WISCONSIN FEELS EFFECTS OF RECALL; Tainted Pet Food Hitting Wallets; Some Are Struggling With Hefty

Apr 01, 02:08 PM

Current Headlines: By KAWANZA NEWSON

Sherri Johnson hopes her dog, Akio, will live to see her 7th birthday today.

The usually playful 60-pound boxer mix is recovering from emergency surgery to repair her bladder, which was damaged after calcium built up in her kidneys.

She's now urinating blood and wincing with each bathroom break.

When she feels like eating, she nibbles on special food provided through her veterinarian. Iams canned food is no longer welcome in the household.

"It's been financially hard on us, but emotionally hard on my 10- year-old daughter," said Johnson, of Janesville. She also has a 7- year-old son.

Instead of running around with the kids, Akio remains in her kennel, or is tied to the bedpost, so that she won't tear her stitches.

Last week, both of Johnson's children offered money they'd been saving for a trip to Disney World to help cover Akio's vet bills, which are now more than $2,000, she said.

The vet costs for Akio have left the family unable to take their 11-year-old cat, Bandit, in for a check-up. Bandit also ate canned Iams food, and he has started to lose weight and control of his bladder, Johnson said.

The Food and Drug Administration says that it's received more than 8,000 complaints from pet owners who say their cats or dogs were sickened or killed after eating one of the nearly 100 brands of "cuts and gravy" recalled food produced by Menu Foods in March.

On Friday, the agency said that melamine, a chemical found in plastic, had been found in food samples and in the wheat gluten used as an ingredient in the wet-style products of Menu Food products. They also notified Hill's Pet Nutrition that melamine and melamine byproducts were detected in wheat gluten in its dry cat food. Both Hill's and Menu Foods used the same wheat gluten supplier.

Hill's has recalled its Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry cat food, which is sold exclusively through veterinarians.

And Saturday, Nestle Purina PetCare Co. announced a recall of all its Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy wet dog food with specific date codes, saying it contained a contaminated wheat gluten from China.

The FDA says that it did not find aminopterin, a rat poison that had been identified last week by the New York State Food Laboratory and Cornell University scientists, in any of the samples the agency tested.

The name of the company that supplied the wheat gluten is still being withheld.

Also Friday, Menu Foods "expressed confidence" that foods produced outside the recall period were "safe and healthy for consumption by North America's cats and dogs."

"Quite simply, one supplier's product was adulterated with a material that is not part of any known screening procedure for wheat gluten," said President and Chief Executive Officer Paul K. Henderson. "The important point today is that the source of the adulteration has been identified and removed from our system."

Kidney failure questions

But questions still remain, said Steven Hansen, a veterinary toxicologist and senior vice president with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

For example, it's still unclear if melamine is the cause of the kidney failure seen in the animals, he said.

Many older animals, particularly cats, could possibly have an underlying kidney condition that had gone undetected, though eating the contaminated food would have exacerbated the condition, he said.

And that's the problem that local vets say they're having a hard time untwining.

John Beltz, a veterinarian at the Wisconsin Veterinary Referral Clinic in Waukesha, says that the facility saw 14 suspicious cases - eight cats and six dogs - between March 18 and March 25. Of those, seven showed mild or severe symptoms. Two owners chose to have their cats euthanized, likely because their condition had been pre- existing, he said.

The other seven animals had normal lab results, Beltz said.

At the Animal Emergency Center in Glendale, three older, sick cats were seen whose owners reported that they'd been regularly fed the recalled food, said Elke Rudloff, an emergency and critical care specialist with the center.

One owner chose euthanization, she said.

Akio's owner hopes that her family doesn't have to face a similar situation.

"Last week was a living hell," she said. "But you can tell she's feeling better because she's now wagging her tail."

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