Houston Community News >> Pet Food Poison Identified
3/23/2007 (AP)-- Scientists now
think they know what's causing that pet food crisis: rat poison.
A New York lab isolated aminopterin in samples of cat food. A Canadian pet food
manufacturer has recalled 60 million cans and pouches that may be laced with the
chemical.
Scientists fear thousands of dogs and cats may be sickened or killed.
At Alexandria Animal Hospital, Coco the tabby cat is in trouble. Her kidneys
show signs of failure, most likely caused by the poisoned pet food.
Alexandria Animal Hospital is treating six pets who are struggling to recover
after eating food that may have been laced with a rat poison called aminopterin.
The scientists who isolated the aminopterin refused to speculate on how the
poison got into pet foods produced for scores of companies by Menu Foods.
But Menu Foods had been using a new supplier of wheat gluten, a meat-substitute
more commonly used in Asia. And investigators are now trying to determine if the
rat poison might have been used to control rodents in storage facilities in
China.
Paul Henderson, the Menu Foods CEO told a Toronto news conference, "How did
substance get in to pet food. We don't know. We'll check to see. What products,
again we don't know for certain."
The lab released it's early findings in hopes of giving vets new ways to treat
the sickened dogs and cats. But at Alexandria Animal Hospital, veterinarians say
it really doesn't help them much. They will continue to pump the pets with
fluids, hoping to flush the poison out of their kidneys. But there is no
antidote.
Aminopterin is NOT licensed for use as a rat poison in the US, but it is used
overseas. And here's an interesting twist. If this was a US licensed rat poison
like D-Con, vets could treat it with massive doses of Vitamin K.
Doctors used it in the 1950s for to kill human cancer cells in chemotherapy. But
it was so toxic, they gave it up. Now smaller, purer doses are again undergoing
testing for chemo.
(Contributed by AP)