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Chenango Valley Recalls More Pet Food

Chickens Released; Are Bees Being Poisoned?

By Lisa Wade McCormick
ConsumerAffairs.com

May 18, 2007

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Chenango Valley Pet Foods announced today that it’s recalling even more of its dry dog and cat food -- and one brand of ferret food.

The products in this recall do not contain any melamine-tainted ingredients, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said today.

But they were made at the same time Chenango Valley Pet Foods manufactured other products containing melamine-tainted rice protein concentrate imported from China.

Melamine is a chemical used to make plastic and fertilizer. It is not approved for use in pet or human food.

Since March, 18 companies have recalled more than 5,600 pet food products made with imported melamine-tainted ingredients.

These adulterated ingredients are blamed for the deaths and illnesses of thousands of dogs and cats nationwide and triggered one of the largest pet food recalls in U.S. history.

The FDA said this latest recall of Chenango Valley Foods is “precautionary due to the possibility of cross-contamination.”

The products included in today’s recall are:

• DOCTORS FOSTER & SMITH LAMB & BROWN RICE FORMULA ADULT DOG FOOD, NET WT. 6 LBS. (UPC 25141 28244), 15 LBS. (25141 30074), and 30 LBS. (UPC 25141 06043); Date Codes: Best By Feb 09 09 and Best By Feb 26 09;

• SHOP RITE REDI-MIXT DOG FOOD FOR DOGS, NET WT. 25 LB. (UPC 41190 00555), Date Code: Code C7107;

• LICK YOUR CHOPS KITTEN & CAT FOOD, NET WEIGHT 4 LBS. (UPC 32976 25915), and 18 LBS. (UPC 32976 25925); Date Code: Best Used By April 29 08;

• SHEP chunk style dog food, NET WT. 20 LBS. (UPC 41498 14142); Date Code: Best By March 14 08;

• Bulk Lamb & Brown Rice Formula Dog Food, Date Code: Feb 09, 08, sold to one consignee SmartPak;

• Health Diet Cat Food Chicken & Rice Dinner NET WT. 1.81 kg/4 LB (UPC 78198 01594), 4 kg/8.8 LB (UPC 78198 01599), and 8 kg/17.6 LB (UPC 78198 01585); Code C7072;

• EVOLVE KITTEN FORMULA, NET WT. 3 LBS. (UPC 73657 00250) and 7 LBS. (UPC 73657 00251); Date Code: Best Used By Sept 13 08. Evolve has recovered 99.5% of the product from its distributors and is working with dealers to recover the remaining inventory;

• 8 in 1 Ferret ULTRA-BLEND ADVANCED NUTRITION DIET, NET WT. 20 LBS, UPC 26851 00413, Code: C7072

The FDA has not received any reports of illnesses linked to these products, but warned pet owners to immediately stop giving their animals the food.

Chickens Release

In related news today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released for processing approximately 80,000 chickens that consumed melamine-tainted pet food scraps.

Tests confirmed meat from the chickens -- held on farms in Indiana -- is safe for human consumption. Federal testing also revealed that melamine does not accumulate in chickens and is quickly eliminated by the kidneys.

In a written statement, the USDA said: “The testing also reinforces the conclusions of a human health risk assessment that there is a very low risk of illness from the consumption of meat from animals exposed to the feed in question. Poultry held on farms appear healthy, which will be confirmed upon the rigorous inspection that USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service conducts on all poultry during processing.”

The USDA said a person weighing 132 pounds would have to eat more than 800 pounds of chicken a day -- that contained melamine and its compound cyanuric acid, at levels present in the poultry -- before it would cause a health concern.

In related pet food recall news:

• The FDA said Thursday that fish on two commercial farms -- one in Hawaii and the other in Washington State -- have tested negative for melamine. Those fish farms -- Kona Blue in Hawaii and American Gold in Washington State -- had received feed made with melamine-tainted ingredients from a Canadian company. Based on these latest test results, Kona Blue has resumed harvesting the fish;

• The FDA confirmed that 196 hatcheries also received melamine-tainted feed from that same Canadian company -- Skretting. But the FDA said those fish pose no public health risk because they’re small, they’re no longer exposed to the tainted feed, and they’ll ultimately be released into public waterway -- not directly into commerce. Skretting received the melamine-tainted wheat gluten from China;

• The FDA said it has detained 46 shipments of vegetable protein products -- including wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate -- from China since April 27. “None of the importers have proved that the shipments are melamine-free, so these products remain in detention,” Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection with the FDA, told reporters Thursday. “And before any of these shipments are released, the FDA will review the analytical reports for technical accuracy, and we may collect and analyze samples of the product to confirm any submitted reports . . . as I've said, (these products) will remain in detention until we are satisfied.”

• The FDA has run tests for melamine on 63 samples of vegetable proteins imported from China and used by manufacturers in six states. Samples were taken from manufacturers in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota and New Hampshire. “There have been no positive results for melamine on any of these samples collected so far,” Acheson said Thursday. “Of those 63, 37 of them were negative, 23 are pending, and 3 could not be analyzed because there was no method to do that-- and that was because essentially they were a mixture of rawhide dog chews, clearly of low risk, and gel capsules. So that's why there wasn't a method for those three samples.”

• The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported on Thursday that it has not found any melamine in the imported wheat gluten, corn gluten, and rice protein concentrate it’s tested since April 30. Dr. Vera Adams with the CBP said her agency has tested these ingredients -- imported from China and other countries--that are destined for human or animal consumption. She said the CBP has tested samples from about 80 percent of all shippers of these products — and the analysis is complete on about 80 percent of those samples. Adams said her agency started testing these products as a “precautionary measure and to supplement federal efforts to detect and prevent the importation of specific products contaminated with melamine.”

Bees Stung?

The Pittsburg Tribune-Review reported today the federal scientists are researching whether melamine --the chemical linked to the deaths and illnesses of thousands of dogs and cats -- is also responsible for destroying the honeybee population in the United States.

The paper said researchers at the Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory and the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine are testing commercial bee feed for melamine-related compounds and doing feed tests on honeybees. So far, no link has been found.

"I was curious enough and wanted to be complete enough that I thought it was worth doing," Jeffery Pettis, the bee lab's research leader, told the newspaper. The paper said honeybees in the United States started dying in unprecedented numbers late last year. That threatens the country’s human food supply because one-third of it is dependent on bee pollination. A quarter of the country’s 2.4 million honeybee colonies died last year from what scientists dubbed “Colony Collapse Disorder,” the paper reported.

More about the Pet Food Recall ...

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