For an update on what wheat gluten is and why we import most of it, please click here.Thank you, catmanager, for this very important in...
Now this....
Hills, a reputable pet food company that makes Science Diet and veterinary precription diets, has recalled its feline a href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/30/news/companies/bc.petfood.melamine/?postversion=2007033018">m/d kibbleThe feline m/d is made with wheat gluten, from the same source as that found in Menu Foods' recalled products. Once again, this wheat is grown in China. What are we growing in the Prairie provinces and down in the US? Figs? Can we not procure our wheat from our own farmers? At least this way we'd know that banned rodenticides will not be found on the crops. When Menu Foods recalled some of their foods, I thought...
Not a fungus
Nope. Not a fungus, although quite a pretty electron micrograph below, wouldn't you say? Everyone knows it already: the compound found in the pet food is called aminopterin. It is a rodenticide that is not approved for use in Canada or the US. Aminopterin has a similar mode of action as methotrexate, a commonly used chemotherapeutic drug. The typical rodenticides (at least those known to vets) inhibit vitamin K synthesis, important in blood clotting. This is why veterinary patients can hemorrhage after ingesting this type of rodenticide. Rodenticides causing kidney failure (acute tubular necrosis, more specifically) was hitherto (who am...
Pet food recall: Update
Aspergillus: could this be the illness-causing culprit in the recalled pet food?After speaking with a close friend of mine who is an ACVP-certified veterinary pathologist, he has confirmed that pathologists across the continent have been describing similar, if not identical, findings in tissue samples from patients having died of the suspected "tainted" pet food. Acute tubular degeneration and necrosis, with numerous intratubular birefringent crystals. The exact nature of the crystals is not clear (whether they are oxalate or not). Those finding are not specific and the etiology remains unknown at this time, but Aspergillus-associated oxalate...
Pet food recall
If your cat or dog becomes sick in the next few days, look no further than the bag of pet food in your kitchen. Retailers across North America are pulling bags of pet food from their shelves after several cases of renal failure in cats and dogs were linked to these foods. This is quite scary. So far, the exact source of illness is unknown. I was relieved to see that the foods I feed my kitties are not on the recall list.To boot, the company making the food is based in Ontario. In the spotlight once again, this will surely get tourists wanting to visit Ontar...
Cesar's Way
Likely millions have read the bestseller "Cesar's Way," authored by a man born in Mexico, who now runs a very successful canine behavioural rehabilitation center in California. It was shelved for a few months and having little interest (for now) in the last book I was reading, I just picked it up. Wow, is all I have to say. I concede I have just started it and therefore should not even be offering an iota of an opinion, but I KNOW that I am going to like it and, most importantly, agree with his views on dog behaviour, its roots, and its treatment. In the foreword, the president of the International Association of Canine Professionals (?),...
