A veterinary toxicologist opines about the pet food recall

We took Phoenix to the vet today for her cat bite.  The verdict:  she has some cellulitis and is now on Clavamox, but otherwise the wound is healing very well.  While at the clinic, I was able to read a report by a veterinary toxicologist regarding the recent pet food contamination scare and subsequent recall.  The toxicologist offered five possible causes of contamination, as follows:


  • Vitamin D excess.  This was a problem for Royal Canin and their Urinary SO formula last year, but it seems unlikely in this case because it can take months for the symptoms to appear.
  • Mycotoxin contamination, specifically Ochratoxins and Citrinin.  These can both cause nephrotoxicity.
  • Heavy metal contamination, like Mercury or Arsenic.  The doctor didn’t think this was likely, because the clinical signs would be very obvious.
  • Contamination with industrial chemicals like phenols or toluene is another possibility, but it would have likely made the contaminated foods unpalatable.
  • Contamination with Glycols, such as Ethylene Glycol (antifreeze) and Diglycol Ether.

In addition, someone from the pet food industry with the name of “Dawg Man” left a comment in one of my previous entries, and he feels the problem will likely be traced back to a mix-up between ethylene glycol to and propylene glycol—the latter being a normal ingredient in wheat gluten, and the former being used in antifreeze.  With a bit of luck the mystery might soon be solved, because there’s a veterinary patient somewhere in the country currently being treated for renal failure which came on after eating food from a batch which was subsequently recalled.  Just a week prior to that, the patient had been perfectly healthy, and had received a routine dental cleaning and a full pre-op blood panel.  The patient was tracked so carefully in the days after surgery that there’s no way anything but eating contaminated food could have brought on the sudden renal distress, and hopefully tests on that specific batch of food will help reveal some answers.

We had to go to Petsmart this evening, and it’s just row after row of empty shelves.  The empty spots have signs explaining the food recall, and they claim all food still on the shelves is safe.  At the front of the store were carts filled with pouches of recalled cat and dog food, perhaps owner returns.  Menufoods produces food for 17 of the top 20 American pet food retailers (85%), as well as manufacturing for Proctor and Gamble (Iams and Eukanuba), and Hills.  There’s barely any food which went untouched, and it’s a sad day when you walk into a store and find that Friskies and Whiskas are your safest pet food choices.  I don’t know if the recall caused confusion among pet food companies at first, but Menufoods did a very poor job of making their pet food recall list accurate (they left off Iams, Eukanuba, and Hills), and the brands they did list were then linked to complicated and confusing Excel files.  It should have been easier, and it should have been more thorough, and there should have been one list in one central location which named everything being recalled.  I’d like to know if Menufoods didn’t want to list Iams, et al, because they didn’t want to make the recall look even worse than it already was, or if Iams, et al, didn’t want to be listed on the Menufoods site with those “cheap” brands.  Kudos to Nutro for being on that first list, however they managed to get there.

Let’s hope that this horrible mistake leads to some transparency in the pet food industry.  The cat is out of the bag - some company we’ve never heard of manufacturers almost all the pet food in the entire country - so perhaps it’s time to make that sort of information easier to find, and easier for the consumer to trace.  It’s said the recall is costing manufacturers about 30 million dollars, and I hope they’re also picking up the tabs for the owners of affected pets.

On a closing note, this is a good time for me to put in a plug for Whole Dog Journal.  I started subscribing to their newsletter a couple of years ago, as I wanted to read their famous “annual top dog food list”.  Today they sent around a bulletin about the pet food recall, and they ‘fessed up to the fact that “Nutro’s Ultra Holistic” dog food was on their top food list of 2006.  I thought it was an informative alert for them to distribute, and it reminded me of what a wealth of information they are regarding dog food quality.  Has this pet food recall incident prompted you to want to explore other, better options for feeding your dogs (and cats)?  If so, definitely check out Whole Dog Journal—you can even order just the dry dog food review and/or the canned dog food review online, at a cost of $10 each.  It’s well-worth the price, and will give you insight into cat food as well.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/20 at 02:48 AM

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  1. Hi, a Cornell toxicologist who is part of a team there trying to determine the cause of the problem reported on VIN that the tissue samples they’re seeing are not consistent with ethylene glycol and that tests for it, diethylene glycol, and propylene glycol have all come up negative. Doesn’t mean those chemicals won’t still be implicated, but evidence is pointing away from them.

    (I’d provide a link to this toxicologists comments, but if you’re not a paid subscriber to VIN.com, you wouldn’t be able to read them.)

    Posted by catmanager  on  03/20  at  06:36 AM

  2. Thanks for the update!  Oddly enough, I just added you to my blogroll a couple of hours ago—are you a mind-reader?  Sadly, I don’t have a VIN login… I’m on VSPN.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  03/20  at  07:03 AM
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