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Pet Food Recall AGAIN!


meagain

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Meagain,

I've been told before that Iams is bad. I know. The last people that told me were the vets.......selling Science Diet.......which has been recalled.

What do you recommend for two 10 year old cats, and one 5 year old cat? It has to be dry.

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Mark - I'm glad you came back here cuz it's been bothering me all day. I'll come up with a list for you. You're in the Atlanta area? So Orijen might actually be around you now. They are in Canada and it's a biatch to get their product but they're trying. Much of the choice has to do with what you feel a proper diet should be. I'm of the camp that cats are carnivores that don't need or wouldn't eat grain. They (and dogs) have fang teeth and not cow/goat teeth like we have. Anyhoo.... I've been really sold on Innova EVO dry. I've been through all the boutiquey types and dang - my cats adore this stuff. I trust it and it's got the high protein I feel cats need. There are a few others that I would recommend but I'd have to compile something. It's very very tricky right now. One has to know for sure where the food products are coming from, the distributors, MANY sites claim they get their stuff from the US but we NOW know that the US products can have originated in China, etc. But besides this recall stuff - That's bad food.

I have to differ with PhilMays. I didn't look at the dog but the basic adult dry cat of Flint River is: Chicken meal, GROUND YELLOW CORN, Lamb meal, CORN GLUTEN MEAL, Poultry fat. Now. Corn is cr*p. There are many reasons why it's cr*p, but let's just say "cr*p". But, we know there are issues sprouting up with "corn gluten" that are now being recalled. IDK if the corn gluten recall has spread here but many of these companies are whoreing all these GRAIN ingredients that they don't even know what they have! Corn gluten has tested positive for Melamine in S. Africa which sells here in the US (Royal Canin). Innova EVO is fairly readily available and grain free. Given that many think grain free is the way to go... but moreso this recall issue has spread from wheat to rice and now to corn glutens/proteins, etc.... It seems grain-free might enable avoidance of checking these darned complicated lists each day. Thing is, I've tried these high end drys and dang if they didn't stop crying for canned in the morning, etc. They love it. Their coats have improved and I was feeding good food to begin with. I used to breed and show Siamese in CFA. But really, most anything is better than Iams. :)

Good forum on this issue: http://64.79.216.38/~itchmo/forums/index.php?board=52.0 The itchmo 'blog' for breaking news http://petsitusa.com/blog/

http://thepetfoodlist.com/forums/index.php

http://petsitusa.com/blog/

http://www.howl911.com/



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I didn't know about all these "boutique" pet food manufacturers. Many names being mentioned here I have never heard. I just don't look for cat food on the internet. I should broaden my horizons I guess.

I always heard negative possibilities about feeding pets raw food (meat)......but everyone here mentioning it is having miracle results.

Meagain, thanks for the concern and leg work. I am in the Athens area...about 60 miles east of Atlanta. I just buy cat food at the grocery store, the vet, or the tack store down the road. Whichever is closest and "about next" in the rotation.

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I get mine from Pet Supplies Plus. IDK where they are spread to. Petsmart had bad food last time I checked, but most pet shops should have decent food. Especially now! Everyones learning about ingredients/labelling and buying the better foods. Not much of a choice actually! So hopefully pet shops have been stocking more. I bought the last small bag of my cat food today so they are flying off the shelves faster. Also Mark - any pet shop will stock something for you. At least as a test and they'll also special order from you. Especially now. Course then there's online but no ideal. The changes noticed in pets so pretty dramatic depending on the food. Really important.

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hmm, didn't look up the cat stuff. Their dog food has no corn in it......so...... i just assumed......sorry I almost killed your Kat.....

EDIT: just looked it up again and they do use corn in the Kat food. They claim there is a benifit to felines....but I'm not in that line of work so I cannot claim to know if that is a correct statement or not.

SECOND EDIT: If you notice in my avitar, my oldest pug is "the man" holding my Kat down. Corn didn't kill him, the back right tire of my dodge ram 2500 did....that was a very sad day indeed, two weeks ago.

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One of the lawyers who works for me just got his two dogs out of the Pet Hospital after a week. His dogs got real sick a week or so ago, at first they thought it was Lepto, the stuff you get from Rodent urine. There kidneys shut down and they had to stay in the hospital while they were being flushed with IV and even dialysis. Long story short, they figured out it was the rice and venison stuff that someone previously posted about, Dick VanPatton's something or other. His was the first case in Texas, several dogs have died here in Austin, but both of his have made it through. His vet bill is over 6K!!!!!

I saw people talk about Flint creek, if that is the one I am thinking about, it is make in Co. by former hippies, supposed to be great stuff. Since we went to organic after seeing Mark's post we have not had to worry, but were looking at places like Flint Creek as a back up when we didnt want to make a bunch of rice and chicken.

Travis

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Here's a link for the dogfoodanalysis's reviews of Flint River dog dry http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showcat.php?cat=all&stype=1&si=flint+river This site has a rating system of 1-6 with 6 being the best. I'm seeing some of these Flint Rivers rated at 2, some 4. Seems the main complaint is the high grain content in the top ingredients. I see it does have alot of grains up there instead of protein from meat. Some say since rice bran is the 3rd or 4th ingredient, they consider it filler. They don't seem to use much meat protein.

Here's a list of their 6 star dry dog foods (very short list): http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showcat.php/cat/8

The top 4-5 ingredients are super important like our food labels. Or, find the fat listed (usually #6 or so from the top) and anything before that is the key stuff. Sorry for the cut & paste links.

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meagian,

I'm certainly not wishing to argue with you over a brand of dog food, but, it really depends on where you go for your ratings. I have not gone to your site to see the ranking but pulled up, at randum, sites for dogfood ratings. Animalark.com who I assume is run by Dr. Linda Wolf, DVM, ranks Azmira, California Natural, Canadie, Eagle Pack, Flint River Ranch, Innova, Sojourner Farms, & Solid Gold as her highest rated dry dog food.

While her rankings were done in 2001, I found none of these on the recall list.

What I can say is this. Our dogs have a very healthy coat, they pass our vet check-ups with flying colors, they have small healthy poop that biodegrades quickly, and they LOVE it dry!

When I switched them over, of course there was a break in time as with all diet changes, but once acclimated they couldn't be happier. We couldn't either.

I'm not saying Flint River is the best, but it is HIGHLY thought of and a very good dog food.

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OK, I went to that site. While it looks "neat" I could not find who sponsors it nor how they derived at their rankings. Let me also say I am not bashing any of those foods either, they all looked fine and some looked better than what I'll have for lunch[;)].

I think when you get into these lines they are probabally all pretty good. I know that the holistic and natural line of dog foods have expanded 5 fold in the past few years.

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I'm not dissing your food at all, only that alot of people question the use of flour, ground rice, millet, etc. in the top ingredients or as a protein source.

The dog food project: discusses all ingredients pertaining to cat/dog & has nice tabs to surf around: http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=betterproducts

Great dog forum solely on foods (useful for cat people too), they are pretty obsessed. Lots of breeders, etc. and very good/easy search engine: http://forum.dog.com/asp/tt.asp?forumid=80

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I think that buying pet food could be a major issue if one lives in an urban area, since the only source tends to be pet stores or grocery stores where profit is the driving issue on the choices.

Never had any problems with the 100 pound bags of "Old Roy" or the Purina 'maintenance' diet from the feed store. "Akila" (90%+ Arctic Wolf and 10% Godzilla..) likes it. Fortunately, wolves are omnivores, and he loves vegetables, etc. Never had a scrap of food wasted.... On the corn issue, we sometimes will mix cracked corn (local ground, and from the feed store and used as a winter supplement with the horses) with his food; it seems to do just fine as a gluten supplement for his coat. He's 12 years old now and vet checks him every 6 months; verdict: "very healthy, should live for full 20+ years".

The barn cats and porch cats will eat anything.... We feed them some bulk cat food from the feed store, but not too much. They are fat & happy, but they tend to "supplement" their diet with rabbits, mice, and anything else that crosses the pasture or comes near the pole barn where the round bales of oat hay are kept. So I guess we're lucky and don't have to buy much for them. They clean up Akila's leftovers and one of them absolutely loves week old shepherd's pie leftovers, especially peas!.... We've not had edible garbage for years since we moved out in the "country", We "recycle" everything.

Here's a picture of Akila. It's hard to get him to pose for anything.

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Groomlake - He's gorgeous!


Criminal Probe Opened in Pet Food Scare
FDA Says Charges Possible; Tainted Pork Confirmed in Calif.
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 21, 2007; Page A10


The Food and Drug Administration has opened a criminal investigation in
the widening pet food contamination scandal, officials said yesterday,
as it was confirmed that tainted pork might have made its way onto
human dinner plates in California.

More than 100 hogs that
ate contaminated food at a custom slaughterhouse in California's
Central Valley were sold to private individuals and to an unnamed
licensed facility in Northern California during the past 2 1/2 weeks.
The hogs consumed feed that contained rice protein tainted with
melamine, the industrial chemical that has sickened and killed dogs and
cats around the world.

Almost a dozen companies have found
that they have used melamine-contaminated ingredients from China in
their animal foods, either wheat gluten, corn gluten or rice protein
concentrate. In the United States, more than 60 million containers of
cat and dog food have been pulled from the market in the past five
weeks.

People who bought pork from the American Hog Farm, a
1,500-animal facility in Ceres, Calif., between April 3 and April 18
are being advised not to eat the meat, California health officials said
yesterday, although there have been no reports of illness in either
people or the hogs. Authorities are tracking down all the
purchasers....

Read the rest of this article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042002016.html?hpid=moreheadlines
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I'm not dissing your food at all, only that alot of people question the use of flour, ground rice, millet, etc. in the top ingredients or as a protein source.

The dog food project: discusses all ingredients pertaining to cat/dog & has nice tabs to surf around: http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=betterproducts

Great dog forum solely on foods (useful for cat people too), they are pretty obsessed. Lots of breeders, etc. and very good/easy search engine: http://forum.dog.com/asp/tt.asp?forumid=80

I see, no harm no foul!

The people I buy the Flint River from are top handlers and breeders of Champion Irish Setters. One of theirs was shown in Westminster this year. They are VERY anal about their dogs, in fact it bores me sometimes.

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You will pardon me but I find allot of the marketing hype fascinating. So here are a few comments of one trying to stradle the fence between scary reality and the hype.

Despite the recommendations of the 'all natural' crowd, most of the foods that are highly recommended and who claim to be so much better contain "natural flavors" - a most intriguing legal definition which includes MSG and of which MSG by far the largest single ingredient used under that nomenclature, as well as "tapioca" occurring as the 2nd or 3rd most prominent ingredient used in a preponderance of the 'grainless' foods. Of course tapioca is a derivative of the cassava plant, which ironically enough contains a "natural" toxin. Although the red branched variant is slightly less harmful than the green branched variety. But the toxin is not suffienctly lethal to prevent the red branched variant to be consumed directly as opposed to the additiuonal processing the green branched variety requires. But hey, all is OK, as tapioca, which is a starch and most commonly used as a food thickener, is also used as a binder.

And all of that hype being due to grain's potential for aflatoxin,
a toxic mold that occurs due to improper storage. And if the grain can
get it, think of what the meat is subject too - especially as almost
all of the dry food has a shelf life of at least a year...think: the
plastic sandwiches in the dispensing machines that can exist 'just
fine' for an almost indefinite period at room temperature...)

And the meat "byproducts" eschewed by so many are simply the various organ meats, tripe, cartilage, etc featured in so many other "all natural" foods. I guess it all depends on how they want to list it, as a more prominent category listed higher up in the ingredient list, or broken into component parts which relegates the 'pieces and parts' further down on the ingredient list. The irony is that many of these byproducts are actually more nutritious than the prime cuts that we like on our table. But then again, many of them are also more highly concentrated with additives fed to the animal during its lifetime. I mean, as the liver is essentially the oil filter of the animal, would you eat beef (or ANY OTHER) kind of liver coming out of the food industry - assuming it tasted edible?

What is interesting, is that few if any specify the ultimate original sources of any of the ingredients. After all, a major source of "meat", that exotic ingredient so many focus upon, is from the traditional industrial sources for meat - namely the culled poultry from egg farms who no longer produce at their maximum capacity, but which have led a life of extreme hormonal and antibacterial doping partially due to their accelerated life cycles and close packed quarters. And hey, this meat. while not allowed to be used for human consumption, is just fine for animal feed. But them, just about all meat sources are exposed to some degree of hormonal and antibiotic treatment. And I won't even get into the wonderful legal definitions of '"open range" or "free range". Well, at least they can extend their heads out of the cage. And natural? Oh, many think that this means the animals have not been treated with accelerated does of hormones or antibiotics? Right. And "Natural" means "natural". Semantics, you say? Do a little research into what the legal definition of "Pure" means. Basically it means "whatever you put in there" - hecks, its "pure" stuff! In other words, if the mix of sugar you specify contains 60% sand, well, its "pure sugar"! But I am sure the "pure" label makes you feel better. And I an quite sure whoever labels the product as such is hoping that as well.

But my intent is not simply to denigrate any 'class' of food, but simply to illustrate that there is indeed more to product than the labeling.

Heck, have any of you actually tried to find items in the store labeled as actually having trans fats? Its a hoot! Crisco almost doesn't qualify! As long as they can define the serving size and specify the percentage of trans fat per the serving size, it is a farce. Does it matter that a serving size of potato chips is 1.5 chips? Well, you tell me. But what is amazing is that without changing ingredient composition, trans fats have almost disappeared - despite the food still containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil! And that is in addition to the lousy quality of palm, cottonseed, soy, and so many of the 'new improved healthy oils' that have been pushed in the last 10 years that are even more reactive than those 'bad' oils they were intended to be a healthy replacement for!

So, be careful and hopefully you can reach a reasonable median between natural hype (hey, its a big LUCRATIVE bidness!!!!) and the literal junk thats out there that makes no special claims.

Now, I wonder how many are hopping mad and how many have a wry smile on their faces after reading this! [:P]

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A few of these foods claim 'human grade' meats, etc. It's my understanding by-products are not human grade. I mean, unless one goes to 100% home made, one has to try to zero in on the best one can do research as best as possible and surf forums for opinions/results of the foods. Otherwise Mas - taking suggestions.

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Unreal http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N23332213.htm

"Now, another company is suspected of importing rice protein from China,
Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Maria Cantwell of
Washington said in a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.


"We have learned that in addition to Wilbur-Ellis, a second United
States company imported a shipment of rice protein from China that is
also likely to be contaminated with melamine," the senators wrote. "We
request the FDA identify this second importer as well as those
manufacturers to which it may have sold the contaminated product."

An aide to Durbin said the senators found out about the second importer from industry sources."
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