Don, most melamine I found was 99% pure. I don’t think it was in this case as I still believe it was a mix of junk someone put together as the price of melamine has gone up. There aren’t any studies for mixes of melamine cyanurate, whose common contaminants are cyanuric acid and melamine. Melamine cyanurate is the one that has no studies.

It’s also worth noting that the crystals cooked up at Goof U, don’t look a bit like those alleged to
come from poisoned animals:

http://www.labservices.uoguelph.ca/urgent.cfm

In the mean time, I find it more than a little interesting the righteous up in arms approach of the
FDA as far as melamine in gluton was concerned and that it should never be present in any quantity, but
the rather casual approach to feeding melamine contaminated animals to people. Apparently the FDA isn’t
too fussy about adulterated food stuffs as long as they’re produced in the US.

In the mean time, I find it interesting that melamine gluton feed to pigs and chickens doesn’t bother
them a bit, and it doesn’t appear to bother dogs, rats or mice in clinical studies, but if you mix it
with the rest of the Menu Foods ingredients, it kills in a matter of days.

Isn’t the melamine hoax getting just a little stale at this stage of the game?

Are we ever going to get straight answers about toxins that went into the food at the rendering plants?

Don’t have an answer, but we’re in basically the same place.

Here’s to Boomer, let’s keep Sammy and Mischeif going one day at a time, week by week…

Our next blood check is a month from now, I won’t know much more until then. Unless the folks from Cornell come up with something new…

Can my pet’s body fight this off? He was on 3000 mgs of antibotics a days for several weeks and seems to be fine. Seems is the key word. I am afraid for him. Sammy is a large Golden Lab. His brother Boomer died March 15, 07. You see he loved the dog food that was contaminated, it was not a normal part of thier diet and was meant only as a special treat.

Increased fluids is a good idea, but our cat’s kidney function did not improve over the first 2 months of treatment, including periodic sub-cu fluids, and her use of water is way up, and our use of clumping litter is way up. It may be we need to do more, I’ll negotiate that with the vet at the next test.

The crystals are described as extremely insoluable. I would expect once enough form to block the dystal tubes, as described in the notes on examinations, there is very little flow through and around the crystals.

It is also entirely possible our cats kidney problems are purely coincidental, just because she ate foods from Menu in the suspected time frame and suffered a dramatic weight loss with kidney failure is no reason to connect the dots this way.

It is clear from the numbers that dogs and cats are equally affected, but cats have a long history of kidney problems in general, but mostly with age, we don’t have the age issue, and no history of kidney issues with the parents of the cats.

So what is different? Only the food. So why is there no improvement? Speculation only, the kidneys are still blocked. Maybe it’s not the crystals, or maybe they simply are not just flushing away with extra fluids.

That’s what makes it so hard to know. Too many variables. Fortunately this was not a sole food source or both would probably be dead now. Instead the one that hogs the gravy is sick, and her sister is fine. On the surface, though, it seems more needs to be done for this cat to recover, or maybe we really are treating something unrelated…

I do recall reading a description of someone mixing melamine and CA solutions into cat urine and watching macroscopic xtals form.

I would think melamine would be changed in the stomach. From INCHEM doc:
Melamine is a weak base. It is neutral in the pH range of 6 to 13. The cation C3N3H+(NH2)3 is present in the pH range 1 to 4

From INCHEM doc on isocyanuric acid (same as CYA):
Ref listed: Intravenous Cats LD50 2,144 mg/kg Ref.5 J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther.:, 103, 420 (1951)

4.3 Initial Assessment for Human Health
Several subchronic oral toxicity studies demonstrated renal damages, such as dilatation of the renal tubules, necrosis or hyperplasia of the tubular epithelium,increased basophilic tubules, neutrophilic infiltration, mineralization and fibrosis. These changes were probably caused by crystal of this chemical in renal tubules. The mechanism of this renal toxicity is supported by the toxicokinetics studies in animals and humans, showing that this chemical is quickly absorbed and excreted to urine within a few hours as an unchanged form.

It may not be just the urine pH. The concentration of melamine and cyanuric acid may gradually increase (and precipitate) if kidney filtration leaves them both behind. I forget which classes of molecules the kidney filters out, but I think it has to do with size and polarity. Don’t know which way these compounds would go.