I blogged about the pet food recall the other day, but there have been new findings. During their investigation, they were focusing on the change in wheat gluten...which wheat gluten itself wouldn't cause kidney failure....but what they found in the contaminated foods would...
Rat poison.
Yep, they don't know how it got there either because it wouldn't make sense to spray a crop with rat poison. Aminopterin is the name of the toxin discovered. Actually, it's not used as rat poison here in the US, but rather as a cancer drug. Even the tiniest amounts of it in food would cause kidney failure in pets (which lead to deaths, of course, and the number is up to 16 at this point...but likely higher because not everyone has heard about the recall and wouldn't necessarily report their pet's death as being linked). In humans, aminopterin, inhibits the growth of malignant cells and suppresses the immune system, so it's beneficial as a cancer drug. Otherwise, it's highly toxic and is quite tragic that it got into millions of cans of pet food.
You can read an updated article here.
I'm posting mostly over at Quirky Cookery right now, where I play with my food and teach you to have fun with it, too. Come check me out?
Menu Pet Food Recall Update--Rat Poison
Posted by Jessi
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