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I don’t quite get the dates you’re citing. The earliest reports of pet illness and death from Menu Foods products were back in late December. I would think that anything made AFTER March 6 is what would be safe (at least as safe as anything is). Menu Foods has said from the start that they had already stopped using the new wheat gluten supplier at the time the recall started. Perhaps they’ve extended the date further back for some reason, but I don’t think they extended it further forward. In this era of “just in time” manufacture and delivery, there’s probably little or no food left on store shelves that was made as far back as November, though there’s likely to be a bit more in people’s cupboards. So the AVMA statement that food being SOLD NOW is safe would be generally true, as long as you steer clear of foods in dusty packages that look like they’ve been on the shelf for an unusual length of time.

Re the “is it the melamine?” question, veterinary experts have been saying since the first day melamine was mentioned that it really couldn’t account for the severe effects seen in dogs, and that it was unknown whether it could produce such severe effects in cats. I’ve never thought for a minute that it was established that melamine was the responsible agent, and I’ve never seen any statement from the FDA that suggested they thought so. The FDA found melamine in pet food that shouldn’t have been there, and MIGHT be responsible for at least some of the food-related kidney failure cases. Foods believed to contain melamine were recalled because the melamine shouldn’t have been there, and because there was at least some known risk from it (of mild and non-permanent kidney damage in dogs), not because a conclusion had been reached that it was THE explanation for all these pet illnesses and deaths.

My point throughout this has been that we don’t really know what the contaminant is, so we clearly don’t know how it got into this batch of wheat gluten (and now there’s even some question as to what country the wheat gluten originated from), and so we really have no idea what else the contaminant might be in. Some of the over-the-top panicking over “pet food”, when there’s very real reason to be concerned about human food, just strikes me as seriously misdirected. There’s no reason to think that a non-recalled brand/flavor of pet food is less likely to be safe than any human food on the market containing wheat gluten (and there are a LOT of those), yet many people are steering clear even of non-recalled brands that don’t contain any wheat gluten, and taking up home-cooking for their pets.

This whole thing is looking like a step-by-step instruction manual to al-Qaeda on how to generate a mass panic and serious economic damage in the US, very easily and inexpensively. That’s the main reason I’ve felt it’s worth the effort to chime in and try to inject some reason and perspective when people start making irrational statements.