New York Times, NY
04-06-07
22 Brands of Dog Biscuits Are Added to Pet Food Recall
By KATIE ZEZIMA
A recall of pet food tainted with melamine, a chemical used to make plastic
products, has been widened to include 22 types of dog biscuits, the Food and
Drug Administration said yesterday.
The biscuits, made by Sunshine Mills Inc., contain wheat gluten imported from
China that contained melamine, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center
for Veterinary Medicine at the F.D.A.
Sunshine Mills, of Red Bay, Ala., manufactures branded and private label dry pet
food and biscuits. The recalled biscuits include Nurture Chicken and Rice Biscuit,
Ol’ Roy Peanut Butter Biscuit and Pet Life Large Biscuit.
Conrad Pitts, a lawyer for Sunshine Mills, said 80 percent of the tainted biscuits
were sold by Wal-Mart, under the Ol’ Roy brand. Mr. Pitts said that the company
had produced about 24 truckloads of biscuits with the contaminated gluten, and
that the majority of the product was large biscuits. He said wheat gluten
accounted for less than 1 percent of the total weight of the biscuits.
Until last week, when moist cat treats, dog jerky and a type of dry cat food were
added to the recall, it had been limited to wet pet food sold under a variety of
brand names.
Menu Foods, which last month recalled more than 90 brands of its “cuts and
gravy” pet food, said yesterday that it had extended the period of time covered by
its recall to include food made after Nov. 8, 2006. The company, based in
Ontario, initially recalled only food made from Dec. 3, 2006, to March 6, 2007.
The company also added 20 additional varieties of those brands to the recall list
yesterday. Information about the recalled pet food can be found at
www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html.
Menu Foods said it acted after a supplier, ChemNutra of Las Vegas, recalled all
wheat gluten it had imported from the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology
Development Company of Wangdien, China. ChemNutra said Wednesday that
the F.D.A. had found melamine in the gluten. The agency said it was now testing
all wheat gluten from China.
The Chinese government said yesterday that no wheat gluten had been exported
to the United States or Canada. Xuzhou Anying denied it had ever shipped wheat
gluten to either country.
“We are a trading company and don’t manufacture the product,” added Mao
Lijun, the company’s general manager. Michael Rogers, director of the Division
of Field Investigations for the F.D.A., said records showed that the tainted gluten
came from China.
“We fully expect the Chinese government’s cooperation and assistance in our
further investigation,” Mr. Rogers said.
Mr. Rogers and Dr. Sundlof said the gluten did not enter the human food supply.
The agency said that it was still investigating how the melamine got into the
gluten, and that it had notified all companies that had received it.
Though melamine has been found in the food and in the urine and kidneys of
pets that have eaten the food, officials and scientists are not sure whether the
chemical actually caused pets to get sick.
Melamine, which is also used as a slow-release fertilizer, is generally not known
to be toxic. Some theories are that it might act as a marker for another unknown
toxin that causes renal failure in pets, Dr. Sundlof said, or that cats and dogs are
extremely sensitive to melamine.
“We still have a lot of work to do to understand why melamine is involved, as it is
a relatively nontoxic substance,” Dr. Sundlof said. “We are relatively certain that
there is a connection here someplace.”
The F.D.A. said it had received more than 12,000 complaints about pet food
since the recall, as many as it usually gets in a two-year period on all topics
combined. It has confirmed 16 deaths.
“We have no good information what that final number might be,” Dr. Sundlof said.
“It will take a while for us to get there.”
The College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University is investigating
43 suspected cases of pets that died from eating tainted food; the deaths of 18
are consistent with ingestion of a toxin, said Patrick Halbur, executive director
of the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at Iowa State.
Dr. Halbur and Grant Maxie of the University of Guelph in Ontario, which is also
investigating the cause of the illnesses and deaths, said it would probably take
months to determine what made the pets sick.
In Chicago, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, called for a hearing
to question F.D.A. officials. He also called for standardized federal regulations
and inspection requirements for pet food.
David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai, and Libby Sander from
Chicago.