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Veterinarians Solve Pet Food Death Puzzle

Combination of two chemicals proved lethal

By Lisa Wade McCormick
ConsumerAffairs.com

December 1, 2007

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Veterinarians say the mystery behind the deaths of dogs and cats across the country that ate tainted pet food earlier this year has been solved.

The veterinarians now blame the deaths on the combination of two chemicals the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found in the more than 60 million containers of recalled pet food: melamine and cyanuric acid.

Melamine is used to make plastic. Cyanuric acid is used to chlorinate pools. Neither is approved for use in pet food.

Those two chemicals -- which FDA officials discovered in the imported wheat gluten and rice protein concentrated use to make pet food -- can combine and form crystals in the animals’ bodies, the veterinarians say.

And those crystals can impair the animals’ kidney function.

“Either one of those chemicals alone wouldn’t cause these (deaths),” Dr. Barbara Powers, immediate past president of the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD) and director of Colorado State University’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told us on Friday. “It has to be the combination of the two.

“So it’s not melamine alone.”

Dr. Power’s comments support a theory raised earlier this year by the University of Guelph’s Animal Health Laboratory in Ontario about what might have caused pets to die after eating the tainted food.

Tests conducted at the university revealed that melamine and cyanuric acid could react to form crystals that block kidney function.

When the study came out in May, John Melicherik, director of analytical services for Guelph's laboratory services, told The Toronto Star: "This is a piece of the puzzle, a significant finding. We have found these crystals in cats that have suffered renal failure."

Story continues below video

Thousands of deaths

Dr. Barbara Powers

Since Menu Foods announced its massive pet food recall in March, the FDA has received 17,000 complaints from consumers who said their dogs or cats suffered kidney problems or died after eating the tainted food. FDA officials, however, only confirmed 16 pet-food related deaths.

In the months that followed Menu’s recall, ConsumerAffairs.com heard from scores of pet owners who said their dogs or cats became seriously ill or died after eating the adulterated food. Many had lost two, three or even more pets.

And we’re still getting complaints.

Some consumers even hired a private laboratory in Texas to analyze their pets’ food for possible toxins. That facility is Expertox Analytical Laboratory, which has confirmed to us that it detected the pain killer acetaminophen in some samples of pet food.

But Dr. Powers downplayed Expertox’s findings.

“That’s not an AAVLD lab and acetaminophen has never been confirmed (in pet food) by other labs,” she said. “That’s a not a valid finding.”

Meanwhile, veterinarians now have a better idea of just how many dogs and cats died after eating the contaminated pet food.

Dr. Powers told us that a recently released survey by the AAVLD found the number of confirmed deaths linked to the tainted pet food -- ones that met specific criteria for kidney failure -- now stands at 226.

Of those deaths, 143 were cats and 83 were dogs.

“But there absolutely could be more deaths from the tainted pet food,” Dr. Powers said, adding veterinarians across the country participated in the organization’s survey. “This survey didn’t catch all the deaths that happened. In order to be counted in our survey, you had to meet certain criteria.”

She added: “If someone had a pet that died and they buried it in their background, they weren’t eligible for our survey. We had to have confirmed exposure to the recalled pet food, proof of toxicity, and clinical signs of renal failure. So this is only a percentage of the deaths that are out there. There’s no way to guess how many pets were affected.”

More cats died

The AAVLD’s “Pet Food-Induced Nephrotoxicity" survey also discovered that more cats than dogs became sick or died after eating the tainted food.

“We don’t know why it affected cats more than dogs,” Dr. Powers said. “It could very well have to do with the animals’ size -- cats are smaller than dogs. Or it could be the animal’s metabolism. Cats have a different metabolism than dogs.”

What about smaller dogs?

“We broke the breeds down into small, medium, and large and discovered that small dogs were affected more by the tainted pet food,” Dr. Powers said. “So there is certainly a size factor there.”

Her colleague, Dr. Wilson Rumbeiha, associate professor at the Michigan State University Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health, agreed.

“Even among dogs, small- to medium-size dogs were affected the most,” he said.

The AAVLD’s voluntary survey included more than 550 cases nationwide, but only 347 met its specific criteria for kidney failure caused by the tainted food, Dr. Powers said.

“The impetus for us to do this survey was because we – as association members – started seeing these cases (earlier this year) showing up in our labs across the country. We have a listserv where we chat among ourselves and we were talking about us seeing all these deaths in dogs and cats. I was president of the association at the time and said we need to do a survey and see what’s going on and what the extent of this problem is. That’s how this got started.”

Quicker response needed

The organization’s next goal, she said, is to obtain federal funding that would allow labs across the country to respond more quickly if there’s another tainted pet food or other type of toxicological crisis.

“It’s hard to prevent something like this from happening again,” she said. “I’m sure there are now safeguards in place, but you can’t check for every toxin under sun. And who would have ever thought to screen for melamine and cyanuric acid. Those were chemicals that weren’t on anyone’s radar.”

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