Contaminated Pet Food - There Are Still Unanswered Questions.
Contaminated pet food stories have faded from the news and as the incriminated food has been recalled, taken off shelves, or used up, reports of illness or death of cats and dogs have abated. But there are still a few things to think about.
Melamine and/or related chemicals were found in many pet foods and are thought to be the cause of recent poisoning in dogs and cats. The Chinese were deliberately adding melamine to wheat gluten and rice paste because it's high nitrogen content fraudulently raised the protein levels on tests. That meant they got more money for these products.
It's not clear from the research I did for this column, but I don't think the Chinese just recently started adding melamine to foodstuffs. And in experiments done in 1945 large doses of melamine were given to dogs, rats, and rabbits with no apparent toxicity. In 1958 a patent was issued for its use in cattle as a nitrogen feed supplement. In the 1980's there were reports that melamine and related compounds - cyanuric acid and others - may be more toxic in combination than any of these individual chemicals. They've found crystals containing melamine in the urine of some cats but have yet to demonstrate or explain how these things killed or sickened cats and dogs.
I think media reports of the numbers of illnesses and death were greatly exaggerated. Increased water consumption has been cited as an early symptom and early aggressive intravenous fluids stressed as a life saving treatment. How many reported cases were actually healthy pets whose owners just thought were drinking a lot of water? Increased water consumption may be the only sign of early kidney failure and lab tests, other than urine concentration, may be normal. There are many, many other diseases, as well as diet and stress, that can cause increased water consumption. A kidney biopsy may be required for a definitive diagnosis, and that is expensive, risky, and rarely done. And overzealous intravenous fluids can kill a patient.
Finally, what is being done to prevent more such incidents? Only a small percentage of imported foodstuffs are actually inspected or tested. We have little or no control over conditions of sanitation and purity in other countries, let alone security.
What if, instead of melamine, a terrorist cell had managed to spike something with polonium?
Polonium is the radioactive element used recently to kill the former Russian "Spy" Alexander Litvinenko in England. It is 5000 times as toxic as cyanide. According to Wikipedia, it is "widely used in industry, and readily available with little regulation or restriction." It's probably easier to get than ammonium nitrate fertilizer. One corrupt employee could spike the food. Even if the dose per person in, say wheat gluten or rice paste, was not enough to cause the acute radiation poisoning that killed Litvinenko, in smaller doses it causes cancer.
It took "9/11" to make the guardians of our security start locking cockpit doors on airliners. About a year later, it took the "shoe-bomber" to make them realize security needed to include inspecting shoes. After six years, they discovered a terrorist group plotting to blow up airliners with bombs made from liquids and only then did they start restricting and inspecting liquids.
Will they wait until Al-Qaeda or some other group actually infiltrates a food processing plant somewhere in the world that produces food ingredients that are headed for consumption by people in the United States? How many of us and our pets would be fatally poisoned by the time a "polonium poisoned foods" recall got up and running?