Menu Foods' Pet Food Recall Linked To Plastic Chemical-Melamine

M. Brandon Smith

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A recent recall on more than a 100 brands of "cuts and gravy" style dog and cat food has now been linked to a chemical used to make plastics: melamine. Melamine, after numerous tests by the United States Food and Drug Administration, has been definitively identified in the corpuses of both dogs and cats alike. Since the pet food recall issued by Menu Foods, Inc., and the FDA it has been reported that thousands of animals have been either seriously injured or killed after eating the contaminated pet food.

According to MSNBC.COM:

In a news conference, FDA officials said that the apparently melamine-contaminated wheat gluten also was shipped to a company that manufactures dry pet food, but they would not name the company.

Wheat gluten, a source of vegetable protein, is also used in some human foods, but the FDA emphasized it had found no indication that the contaminated ingredient had been used in food for people.

Menu Foods recalled 60 million containers of cat and dog food earlier this month after animals died of kidney failure after eating the Canadian company's products. It is not clear how many pets may have been poisoned by the apparently contaminated food, although anecdotal reports suggest hundreds if not thousands have died. The FDA alone has received more than 8,000 complaints.

"While we have no doubt that melamine is present in the recalled pet food, there is not enough known data on the mammalian toxicity levels of melamine to conclude it could cause illness and deaths in cats. With little existing data, many questions still remain as to the connection between the illnesses and what has caused them," Hooker said.