Recall Expanded to Some Dry Cat Food
WASHINGTON The recall of pet foods contaminated with a chemical used to make plastics has grown to include both wet and dry products, even as investigators remain uncertain about why the substance would be fatal to dogs and cats.
Hill's Pet Nutrition became the first company to recall any dry pet food, saying its Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry cat food was made using wheat gluten purchased from a U.S. supplier of the vegetable protein source. That same unnamed company also supplied the imported Chinese wheat gluten to Menu Foods, which earlier this month recalled 60 million containers of the wet dog and cat food it makes for sale under nearly 100 brands.
Federal testing of those recalled pet foods and the wheat gluten they contained turned up the chemical melamine but failed to confirm the presence of aminopterin, a cancer drug also used as rat poison, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Cornell University scientists also found melamine in the urine of sick cats, as well as in the kidney of one cat that died after eating some of the recalled food.
Earlier, the New York State Food Laboratory identified aminopterin as the likely culprit in the pet food. But the FDA said it could not confirm that finding, nor have researchers at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey when they looked at tissue samples taken from dead cats.
Experts at the University of Guelph detected aminopterin in some samples of the recalled pet food, but only in very small percentages.
"Biologically, that means nothing. It wouldn't do anything," said Grant Maxie, a veterinary pathologist at the Canadian university. "This is a puzzle."
The FDA was working to rule out the possibility that the contaminated wheat gluten could have made it into any human food. However, melamine is toxic only in high doses, experts said, leaving its role in the pet deaths unclear. Menu Foods announced the recall earlier this month after animals died of kidney failure after eating the Canadian company's products.
An FDA official allowed that it wasn't immediately clear whether the melamine was the culprit. The agency's investigation continues, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine.
Menu Foods said the only certainty was that imported wheat gluten was the likely source of the deadly contamination, even if the actual contaminant remained in doubt.
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