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Friday, March 30, 2007

Your pet -- and you -- may still be at risk
Posted by Jill | 1:14 PM
The tainted wheat gluten from China that has sickened and killed pets across the country may not be limited to wet pet foods. It may be in kibble as well -- or even in the human food supply -- and the FDA ain't talking:

In an FDA press conference this morning, a reporter asked the FDA’s Dr. Stephen Sundlof if people could be feeding unsafe food to their pets right now, because the FDA won’t reveal the name of a company - that makes dry “kibbled” food as well as “wet” pet food - that received wheat gluten from the same source Menu did.

The response? “It is possible, but I think we’ve been following every lead that we can. My sense is that we have gotten most of it under control.”

As soon as we have any information, he assured reporters at a press conference this morning, we’ll notify the public. Except for the name of the company, it seems.

How about the numbers? asked another attendee. You’re still saying only 15 confirmed deaths, but some reports are in the thousands. How do you explain the discrepancy?

Dr. Sundlof said FDA can’t confirm any cases beyond those first few in Menu’s test labs, even though they have received over 8800 additional reports, because “We have not had the luxury of confirming these reports.” They’ll work on that, he said, after they “make sure all the product is off the shelves.”

He pointed out that in human medicine, the job of defining what constitutes a confirmed case would fall to the Centers for Disease Control, not the FDA… and there is no CDC for animals.

Updated: Karen Roebuck of the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, who broke the story earlier this morning that melamine, not aminopterin, had been found in the tested foods, asked if any of the wheat gluten had found its way into the human food supply.

The response: “At this point we are not aware that any of that went into human food.” They do know the company that supplied the contaminated wheat gluten, and are tracking its shipments, but they aren’t disclosing the name of the company.

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