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Date Posted: 12:54:05 pm, Wed, 06/06/07
Author: V~
Subject: Now they've found new contaminants in pet foods.......

Texas lab finds pain medicine in pet food

By Karen Roebuck
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, June 5, 2007


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating a Texas laboratory's finding of acetaminophen in dog and cat food, an agency spokesman said Monday.
"We're very interested in being able to test these samples ourselves to determine the levels of those contaminants," said FDA spokesman Doug Arbesfeld. "What's significant is these things are there. They don't belong there."

The pain medication is the fifth contaminant found in pet foods during the past 2 1/2 months and can be toxic or lethal to pets, especially cats. It is not known if any animals became sick with acetaminophen poisoning, or died from it.

"We were looking for cyanuric acid and melamine, and the acetaminophen just popped up," Donna Coneley, lab operations manager for ExperTox Inc. in Deer Park, Texas, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review yesterday. "It definitely was a surprise to find that in several samples."

At least five dog and cat food samples submitted by worried pet owners and pet food manufacturers contained varying levels of the pain reliever, she said. Only the food, not individual ingredients, were tested.
The medication was found most often with cyanuric acid, a chemical used in pool chlorination, Coneley said. Varying levels of melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, also were found among the hundreds of samples ExperTox tested, she said.

The contaminants were found in foods that are not among the more than 150 brands recalled since March 16, Coneley said. The highest level of acetaminophen was found in a dog food sample submitted by a manufacturer, she said. Coneley declined to identify the company but said its officials were given the results "well over a month ago."

That company should have -- but did not -- notify the FDA, which first learned of the acetaminophen findings after pet owners posted lab reports on the Internet, Arbesfeld said.

"With any poison, it's the amount that matters." said Dr. Wilson Rumbeiha, a Michigan State University pathologist who is working with the FDA on the pet food contamination investigation. His lab has screened for acetaminophen but found none, he said.

The highest level of acetaminophen found by the Texas lab -- 2 milligrams per gram of dog food -- is a large amount, Rumbeiha said. That is eight times what a 10-pound cat could safely consume, he said.

However, a 20-pound dog would have to eat more than 6.5 pounds of food in 24 hours to be poisoned, unless it ate the same contaminated food daily, Rumbeiha said.

A still-unmeasured amount of acetaminophen and cyanuric acid were found in cat food submitted by Don Earl, 52, of Port Townsend, Wash., whose 6-year-old cat, Chuckles, died in January.

He said he was suspicious of two flavors of Chuckles' Pet Pride food because his other two cats refused to eat it and because Chuckles, strictly an indoor girl, had been healthy.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=local&id=5366430

(6/05/07 - KTRK/DEER PARK, TX) - You just thought your pet food was safe. Poison has been found in pet food just months after another scare. A Houston doctor says he's uncovered pet food contaminated with pain medication. The pet food you are feeding your dog and cat could kill them. Experts are now warning that the contaminated pet food scare could be far worse than first thought. We've just learned a local lab has found food contaminated with a common pain medication -- acetaminophen. That's a deadly combination for pets.


The doctor who runs the lab believes the problems with pet food are far from over. His finding has sparked a new federal investigation.

Just one little acetaminophen pill is enough to kill a cat. But according to the lab, this drug was found in at least a half dozen pet food samples.

Technicians at EperTox in Deer Park test all kinds of samples. For the past few months more than a thousand of those samples have been different types of pet food. The results are troubling.

"We don't really how big and how involved this problem is right now. We are only uncovering the beginning of it," said Dr. Ernest Lykissa.

What Dr. Lykissa says he uncovered in his lab is more contaminated pet food. In more than two dozen samples Dr. Lykissa says either cyanuric acid or acetaminophen were found.

"Poisonous yes, if we're testing for it here, it's potentially poisonous to you," he said.

The highest level of acetaminophen contamination came from a sample sent in by a manufacturer. It tested at 2 milligrams of the painkiller per gram of dog food.

"So if you put two milligrams of Tylenol in little bit of food, that's an extremely high concentration," explained Dr. Michael Huddleston with the Bellaire Animal Clinic.

That's a concentration that could make a dog sick and could even kill a cat.

Dr. Huddleston warned, "Cats are extremely sensitive to this drug."

ExperTox lab manager Donna Coneley was so troubled by the results that she verified the tests.

"We were questioning that," she admitted. "We took that same sample and did an extraction."

Due to a confidentiality agreement, the lab can not reveal which pet food samples tested positive for the drugs. At least one sample was Pet Pride cat food. All test results were reported to the pet food makers, which should have been reported to the FDA.

It may be up to owners to police pet food because, according to the lab manager, no one from the FDA has investigated their positive findings. In fact, to date not a single government inspector has asked to look at one of the tainted pet food samples tested in this laboratory.

Late this afternoon, an FDA spokesperson says the agency is trying to get those samples. For now Dr. Lykissa considers the quality of pet food questionable.

He said, "The FDA has to become a lot more vigilant, because if we're finding those things who knows what we're not finding."

The tests were conducted over the past month. An FDA spokesperson says the agency wants to test the samples independently to determine the levels of contaminants.

The makers of Pet Pride food said court order prevents them from commenting on our story.

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