I'm a contributing editor for Universal Press Syndicate's Pet Connection, a syndicated pet column appearing in around 70 newspapers nationwide. We've been covering the pet food recall story on our blog as well as our column.
I just got out of an FDA press conference, where a reporter asked the agency's Dr. Stephen Sundlof if people could be feeding unsafe food to their pets right now, because the FDA won’t reveal the name of another company - one that makes dry or "kibbled" food as well as "wet" pet food - that received wheat gluten from the same source Menu did.
The response? "It is possible, but I think we’ve been following every lead that we can. My sense is that we have gotten most of it under control."
As soon as we have any information, he assured us this morning, we’ll notify the public.
Except for the name of the company, it seems.
How about the numbers? asked another attendee. You’re still saying only 15 confirmed deaths, but some reports are in the thousands. How do you explain the discrepancy?
Dr. Sundlof said FDA can’t confirm any cases beyond those first few in Menu’s test labs, even though they have received over 8800 additional reports, because "we have not had the luxury of confirming these reports." They’ll work on that, he said, after they "make sure all the product is off the shelves."
He pointed out that in human medicine, the job of defining what constitutes a confirmed case would fall to the Centers for Disease Control, not the FDA... and there is no CDC for animals.
Karen Roebuck of the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, who broke the story earlier this morning that melamine, not aminopterin (a rat poison), had been found in the tested foods, asked if any of the wheat gluten had found its way into the human food supply.
The response: "At this point we are not aware that any of that went into human food." They do know the company that supplied the contaminated wheat gluten, and are tracking its shipments, but they aren’t disclosing the name of the company.
They are, however, doing "100 percent review and sampling of all wheat gluten from China."
We'll update at PetConnection.com with more reports from the FDA conference throughout the day.
UPDATE LATE ON FRIDAY, MARCH 30:
From Hills Pet Nutrition, Inc.:
"In accordance with its over-riding commitment to pet health and well-being, Hill's Pet Nutrition, Inc. is voluntarily recalling Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry food from the market. Hill's is taking this precautionary action because during a two-month period in early 2007, wheat gluten for this product was provided by a company that also supplied wheat gluten to Menu Foods. U.S. Food and Drug Administration tests of wheat gluten samples from this period show the presence of a small amount of melamine. Prescription Diet m/d Feline Dry represents less than one half of one percent of all Hill's products."