Pet Connections was there and live-blogged the whole thing.
The issues discussed included the announcement by Royal Canin in South Africa that they received tainted *corn* gluten from China. They say only two African countries are affected. Plus, the second company supplied the poisoned food rice gluten by Wilber-Ellis in SF is “Blue Buffalo.” They have recalled Select Kitten Dry Food, product code: “Best Used By Mar. 07 08 B.â€
The FDA says upwards of 15,000 pets have been affected by the poisoned food (I refuse to use the word ‘tainted.’ It’s an ineffective and diminishing euphemism for nothing less than a poisoning).
Pat S. provides some bullet points of some of the discussion:
Short version:
- Checking all wheat and rice gluten coming from China, not checking corn gluten yet. (So far only South Africa known to be affected.)
- Apparently entrusting companies to test and initiate recalls of any kind of contamination. Industry’s responsibility to check their sources.
- Latest info on number of illnesses and death: 15,000
- Companies receiving tainted gluten will not be named unless they confirm product was manufactured using the gluten.
- Can’t guarantee contaminated gluten not in “diverted” into other products, i.e., human food.
- FDA tracking disposition of pigs feed with hog feed using contaminated gluten.
Please go to the Pet Connections site and read their live-blog of the FDA conference. Lots of good information. Also, the usual Menu Food/Pet Food Recall post here in Tammy blog is being updated with more information as well.
This just sickens me (no pun intended). I turned to Blue Buffalo because it was very natural and now THEY are poisoned too? Granted my cats weren’t eating the kitten food but this is really scary stuff.