I’ve been rather quiet the last couple of days - one of my cats is at the Vet’s office right now and getting an IV. What happened? Well, in short, MenuFoods shipped toxic cat food that can cause kidney failure to about recall/product_cat.html”>42 cat food vendors and 53 dog food vendors. They’re still discovering new ones, which is kind of amazing - obviously MenuFoods can’t remember who they sell things to.
One of these brands is Iams. Ironically, I bought a few pouches of Iams as a treat for my cats - fine treat that turns out to be.
It gets more fun, though. MenuFoods knew on February 20th that their food is toxic. So they started a test series on February 27th - why move with any speed just because your product is deadly? (Note that all that initial information “vanished” from the MenuFoods website…)
The result: It’s deadly to about 20% of the animals eating it. Now, that’s kind of bad. So they waited till March 16th to actually issue a “precautionary” recall. Which, to help reach a wide audience I assume, is marked as “Not for release over US Newswire Services”.
And interestingly enough, MenuFood doesn’t sell directly to end consumers, yet they got complaints “from their customers” which means that at least parts of their customers must have known about the problem before February 20th.
In other words, quite a few people seem to have knowingly accepted the death of pets to further profits - can’t have a recall that might damage the image.
It’s not exactly a small scale problem, either. I’ve tried to reach the SoCal office of the FDA, and their voice mailbox is full. Our local vet’s office has a large number of cats and dogs being treated for kidney failure right now. I’ve been contacted by the Los Angeles Public Health Department for info, so it’s bubbled up to their attention.
And of course, MenuFoods (and all their customers like Iams) never bothered to notify vets, either - after all, they might stop recommending their foods, and that would impact the bottom line. Can’t have that.
(”Official” death toll by menu foods: 10 - Some random website collecting stats has 200 reports so far…)
Oh, and just to make this an even bigger mess - WalMart is still selling deathly cat food despite recall
So that’s why I’ve been quiet. When we brought our cat to the vet on Tuesday, they gave us a 50% survival chance - I was certainly not in the mood to write happy fun blog posts after that. Thankfully, she’s recovering well. Her kidney reading is still elevated, but at least back on the charts, and she seems to be doing quite fine. (In fact, they called her the “superstar” - so I’m really happy now)
If you have cats, or dogs, I suggest you never again buy any foods that are produced by MenuFoods - they clearly place little value on your pet’s life. And even if you don’t have pets, I’d appreciate it if you sent a few positive thoughts out for all the animals that are suffering right now.
My fiance and I adopted a dog and we nearly died when we saw that he was loosing patches of hair (turns out it’s common after certain vaccinations), so I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to know that he was poisoned by the dog food we bought him.
I heard about this story a few days ago on NPR, and what I really found unacceptable was MenuFood’s decision to continue producing their product while not understanding what went wrong. What kind of a philosophy is that?
I’m glad to hear that your cat is doing better, be sure to post a pic of her when she gets home from the vet.
Glad to hear your kitty is doing well. I heard about this recall some time ago, but didn’t think much of it as I only offer my cats one 3oz can of wet food per week and that typically not any of the listed brands but rather an organic brand (forget the name of it) that I buy from Wild Oats. Makes me quite glad I switched.
I agree with Tomas above, post a pic when kitty’s back home. We’d love to see a happy and healthy kitty.
AP is reporting that the tainted food actually contained rat poison!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/aponreus/petfoodrecall7
Hey guys!
Just wanted to let you know, she’s doing much better now - her Kidney function is back in the “acceptable” range, and she even made it into a clip on CBS. I’ll post more info soon
That’s great to hear!
Wow, thanks for letting us know. I wish you and your kitty the best. I’m glad she’s doing better. I know the stress of this kind of thing. Our kittens got into lilies last year and come to find out lilies also cause kidney failure in cats. Luckily they were fine now after a weekend in the vet hospital.
Apparently Hills has recalled some of their food as well…
http://www.hillspet.com/menufoods/MenuFoodsenUS.htm
I aways would get iams thinking it was the best for my cat’s 1 of my cats died at a young age but i never hade the money for the test to be done makes me think is the food had anything to do with it Thank for letting me no i will never buy iams again