Angry in the Great White North

Before today, the situation could be summarized as follows:

• Something was making thousands of cats and dogs ill across North America; over a dozen animals, all cats but for one dog, succumbed to kidney failure
• Food was tested and recalled -- the common source was the manufacturer Menu Foods
• At first the rat poison aminopterin was detected, but subsequent tests failed to reproduce that finding.
• The consensus was that a high concentration of melamine in wheat Gluten imported from China was somehow responsible.
• One of the questions remaining unanswered was why cats were dying as melamine is not particularly toxic, however the data is based on a 50-year-old study that used dogs as test subjects.

Today is a day when our understanding took several steps back:

The industrial chemical melamine has been found in more pet food, and suspicion is falling on a second pet-food ingredient imported from China as the source of the contamination.

Natural Balance Pet Foods said Tuesday it found melamine in samples of some of its food, which led to a recall. The company suspects melamine was in a rice protein concentrate used as an ingredient, said President Joey Herrick in an interview.

Melamine is the chief suspect related to the Menu Foods recall, first announced four weeks ago for more than 60 million cans and pouches of wet dog and cat food. The melamine in Menu’s products was in wheat gluten imported from China and sold to Menu and several other pet-food makers, which also did recalls.

Melamine again, but this time in rice protein, not wheat gluten. Of course, now they are looking for melamine specifically, and are likely to find it in a number of places where it shouldn't be. But melamine is not particularly toxic, so who knows where else it might be. It might have been there for years.

The rice protein came from...wait for it...China! But that seems to be the only thing in common with the Menu Foods problem:

The rice protein concentrate was imported from China by San Francisco-based Wilbur-Ellis. Herrick says the concentrate, which is being tested, is suspected to have melamine, as it was the only new ingredient. Recalled Natural Balance products include Venison and Brown Rice canned and dry dog foods, dog treats and Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.

Wilbur-Ellis CEO John Thacher said his company sold the concentrate to five pet-food makers, but that most of it went to two firms. One of the primary companies was Diamond Pet Foods, which packs some of the Natural Balance product but doesn’t use the concentrate in any Diamond-made foods, says Diamond spokesman Jim Fallon. The other major customer, which Thacher would not name, tested the rice protein and found no melamine, Thacher says. Natural Balance’s rice protein concentrate is mixed with venison meal, Thacher says.

So the rice protein had melamine...or maybe not.

Got a headache yet? No? OK, this should do the trick:

Natural Balance has received about 10 reports of sick pets, mostly dogs, since Thursday, Herrick says. It started testing the foods Friday, when it also asked retailers to pull the products. As in the Menu recall, some of the pets developed kidney failure, Natural says.

Dogs? But we know from the 1945 study that dogs feed large amounts of melamine had increased urine output, and that's about it. No kidney failure. It was possible that cats are affected differently by melamine than dogs, and that possibility kept melamine as one of the suspects. But now this round of problems affected dogs.

This is just weird.

Rice not wheat.

Dogs not cats.

Even the source of the rice protein is different. The wheat gluten came from Xuzhou Anying Biologic. The rice protein came from Binzhou Futian Biology Technology.

Either the scientific understanding of the toxicity of melamine is grossly inadequate, or it isn't melamine but aminopterin, or melamine is found all over Chinese raw foodstuffs, or melamine was added later, or it was deliberate, or...or...or...

Normally, as more data is revealed, the picture becomes clearer. Right now, the opposite it true. And that to me suggests that there is a lot we don't know yet.

You can read other posts on the pet food recall.

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