Bigger than you think: The story behind the pet food recall

The March 16 recall of 91 pet food products manufactured by Menu Foods wasn't big news at first. Early coverage reported only 10-15 cats and dogs dying after eating canned and pouched foods manufactured by Menu. The foods were recalled -- among them some of the country's best-known and biggest-selling brands -- and while it was certainly a sad story, and maybe even a bit of a wake-up call about some aspects of pet food manufacturing, that was about it.

At first, that was it for me, too. But I'm a contributing editor for a nationally syndicated pet feature, Universal Press Syndicate's Pet Connection, and all of us there have close ties to the veterinary profession

Have you interviewed the owners of PetConnection.com? If not, then how do you know whether or not they are including all of the "no" responses to those questions (has pet been seen by Vet, has pet eaten recalled food, etc.). Neither you nor I know what numbers they are including in their total deceased number. It's equally as possible that they are including ALL reported deaths as it is that they have pre-screened and only included deaths that said "yes" to all those questions. The entire point of that self-reported database is that there are thousands of potential cases related to the recall, so everyone should be taking it very seriously.

We can argue about details of what FDA does or doesn't do all day long. Frankly, none of that is relevant to me. What is relevant is that someone has a moral responsibility to make sure that people are informed when something this severe and deadly is in the food supply. And you can bet that if this same situation were happening in the human food supply (with the same numbers of human illnesses and deaths), the FDA would darn-sure be reporting "potentially thousands" of deaths, and they would be freggin' adamant, urgent, and LOUD about it, whether or not ANY of them could be confirmed at the time. They would darn sure make sure that additional deaths didn't happen on their watch. Look at how urgently they (and the media) reported on the Spinach e-coli issue, and that affected a fraction of the numbers that this recall does. So as far as I'm concerned, it's bullpuckey to say the FDA's press releases wouldn't change things if they reported some tiny subset of confirmed illnesses. Here's why:

I belong to a very large animal rescue group that feeds thousands of animals and we can always use donations of food for our animals. When the recall first came out, I personally was trying to obtain some of the recalled food for our animals because "only 16 animals died" out of 60 million cans/pouches recalled and that was such a small number that it was worth taking the risk vs. letting the animals starve to death because we never get enough donations. If I had been successful in doing what I envisioned, which was to get truckloads of the recalled food shipped to our group, we would have potentially KILLED thousands of animals rather than helping them. Fortunately for those animals, I continued to dig into the story and found that the risk was much much higher than "16 animals out of 60 million cans/pouches."

So how many individuals are out there who are NOT well-connected in the animal world like I am, who are simply hearing the "16" animals died, and who are making the same deadly assumption that I did, which is "Only 16 dies, so what are the chances I would get one of the bad cans out of the 60 million cans? The risk is extremely low, so I'll just keep feeding it to Fido."

But if those same individuals would hear on the news "Thousands of animals may be dead or dying due to the recalled pet food. The numbers are not able to be confirmed, but it is imperative that you do not feed your pets this food, because the risk is unknown and may be quite high." The italics indicate TRUE statements that are sufficiently non-committal so they would not put the FDA in a position of confirming any specific deaths, etc., which is what you are concerned about.

You are intelligent enough to know that Lawyers write vague language all the time, so the FDA darn sure could have come up with language that was sufficiently protective of the "public health" (in this case Pets) without locking them into essentially publically testifying on behalf of Pet owners. The fact that FDA did NOT express the severity and urgency and magnitude and risk of this recall is morally reprehensible, regardless of whatever their freggin' regulatory constraints may or may not be. I'll say again, you can be darn sure that if this recall related to human food/illness/death, they would have been LOUDLY all over the news.

We are going to have to agree to disagree from here forward, because I am a perfectly competent, rational, well-informed person, and I will never agree that it "wasn't the FDA's job" to report on the higher numbers, or to report the severity, urgency, magnitude, and risk associated with this recall. The only reason they didn't is because these were "just animals", not people, and that is just plain wrong in my book.

What's amazing is that yesterday afternoon the FDA announced it had identified the source of the salmonella poisoning that triggered a recall of two brands of peanut butter in February, and that the results of their investigation indicate that this could happen at any peanut butter manufacturing plant, and that they have newly classified peanut butter as a "high risk" food and will begin subjecting it to a higher level of monitoring going forward. And there is still not a peep about this on FR, and it's getting very little media coverage. Everyone seems to be so wrapped up in the pet food scare, that the risk of salmonella poisoning from peanut butter, with store shelves currently loaded with inventory produced before the FDA discovered they should have been monitoring this as a high risk food all along, doesn't seem to be worrying anyone at all. There weren't any deaths reported from the February salmonella outbreak, but 425 people were reportedly sickened by the contaminated peanut butter, with many of them requiring hospitalization. And salmonella can kill, and peanut butter is often given to young children who are among the most likely to be killed by it.

I'm glad you were able to determine that the food wouldn't be safe to give to the rescued animals. I just hope the whole contamination and recall issue doesn't get so overblown that it soon becomes much more expensive for financially strapped shelters and rescue groups (and pet owners) to obtain pet food.

I don't think it's fair to keep on accusing the FDA of saying only 16 animals have died. As of March 31, media outlets were carrying the info that the FDA was reporting 8800 complaints on the matter. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_500465.html The FDA's current FAQ page on the pet food recall ( http://www.fda.gov/cvm/MenuFoodRecallFAQ.htm updated 4/3) says:

Q: How many sick or dead cats and dogs have been reported to FDA?

To date, the agency has received over 10,000 complaints. Confirmation that these may be related to the pet food recall takes time and requires follow up by our field staff. Veterinary reports and other evidence need to be collected for each case before any of these reports can be confirmed. In many instances there is insufficient information available to draw a conclusion about a possible association with pet food consumed and pet illness or death. The FDA’s primary concern is in identifying the source of the contaminant, assuring that the recall is effective and providing information to the public.

It’s hard to do ? Maybe for lazy people or those with no imagination.

Step 1 - patronize local produce store and buy in mass quantities from local producers.

Step 2 - freeze or can excess vegs.

Step 3 - buy beef and lamb and chickens from local grass-feeding producer or 4-H club and freeze.

And there you go. Simple, really.

If you have more gumption and initiative you can grow an entire year’s worth of produce in 4 3x3 ft raised bed gardens. Look for the book “Square Foot Gardening” and read from cover to cover. Even someone with only a rowhouse-sized backyard in the middle of a city can grow in quantity.

Of course if all you can do is complain then you will get whatever anyone else wants to put in your food. Good luck with that.

I have read the FDA FAQ, so I know what it says. But what percentage of pet owners have read the FAQ? You are using that FAQ to support your argument that FDA “has done enough” to report this info. My counterpoint is that having only 0.00000001% of pet owners take the time to sleuth out that FAQ is not acceptable.

You are saying the FDA and others should do more to get the word out about peanut butter — that didn’t kill ANYONE.

How can you argue two different points which have the same action by FDA? If the FDA published something on their website about the peanut butter, why isn’t that good enough? You think it’s good enough if they post something on their website regarding thousands of pet deaths and many thousands more pet illnesses.

I’m sorry, but you are essentially saying the FDA has done enough because these are pets. I couldn’t disagree more. But as you pointed out, it doesn’t even matter whether anyone agrees whether pets are “just animals” vs. members of a family... Everyone should be able to agree that the circumstances of this event are not acceptable because it could have just as easily happened in the human food supply... and everyone, even the people who say they are “just animals”, should be able to agree it would not be acceptable for the FDA to handle public notification this way if this were in the human food supply.

Incidently, you have proven one of my points with your peanut butter story: that people are sheep, and if the information isn’t spoon-fed to them, they won’t know anything about it. EVEN FR, as you said, doesn’t seem to notice or care about the peanut butter story because no one in an official capacity has told them they need to worry about it. It’s the same with the pet food - until someone in an official capacity makes a public announcement that the pet food recall is killing thousands, then people will continue to blindly trust and continue feeding potentially contaminated food.

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