It has been one year since the massive pet food recalls of spring 2007. We now know that an outbreak of pet food induced illness and death in Asia in 2004 was also caused by contamination of grains by melamine and cyanuric acid. If only this had been known prior to the 2007 outbreak, the cause certainly would have been identified sooner.
Melamine was added to grains by Chinese manufacturers to artificially raise the tested level of protein in the ingredient. This allowed the ingredient to pass specifications, although it was not truly the correct ingredient at all. The melamine alone is not toxic, but in combination with cyanuric acid, another chemical by-product that was also present in the grain, the two lead to kidney failure.
In 2004, a massive outbreak, affecting 6,000 dogs and an unknown number of cats in Asia was linked back to dog and cat foods manufactured by Mars Inc in Thailand. Researchers could not identify the cause and thought that a fungal toxin was the most likely culprit.
Fungal toxins were also on the list of possible contaminants during the spring 2007 recall, affecting more than 1,000 types of pet food here in the US. Researchers at University of Georgia and also at Mars Incorporated identified the same crystals that were found in the animals that died last spring in retained samples from the 2004 outbreak in Asia.
Greg Aldrich, a consultant with Pet Food & Ingredient Technologies, does not believe that this knowledge would have prevented the recall last spring since the ingredients were sourced from Thailand in the 2004 Asia outbreak. However, it seems likely that scientists might have known to look for this compound earlier in the situation if a previous outbreak had been recorded.
