The People's Pharmacy® with Joe and Terry Graedon

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Pet Food Disaster Points Up FDA Weaknesses

Joe and Terry's Blog May 1, 2007

It’s all about greed. Pet food manufacturers figured out that they could save money by buying ingredients from China. The Chinese figured out that they could get a higher price for wheat gluten if they added melamine.

That’s because this chemical, used in making plastic and fertilizer, has a lot of nitrogen. Quick and easy tests for protein content measure nitrogen, so adulterated gluten looks protein-rich on such tests.

Everyone makes money except the consumer. When a pet gets sick, vet bills skyrocket. Even worse, the dog or cat may die.

The FDA did not discover the pet food problem. Rather, Menu Foods initiated a recall after pet owners complained about kidney problems in dogs and cats. Since then, more than 100 brands of pet food from various manufacturers have been recalled.

According to the FDA: “As of April 26, 2007, FDA had received over 17,000 consumer complaints relating to this outbreak, and those complaints included reports of approximately 1950 deaths of cats and 2200 deaths of dogs.”

No one knows how complete the FDA’s numbers are. When it comes to human adverse drug reactions, the agency admits that it collects only a small fraction of true events. The Pet Connection http://www.petconnection.com/blog/category/2007-food-recall/
reports that as of April 30, 2007, pet owners have reported 14,228 problems to its Web site database. http://www.petconnection.com/recall/
Total deaths reported in cats reached 2,334 and in dogs 2,249.

Although the Chinese pet food manufacturers insist that there is no problem with melamine, it is an illegal additive in the U.S. That makes you wonder how effective FDA oversight is for pet food or other animal feed. There are preliminary reports that both chickens and hogs have also been fed melamine-contaminated food.

If the FDA couldn’t catch the melamine mess, we wonder what else it is missing. More and more, pharmaceuticals or their ingredients are coming from countries like China and India. Labor costs are lower and therefore the raw materials in medicines often cost less than those manufactured in France, Germany or the U.S. How well does the FDA monitor quality in offshore manufacturing facilities?

A pharmaceutical industry insider expressed concern that some generic companies buying these raw materials don’t inspect the plants and may not even take the time to fully test the resulting pills. Nor does the FDA. In fact, the agency relies too much on the honor system. As pet owners have painfully learned, the honor system may not be adequate to protect health.

FDA has posted a list of all the pet foods that have been recalled: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/petfoodrecall/

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