BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: The stuff of which lawsuits are made...
Thursday, March 29, 2007
The stuff of which lawsuits are made...
Scientific America provides an infuriating article on the poisoned cat/dog food recall, and Menu Foods' response to it.
The company had received reports of potential problems almost a full month earlier, on February 20. But instead of alerting the public, it initiated "tasting trials" on 40 to 50 dogs and cats. Seven of the study animals died of renal failure, beginning on March 2, five days after the testing started. The company still did nothing, waiting over two weeks longer before finally taking action.
Menu Foods attributes the deaths of 15 cats and one dog nationwide (including the test subjects) to the tainted grub. But others claim the numbers are much higher. The Veterinary Information Network, which boasts a membership of 30,000 veterinarians, reports that at least 471 animals were sickened and 104 died from eating contaminated chow. Sarah Tuite, a spokesperson for Menu Foods, refused to comment on the lag time between the first test animal's death and the date of the recall.
So they had reports of pets getting sick and dying, they did their own internal investigation which immediately killed nearly a quarter of the animals in the test, and they still did nothing for two weeks until mounting publicity forced their product recall? Wow. Astonishing incompetence crossed with blinding stupidity. Who runs this company, the Bush Administration?
The article is four pages long and goes into great detail about the cases and the likely causes. It also demonstrates that stupidity isn't limited to North American food companies.
China and some other countries, however, have approved aminopterin for use as a rat poison, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that the lethal concentration of the chemical is three parts per million (ppm) for rats; the amount found in the contaminated food samples was 40 ppm. There is speculation that the poison got into the chow because Chinese farmers sprayed their crops, including wheat, with it to protect them from hungry rodents.
So you're growing wheat for pet food, and you're spraying it with a pesticide that kills rats. Well, nothing could go wrong there. It's not as if rats have any similarities to cats and dogs.
The pet food recall is making everyone paranoid, too. Jinxie's been kind of listless the last couple of days, not wanting (demanding) to play as she usually does, and I'm already worried about her kidneys. Of course she's eating dry food (only wet was recalled), by a different manufacturer, and her symptoms aren't at all the same as those of renal failure... but I'm still kind of worried. After all, it's not as if I could expect the makers of Kirkland Select to admit their cat food was full of poison until the news grew too large to contain.
Update: All joking about poisoned cat food aside, Jinxie isn't looking healthy. I don't think there's anything wrong with her food, which hasn't changed in the past month, but she's been lethargic for two days and something's wrong with her back or hind legs, since she can hardly jump up onto a chair or bed now, when formerly she was capable of damn near leaping onto the refrigerator. I'm definitely leaning towards taking her to the vet on Friday. She's not fond of car travel or the vet's office, but I'm less fond of her dying or remaining crippled. Watching her sleep a minute ago her paws were twitching and it struck me as quite sad -- I bet she could still leap and run in her dreams.
Whatever happens to her at the vet, I can guarantee she'll be mellower than this cat. A warning, turn down your speakers before you click that link. Seriously. I'm not joking.
Update #2: Jinxie has a bladder or possibly kidney infection; the vet said her pee was cloudy and had some blood in it, but he couldn't see anything else wrong with her. She has to pee a lot, it probably burns when she does, and she probably got infected by rubbing up against something filthy. Paris Hilton syndrome, basically.
The vet ran x-rays and blood tests and kept Jinxie all afternoon, but I was able to pick her up in the evening and she's doing okay, though she's mostly spent the night sulking under the bed. She's not going to get a lot happier either, since I've got to give her a daily antibiotic pill for the next two weeks. They'll get word back on the blood tests and x-rays on Monday, but the vet didn't think it would be anything more than the infection.
The damage? $660. This is why I kept pet rats for years; they were fun in a herd and they only lived a year or two tops, so when one got sick or developed a tumor or whatever it was a moment of sorrow and then recycled as snake food. I would have preferred a real pet, like a cat, but this is the problem with real pets; they live long enough to be expensive. I just spent more on Jinxie's health care in a day than I've spent on my own in ten years, and she didn't even really require any treatment; just an examination and some tests.
One of our cats recently had some kidney problems and urinary tract blockage, and it took two nights at the vet and two catheterization treatments to clear him up. It ran us around 450 dollars, so not cheap. He's okay now, and our cats are on a better food diet, some Purina Wellness stuff specifically designed for digestive health. Good luck with the Jinxinator; lets hope she heals well and fast.
after a bout at the vet, my sister invested in cat health insurance. doesn't cover everything but does cover enough to be worth it. like when the anethesia they gave her cat when they cleaned its teeth made the cat's blood pressure drop to almost nothing. Unfortunately, there's no real gurantee that your vet knows what they're doing either. As E&T's dogs suffered through their first vet who only knew how to do the basics and couldn't diagnose anything past antibiotics.
