Dog Eat Dog - The
Sickness Continues
2002 © TheDogPlace
/ Barbara J. Andrews -
KMOV
Channel 4 News is to be commended for reporting the disgusting and dangerous
practice of using discarded bodies from veterinary practices in dog food. But
there is an even worse twist to the horror. It isn’t just the remains of
someone’s pet that your dog eats, he could be ingesting pentobarbital, the
lethal drug used by vets and shelters to euthanize pets. With permission from
KMOV, St. Louis Missouri, I’ll share some of the stuff you don’t want to know,
but for your pet's safety, you have to know!
 According
to the well-documented report, your pet could suffer a toxic overdose of the
euthanasia drugs. “Earlier this month we reported how euthanized dogs and cats
from local animal shelters are taken to the same rendering plant that produces
raw materials for pet foods." The awful truth is revealed by Jamie Allman who
says “It's a sad secret kept by most animal shelters run by local governments.
The dogs and cats they put to death go to one place, a rendering plant in
Millstadt, Illinois where their bodies are boiled down into raw materials that
could be winding up in pet food.“
Like many other dark secretes that affect human foods, the Food and Drug
Administration appears to ignore the problem. The FDA claimed that drugs like
sodium pentobarbital, which is used to kill the animals, did not survive the
rendering process. Now the FDA has proof that it does. We learn that test
results in 1998 have been kept secrete and that "several retail feeds were
confirmed for the presence of pentobarbital" which could have only come from
euthanized animals.”
KMOV quotes Don Aird with the Food and Drug Administration who says they were
prompted to test because the FDA “….had reports from veterinarians that dogs had
died after eating foods that may contain pentobarbital. " Perhaps the worst part
of the gruesome story is that the FDA knows which foods tested positive but they
aren’t telling!!!!
Can you believe that? We continue to feed our dogs “meat and bone meal” AND a
drug used to kill animals but the FDA won’t make them take it off the market and
won’t tell us which foods contain the lethal drugs!
The Allman Report quotes FDA as saying "We'll be releasing all that in January.
The problem is just because its there doesn't mean it's dangerous." The FDA
spokesman says the deaths are “rare.”
We can be grateful to the news agencies for having the courage to uncover and
report this danger because let’s face it, dog food commercials are a major
income source for the media. This station has the facts and has contradicted the
Pet Food Institute who earlier denied that rendered dogs and cats were used in
the production of some pet foods.
The reporter asks “What would the FDA do if this was found in people food?” The
makes-you-wonder FDA response was "If it was in people food we would immediately
have a recall," says Aird. There is a poll on the KMOV website and it will help
the effort if you go there and vote on whether or not you think the FDA should
reveal the names of the pet food companies that tested positive. That’s a
no-brainer but you shouldn’t shrug it off. Especially if you have an ill dog, an
old dog, or one that died mysteriously.
Update:
Lawsuit filed May 2007, details at
TheDogPress.com
http://www.thedogplace.org/Articles/Andrews/Dog.Eat.Dog_02.asp
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