Had the vet do a panel of blood tests, they came out negative (normal), continue to watch her for any display of stated symptoms;ie, excess drinking, vomiting, urination, lethargy.

My question for anyone on the board: How insidious is the rat poison? It has been 8 days. Can it cause renal failure a month fron now, 6 months, a year…? Anyone know on its longevity/residual before it flares up? Thanks!

JM

The scum that run these companies make decisions based on greed and nothing else. The testing methods that they utilized (IMHO) were a forced response that took them since early December to give into. Lets face it the only reason they even did the testing was an effort to appear concerned and an attempt to save their business.

They had the weeks and months (since December 6) to do the testing without killing more animals let alone admit that there was a problem and pull their poison off the shelves. Instead they decided that the lives of these animals and members of our families were not as important as the money they were making.

Why are we cutting these people a break? It is clear that they made a choice to put off any resonsibilty for their actions until they were backed into a corner hence the type and timing of their response.

There are a lot of big companies involved in this and I suspect in the end that no harm will come to them. It is such a warm fuzzy feeling I get when I think that our beloved pets and ourselves will have been the only to sacrifice for these people.

It seems South Africa has been experiencing kidney failure and deaths in their pet populations too! But we never hear about this. It has been happening for nearly a month and the culprit in their case is dry food, tainted with ethylene glycol (antifreeze ingredient.) It’s strange because antifreeze is one thing that animals love the taste of and will eat. Only a teaspoon will kill a kitty or small dog. It also causes nearly instant kidney failure. I wonder if somehow the supply of gluten in these foods got contaminated by it? And how?

Below are a couple articles from South African newspapers.

Sincerely,
Rosy

>

SPCA issues alert over dog-food scare

February 23 2007 at 01:53PM

By Natasha Prince and Murray Williams

The SPCA has warned pet owners who may have fed their dogs with
contaminated dry dog food to visit a vet immediately.

A local pet food manufacturer, Aquanutro, warned this week that
ethylene-glycol had been found in a limited number of batches of some
of its dog food products. The substance is a type of coolant,
popularly known as anti-freeze.

One of Aquanutro’s biggest customers is Woolworths, which pulled the
products from its shelves this week and warned the public in an
advertising campaign.

Aquanutro said it had first been alerted in late 2006 by dog owners
and a veterinary surgeon that some of its products had allegedly
caused kidney failure within dogs.

“Extensive tests were conducted by accredited laboratories within
South Africa and were initially found to be negative, until an in-
depth and very intensive … analysis tested positive for the presence
of ethylene-glycol,” the company said.

The company had already alerted its customers that it was undertaking
the tests and confirmed the traces of the substance this week.

The SPCA’s Cher Poznan-ovich said they had received many calls and e-
mails about animals that had died or were showing signs of poisoning,
but she could not say how many reports they received.

Friday Woolworths spokesperson Dorothy McLaren said: “We have no
evidence, whatsoever, linking our product with the death or illness
of any animals.”

Despite already pulling Aquanutro’s products from its shelves, it was
continuing with extensive in-depth tests to establish any risk to
pets.

Aquanutro said the supplier of the ingredient had been notified and
the company had cancelled all orders.

SPCA vet Miles Penfold warned: “If you have fed your dog this food
and even if they are not showing signs of poisoning, it is best to
take them to the vet to be checked.

“Once the symptoms are visible, it is often fatal.”

Symptoms include excess drinking and urinating, vomiting and looking
off colour.

This article was originally published on page 5 of Cape Argus on
February 23, 2007

First, kidney failure has many causes. Menu had to confirm a link between their food and the adverse events. That often can’t be done just from random bits of epidemiological data (i.e., the reports they had from pet owners).

Second, simply testing their food might seem like an obvious step and for all we know it is one that Menu undertook, but consider that probably millions of potentially toxic compounds exist. I’m no toxicologist, but I suspect even working through a list of the most common toxins could take weeks or months. Far better to try to narrow the list so that you can better target your area of testing. That means you need to know what the food is doing to the animals (what changes it is causing in the kidneys and other internal organs). Why couldn’t they use already deceased animals? Well, for all we know, they might have. But I can see a simple reason why they might not have been able to: Toxins break down over time, some quite quickly. They would have had no guarantee that any of the deceased animals would still have traces of toxins.

Please understand, I’m no fan of industrialized food production and companies such as Menu, and I think that animal testing is in many cases unjustified. However, I feel based on what little is known at this point that the testing Menu undertook probably was justified (whether it should have been done sooner is another issue).