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Pet Food Recall: Now we know
By Christie Keith
November 13, 2007
From UC Davis, released today, a report confirming what most of us thought would turn out to be the case:
Two chemicals found in recalled pet food during spring 2007 are relatively harmless alone but, if combined, create a deadly mix when consumed by cats, report researchers at the University of California, Davis.
A pilot study, led by veterinary toxicologist Birgit Puschner and colleagues at the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, found that cats that were fed pet food spiked with both melamine and cyanuric acid quickly experienced acute kidney failure. Cats that received food containing only one or the other of those two chemicals experienced no ill effects.
Results of the study, believed to be the first report on the combined effects of melamine and cyanuric acid in any animal species, are published in the November issue of the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation.
“The results of this study demonstrate that a single oral exposure of cats to melamine and cyanuric acid can result in acute kidney failure,” said Puschner. “The study also provides information that will help veterinarians better diagnose the causes of kidney failure in cats.”
One thing that shocked me was that cats developed kidney damage within TWELVE HOURS of one feeding of the contaminated food. I know many of you reported those types of reactions in cats, but for some reason it didn’t hit me until I read this:
During the pilot study, Puschner and colleagues found that the cats that received both melamine and cyanuric acid developed fan-shaped crystals in their urinary tracts. Such crystals were not normally observed in healthy cats. Those cats also experienced extensive damage to their kidneys within 12 hours after eating the spiked food.
Read the full report from UC Davis here.
Update: The Sacramento Bee’s Carrie Peyton Dahlberg, who was one of the top reporters during the pet-food recall, adds more to the study:
Further clarifying the role that a pair of chemicals played in the deaths that prompted massive pet food recalls earlier this year, UC Davis researchers have shown that cats died only when fed two chemicals in combination.
To test what was suspected but not yet confirmed last spring, UC Davis veterinary toxicologists purchased four cats from a research facility and fed them different combinations of chemicals.
All four cats survived various doses of either melamine or cyanuric acid, two chemicals that regulators suspect may have been slipped into pet food to help a cheaper ingredient masquerade as a costlier one.
Yet the three cats that were fed pet food laced with both chemicals at once sickened within 12 hours, vomiting, losing their appetites and showing signs of kidney failure.
They were killed after 48 hours, and their tissues had the same kind of kidney damage detected in animal necropsies during the pet food recall.
The remaining cat – which had gotten melamine at one point and cyanuric acid later, but never the two together – appeared healthy and its necropsy showed undamaged kidneys.
“The data will make pet food ultimately safer because now we know what to look for,” said Birgit Puschner, lead author of the study and a UC Davis professor of clinical veterinary toxicology.
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Dear God, I can believe this. Lindsey went into acute distress about 8 hours after eating the Iams Salmon in Sauce cat food — I’d never seen him in so much pain.
My vet orginally gave him an appointment for an hour after I called — Lindsey gave a scream like I’d never heard before and was writhing on the floor — I called the vet and told him I was coming NOW. Since I’d been a client for 20 years and knew cats, he humored me and took Lindsey the minute we got in the door.
The kidney flush saved his life — he couldn’t have been in distress more than an hour tops and it was probably closer to 45 minutes. If I worked a normal 9 to 5 job (as things went bad at 3 pm) and didn’t have a vet 15 minutes away who trusted my judgement, Lindsey would be at the Rainbow Bridge now.
Can I just say that I hate, hate, HATE the people who did this to my beautiful, innocent 10 year old cat and put my family through hell wondering what the heck had happened to make him so sick so fast and worrying for days if he was going to pull through this or not? I want them sentenced to eating the same food and I want them to SUFFER — I can’t even say if I want them to get medical treatment or not — I think I’m still angry enough that I don’t — and I know that’s a terrible thing to say.
I’m sorry Gina — it just brings it all back. So help me, I am just not ready to forgive these people yet.
Comment by Dorene — November 13, 2007 @ 7:18 pm
Ummm….
The University of Guelph Laboratory Services Brent Hoff and staff in Ontario Canada reported the melamine and cyanuric acid relationship May 1, 2007. The relationship was that the two combined to create much larger crystals as shown in photos on their website.
http://www.labservices.uoguelph.ca/urgent.cfm
http://www.labservices.uoguelp.....fm#0703301
The lab report was reported in news on the IOL The Star website in South Africa on May 1, 2007. That site also affirmed melamine/cyanuric acid ties and mentions melamine cyanurate larger crystals, damaging kidneys, and killing animals.
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.....595C200510
It is good to see a follow up study with apparent confirmation of the lethal toxicity, however the initial discovery credit probably should go to University of Guelph, with notable mention of the IOL news report for getting it right back in May.
Comment by Dennis — November 13, 2007 @ 8:22 pm
If memory serves, University of Guelph was all in vitro (i.e. “test tube”). These confirming studies by UC Davis are in vivo (the actual animal). Both have value in establishing what happened to the satisfaction of the scientific community.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — November 13, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
I haven’t read this elsewhere, so I just wanted to post a reminder that almost all pool water is treated with cyanuric acid. It tints the water that nice blue color, does not dilute significantly over the course of the year, and helps sustain the levels of chlorine (which are “eaten” by sunlight exposure).
Given that melamine might still be present in food that on its own would not cause the dangerous crystals, it’d be wise to (1) not use cyanuric acid in your own swimming pools and (2) take extra steps to prevent your pets from drinking from pools and fountains (think golf courses, home fountains, etc) that probably contain cyanuric acid.
So, add pool water to your list of no-nos right underneath anti-freeze and engine coolants.
Comment by Christopher — November 13, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
And let’s not forget that blogger Bernie was the first to predict that there were two chemicals involved.
Let’s give some credit where it’s due.
Comment by Lynn — November 13, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
lordy, i hate to think about the poor test cats :(
what about dogs?
“The study also provides information that will help veterinarians better diagnose the causes of kidney failure in cats.”
i also find this a tad disturbing in this day and age . . . .
Comment by straybaby — November 14, 2007 @ 12:28 am
“The research team suggests that, in order to provide more extensive data for a risk assessment of contaminated food, further studies are needed to determine the lowest dose of melamine and cyanuric acid that can cause kidney failure in cats.”
Sounds like the FDA needs to know what are the minimum allowable levels, so they can ALLOW it in the food.
No thanks. I’ll take my cat food WITHOUT toxins, please.
Comment by 5CatMom — November 14, 2007 @ 3:56 am
Glad to read more about the Pet Food Recall subject.
Just went for a check-up for my diabetic cat who was doing poorly in her tests after I took her—during the time she ate the poisoning food.
Her fructosamine (spelled best as can) level is now normal and the vet thinks her poor reading before was due to the poisoning pet food.
I told him how mad I was about this and I was fortunate because so many cats and dogs died.
Comment by Colorado transplant — November 14, 2007 @ 6:02 am
I have saved photos of published kidney tissue infiltrated with melamine/cyanuric acid combo crytals from Univ. of Guelph studies (have similar photos of cat kidney slices from other institutions as well). Yes, studies were done with affected cats and comparisons made using FTIR (infra-red) spectroscopy between synthetic known M/CA crystals and the crystals found in cat urine of affected cats. The match of spectra was perfect.
Comment by Patty L — November 14, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
UC Davis no longer has the power to say anything approaching a scientific study, UCDavis was bought and paid for by the PFI and the checks were cashed.
Anything that UCDavis says will always be met by a snicker and a wink, so take it with the same respect you would give to, say, an FDA media event, or a PFI press release.
Somebody is covering somebody’s butt and that is about as respectable as UCDavis can get.
If you believe UCDavis, then you probably believe a lot of things that are not true.
UCDavis cannot be trusted and those that say they are to be trusted are suspect themselves.
UCDavis is as bought and paid for as , say, petconnection.
Comment by anonymous — November 14, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
The zero comments to many of the posts made by petconnection and the very few comments made at all on this site reflect the fact that the truth is spreading.
Now we know was a fitting title , a lot of pet parents “knew” and they knew it a while ago, what needed to be known. About UC Davis, about the PFI and about IAMS sponsored petconnection.
What people, and internet sites, SAY they care about often contrasts with what they DO.
Actions betray the lie.
Always.
Comment by anonymous — November 14, 2007 @ 10:50 pm
Iams, which sponsors this site, paid the vet bills for the pets who sickened due to eating the product, right?
Eating IAMS food sickens and kills and more money is spent on TV ads than paying the bills, doing the right thing, being honest.
Really great job of showing how much IAMS “Cares”,
just to be clear, any pet food company that CARED would spend more on telling the truth and paying the bills than they did on new TV ads.
So lets see the “proof” of how much IAMS really cares!
In the interest of full disclosure, since a pet food company pays for this site and has been sucking info from it for over 9 months, HOW MUCH has IAMS paid for TV ads and HOW many vet bills have they paid???
Ad budget versus telling the truth and doing the right thing? Straight up.
Any public service ads about the symptoms of the poison they sold as premium pet pet food?
Any pressure on the media to tell the truth about the death toll?
IAMS has been fixing that right up?
Bullcrap!!
IAMS lies and IAMS killed/ And the bills are NOT being paid!
Comment by anonymous — November 15, 2007 @ 4:09 am
Oh brave Anonymous:
You are entitled to your opinion, but we are not paid by Iams or indeed any company to run Pet Connection. This site is paid for by our writing, and over of the course of the last year, our Web sites have costs us thousands more than we had income to pay for. We considered the money spent a public service, and went forward anyway.
We have shared no information from our Web site or our database, with the exception of putting journalists who wants to talk in touch with someone who lost a pet, someone who we thought might be interested in talking. Almost to the last person, the people who lost a pet were anxious to tell their stories.
Only in one case did anyone have a problem with that, and it was a person who posted here daily for weeks. When she told the journalist she wasn’t interested in being interviewed, that was the end of it, for us and for the journalist.
If you are so interested in the truth, try telling some.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — November 15, 2007 @ 6:30 am
In this case, Gina, I believe “anonymous” is spelled “R-A-N-T”.
Was there a full moon last night?
Comment by The OTHER Pat — November 15, 2007 @ 6:38 am
I was worried about “anonymous“‘s claim about UCDavis being “bought and paid for by PFI” (which I guessed meant the Pet Food Institute), so I did a bit of Google searching. I’m not able to say that there is no problem, but I did find into that states that the PFI that funds research studies at UCDavis and other universities is Partnerships for Innovations (PFI), a program of the United States National Science Foundation. That seems like an appropriate agency to be funding such research to me.
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm.....ms_id=5261
Comment by shadepuppy — November 15, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
Oops! - Typo Alert! It should read but I did find INFO that states that the PFI that funds research studies (not “but I did find into that states that the PFI that funds research studies”)
Comment by shadepuppy — November 15, 2007 @ 6:45 pm
I found that second test disturbing….they bought 4 cats and fed some of them the deadly combination and then had to kill them? I understand that we need information, but I was hoping the real life cases were enough without the need to poisen more cats?????
Comment by Jenny — November 16, 2007 @ 6:27 am
I know there is controversy over this practice, but the idea is that you can observe that a reaction has occurred (in the real life cases), but that until you replicate both the cause and the effect under controlled conditions in a laboratory, it’s not considered to be confirmed and remains a hypothesis (in this case, the question of exactly *what* caused the crystals to form). That also holds true with respect to the question of causing the crystals to form in vitro (i.e. a “test tube”) v.s. in vivo (i.e. the actual animal).
Comment by The OTHER Pat — November 16, 2007 @ 6:42 am
I also feel sad about this testing and the kitties who are still dying as a result of this food but I do have a concern about their article implying that pets got sick right away and died. We know from alot of the bloggers in the Spring that this wasnt the case with all pets. Some got sick and died right away and others were sick for months and then died and further, others got sick and managed to survive. So I dont think this test has uncovered everything about the poisonings but yet I dont want them to continue if it means more pet deaths from their testing exposure. Someone else said, how bout no toxins at all.
Comment by Sandi K — November 17, 2007 @ 9:17 am
Those poor animals. What a dreadful way to die “for science.” Isn’t there someway to test without torturing animals?
Can someone tell me why China is the only place where pet manufacturers can get taurine? We can put a man on the moon and the US can’t produce taurine? I don’t understand.
Comment by perkysmom — November 20, 2007 @ 8:03 am