Dog Eat Dog - The Sickness Continues

- 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.thedogpress.com/SideEffects/PetFood-Lawsuit0705.htm

Copyright © 2000 Barbara J. Andrews.  All rights reserved except for brief reference quotations citing author and source.  Article Reprint rights granted only when a working link to this page is provided or if for print media, TheDogPlace.org is listed as source. No portions may be otherwise stored, used, or reprinted in any form without prior express written consent of Barbara J. Andrews