How many dogs and cats died as a result of contaminated pet foods early this year? Its become clear that we will probably never know. Last May, Michael Rogers, director of the Division of Field Investigations for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said in a telephone conference that the agency received as many as 18,000 calls about the recalled foods, with as many as 50 percent alleging an animal death. Certainly as part of a longer-term process, the agency is going to be evaluating this data, and well certainly come out with a final characterization of in total the number of confirmed deaths associated with these recalled products, he said.
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However, our efforts to determine how many people are investigating the reports that FDA received or whether there are actually any people currently working on those reports at all led nowhere. Every FDA spokesperson we encountered told us, Well release the number as soon as we know it.
Information released by other sources suggests that the final number will be much higher than the 17 or 18 cases that FDA accepts as positively confirmed. The Oregon state veterinarian, Dr. Emilio DeBess, states that he has received reports 127 suspect cases of dogs and cats who experienced an adverse response to eating contaminated food; this number includes reports of 49 deaths 20 dogs and 29 cats.
Also, the 20,000 members of Veterinary Information Network (VIN, an online, subscription-based education and communication forum for veterinary professionals) reported almost 1,500 cases of dog and cat injuries and deaths related to contaminated pet food. VIN plans to investigate as many of these reports as they can, in an attempt to independently confirm links between contaminated foods and illness.There is a silver lining to this cloud. Pet food companies are doing more than theyve ever done to secure better ingredients, establish or enforce traceability of those ingredients, monitor their contract manufacturers (if they use one), and communicate with us, the people buying their products.
Of course, in some cases, more than theyve ever done isnt much. Makers of low-cost, low-quality foods will still buy bargain ingredients; theyll just be a tad more certain of the ingredients origin. But the companies who make products aimed at the top end of the market the so-called super-premium foods are pulling out all the stops to accomplish these tasks and earn consumer confidence. On page 14, seven executives from companies that meet the latter description discuss what they are doing (and what they had already been doing) to make top-quality, safe foods.
Many owners who have lost confidence in all commercial pet food makers have found comfort in our series on home-prepared diets, which concludes in this issue. Weve received many letters from owners who have made the switch to home-prepared diets for their dogs and couldnt be happier.
