should also see a significant number of affected pets showing the accompanying signs of severe intestinal damage.
"We have seen reports coming in from all around the country that animals who ate the contaminated foods are suffering from renal failure," Hansen acknowledge. "But the data we've been collecting does not conclusively prove this connection."

Hansen's skepticism was affirmed on March 29, when the FDA and Menu Foods announced that they had discovered another chemical called melamine in the contaminated food, and that it appeared to be turning up consistently. Initially detected in the wheat gluten component of the recalled pet food, melamine has been commonly used for more than 60 years to make hard plastic dishes, cleaning products, stain-resistant laminates, flame-retardant foam, soundproofing, and nitrogen-releasing synthetic fertilizer.

Melamine had apparently never before been found as a food contaminant--not in pet food and not in people food.

FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine chief Stephen Sundlof told reporters that the FDA had not found any studies of melamine in cats, and found the results of only a single 1945 study that tested it on dogs. That study suggested the chemical increased urine output when fed to dogs in large amounts.

"We don't think this is the final conclusion," said New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets spokesperson Jessica A. Chittenden. "Melamine is not a known toxin. There is not enough data to show that it is toxic to cats. We are confident we found aminopterin," Chittenden insisted, "and it makes sense with the pathology."

However, the FDA did not find aminopterin in the pet food samples it tested. The Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine also did not find aminopterin, but found melamine both in recalled pet food and in urine and tissue samples from afflicted cats.

The Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory rushed to confirm the Cornell findings. But the next shocker came from the California Animal Health & Food Safety Laboratory System at the University of California's Davis campus.

Not initially involved in the pet food recall, the Davis lab eventually offered to test unrecalled foods. The staff expected to help reassure the public about pet food safety, U.C. Davis professor of veterinary clinical toxicology Bob Poppenga told Sacramento Bee staff writer Carrie Peyton Dahlberg.

On April 7, however, U.C. Davis toxicology professor Birgit Puschner notified the FDA that she had found melamine in six brands of cat food that were not on the original recall list, and in several additional varieties of foods sold by some of the recalled brands.

"In light of the new findings, toxicologists at U.C. Davis are stepping up their offer to test other foods to ensure all problems are found," wrote Peyton Dahlberg.

"There aren't that many labs that are doing this kind of testing right now. It's our obligation to follow up," said Poppenga.

Within days melamine was found in wheat gluten, rice protein concentrate, and corn gluten pet food components, all imported from China. As the materials were labeled "food grade," the FDA investigated whether any had entered the human food supply.

The investigation spread with the discovery that some pet food was diverted for use as hog feed after it was deemed unsafe for pet consumption.

In the first verified case, rice protein concentrate imported from China by Diamond Pet Food Inc. was sold to American Hog Farm, in Ceres, California. Similar materials may have been fed to pigs in New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Ohio, and at least one poultry farm in an unspecified location, FDA chief vet Sundlof said.

Melamine was found in the urine of pigs raised in California and both North and South Carolina, Sundlof confirmed.