Dog Food and Rat Poison

In 2001 when Canadian pet food manufacturer Sanimal admitted using ground dog & cat carcasses in their food?  With a menu like this, maybe your poop-eating Labrador has had the right idea all along.

Rat poison (aminopterin) contamination is perhaps the worst and most widespread catastrophe in pet food history. One source, PetConnection, states that 1,871 pets have died (1,067 cats, 804 dogs).

Banfield, the nation's largest chain of animal hospitals, reports several hundred cases of poisoned dogs and cats in the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, Menu Foods, the company which distributed the contaminated food, claims only 16 fatalities (15 cats, 1 dog) not including the seven who died in laboratory testing.

But more important than the body count is the question: why does this sort of thing keep happening? The shocking answer is that almost anything can end up labeled as pet food. T

he FDA states, "There is no requirement that pet food products have premarket approval by FDA," 5 meaning that the FDA is not obligated to test pet food until after consumers report trouble, which, in most cases, is too late.