Melamine toxicity

Maybe I#%92m misunderstanding the situation, but I was under the impression that when this fiasco began these foods were put through extensive testing and, except for the weird rat poison false alarm, melamine was the only odd substance that showed up. Deductive reasoning would say that melamine must be the problem then

But chemicals interact and this could be the trigger for something else.
 
 

[linkhttp://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa003&articleId=2B10D1F6-E7F2-99DF-34DAAAC1622FE3CE&modsrc=latest_news]http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa003&articleId=2B10D1F6-E7F2-99DF-34DAAAC1622FE3CE&modsrc=latest_news[/link]

ORIGINAL: timsdat
 
It doesn't say anywhere that I can see that 1605 had renal failure problems that was linked to the food.

Apparently I can't compute when I'm skimming. I was looking for the article I read when the first announcements were made several weeks ago. The vet forums are averaging several clients per clinic... I have no doubt that thousands of pets have been affected.

It DOES say a 30% increase in acute renal failure? Is this not alarming to anyone else???

I absolutely find the 30% increase to be terrifying.  I do question tho whether or not the melamine is the ONLY contributing factor here.  And I can only HOPE that if this were the human food supply the FDA and TPTB would be moving somewhat faster.  Although, someone in power needs to remember that while it might be "just a dog", that dog and his breathren contritbute a MASSIVE amount of money to the economy.  Pet business is HUGE.
 
Now, the reason I came here in the first place......tone it down please.  I'm seeing some borderline nastiness going on in the discussion and I'd rather it stopped now.  Thanks.

You do bring up some interesting points.  I believe that there has been allot of hype in the reporting of the story especially by itchmo.  Read their headlines then the story behind them.  They really stretch it sometimes. That also goes for other news reports.

I do believe that there is real validity melamine is part of the cause of the problem.  Maybe not by itself but in combination with other factors. 
As far as the reported deaths well there could be some extra counting going or all problems occurring are being blamed on the food.  Part of the panic.  It always happens that way.  Look at 9/11, remember how many victims were originally reported. 

The way I see it,,if it weren't for itchmo and some of the others blogs and news we would think this is a very small problem. For the most part,,, FDA is still saying there is about 15 to 17  deaths associated with this recall. That was  just stated again on Oprah last week  Those are confirmed, and include the test animals used when Menu tested after getting reports of pets dying. The FDA is not doing a great job of getting out there confirming more..maybe because they don't have the resources at this point.
I believe Banfield is being used because their reporting is all going to one place...and there are many Banflields around the US.  Whether anyone likes them or not,  I don't know how many other clinics are able to do that.
If everyone asks their vet how many deaths or illness they have seen because of the food that has been recalled....and each vet says only one,,,it doesn't seem like that many. But mulitply that one by all the thousand of vets is the US,,,we have a diffinate problem.
temsdat, it almost sounds to me like you don't believe any of this. Your lucky if you have that attitude...but me...well, I'm worried!   I also wondered myself if this melmeline has been in the food for a while...but its just now being noticed,,,and I am wondering why also. And I can't seem to forget the first reports of arsenic type chemicals found in the food.  There seems to be more to that story, but it seems that has been kind of dropped. I do feel that it will be a long time before all of this comes together.
Pet Connection is taking reports, have been from the beginning. They are not official, and are a pet-owner database, their numbers are in the four thousand base. Acute renal failure is the problem.

To be absolute on the cause of the death re. melamine, would an autopsy need to be done?  It would seem that tissue sample would need to be taken and looked at to see just what is going on.
 

I agree, Dyan.

"All the hype" that itchmo "creates" or "created" turned out to be TRUE.
It's not like they're going around falsifying information that they release. Maybe they make it look "huge", but as pet owners who might feed their dogs this food and with ALL the reported illnesses from this, HOW THE HECK can it even be considered "hype". I'm glad that SOMEONE is informing pet owners of what is (or might be) in the foods they're feeding their pets. ESPECIALLY since the rice protein concentrate isn't listed in ANY of the ingredients on these foods.

We, as pet owners, trusted companies with the lives of our pets. Now we find out they're poisoning them. Maybe not intentionally, but we have a RIGHT to be angry, a RIGHT to question, a RIGHT to seek out news that will keep us ahead in this situation. There's no more room to blindly trust pet food companies anymore. To me, now it's not about "Well, my dog food company won't be affected because they're grain-free and well it says, "blah blah blah" on their site.", now it's about waiting to see WHEN the foods the rest of feed are going to be recalled.

Thank God for news sources like itchmo. Who else would tell us???
A wait for a scientific study of this ingredient or that ingredient while more and more pets die or become ill??

No thanks.

ORIGINAL: dyan


The way I see it,,if it weren't for itchmo and some of the others blogs and news we would think this is a very small problem. For the post part,,, FDA is still saying there is about 15 to 17  deaths associated with this recall. That was  just stated again on Oprah last week  Those are confirmed, and include the test animals used when Menu tested after getting reports of pets dying. The FDA is not doing a great job of getting out there confirming more..maybe because they don't have the resources at this point.
I believe Banfield is being used because their reporting is all going to one place...and there are many Banflields around the US.  Whether anyone likes them or not,  I don't know how many other clinics are able to do that.
If everyone asks their vet how many deaths or illness they have seen because of the food that has been recalled....and each vet says only one,,,it doesn't seem like that many. But mulitply that one by all the thousand of vets is the US,,,we have a diffinate problem.
temsdat, it almost sounds to me like you don't believe any of this. Your lucky if you have that attitude...but me...well, I'm worried!   I also wondered myself if this melmeline has been in the food for a while...but its just now being noticed,,,and I am wondering why also. And I can't seem to forget the first reports of arsenic type chemicals found in the food.  There seems to be more to that story, but it seems that has been kind of dropped. I do feel that it will be a long time before all of this comes together.
Pet Connection is taking reports, have been from the beginning. They are not official, and are a pet-owner database, their numbers are in the four thousand base. Acute renal failure is the problem.

There are still no hard numbers from reliable sources of pets suffering renal failure due to consumed food and specifically melamine.  Only speculation.  I'm not trying being critical of Banfield or any vet with regard to collecting statistics.  I know they don't have any models to work with and it undoubtably is hard to filter information as to whether renal failure was do to melamine or something else.  But I think you have to take into consideration the flaws in the process and look at the actual real information we have before declaring this some sort of melamine epidemic.

Is the jump in numbers of renal failure a cause for concern?  Absolutely!   The pet food industry is now getting attention on how it conducts business.  Great!  But is this problem on the grand scale that itchmo, petconnection, and howl911 are making it out to be.  I don't think so.  There are conservatively 100 million pet cats and dogs in the US.  If you double the stated 5000 affected, thats 1% of 1% of pets out there.  And that doesn't include the millions in shelters.  This is hardly the end of the pet world.  Yes, to the individual pet owner with a sick pet, it certainly is the end of the world and I am sympathetic.  No pet owner should lose their pet because they fed it food that was supposed to be safe.  However on the larger scale, the level of "melamine paranoia" caused by these websites certainly does not correlate with what actual information we have.

And if the melamine theory does turn out to be a red herring, all this paranoia only serves to keep people in the dark about the real cause.   I'm not saying the problem should be ignored as clearly melamine should not be in food.  Clearly the pet food industry, and perhaps food industries as a whole need a hard look as to how they test their ingredients.  Clearly vets are seeing more pets suffering renal failure than usual.  I just think these Chicken Little websites need to be taken with more than a few grains of salt until there is some real information on whether melamine really is the culprit, at what concentrations it's toxic (for both pets and people), and how many pets have really been exposed.

ORIGINAL: littlesaint
There are still no hard numbers from reliable sources of pets suffering renal failure due to consumed food and specifically melamine. 

When you have 4 indoor cats come into your clinic, the youngest being 4 months old, all with acute renal failure... you think toxin. When the find toxins in the food... are you really going to look elsewhere? When others all over the country are finding the same things, are you REALLY going to look at anything other than the food??? As they tell us in vet school, when you hear hoofbeats, don't look for zebras.

Is it melamine, we don't know yet. And you can darn tootin bet that they're looking into every possibility right now. We get bi-weekly updates from our toxicology teacher here at the vet school. I can continue to get updates from the experts if it would make you happy to hear it from someone other than itchmo.

I can continue to get updates from the experts if it would make you happy to hear it from someone other than itchmo.

[sm=bravo.gif] (sorry, just wanted to use a new smiley).  That was my point exactly, correlation is not causation.  My personal standard of evidence is higher then that and I want to see the science.  An autopsy that shows acute renal failure is meaningless as well since we do not know the pathogenesis of this toxin, how can you definitively say it caused the failure? The answer is you can't.  There has to be some basic science work evaluation what the pathogenisis is of melamine especially since it has not shown to cause renal failure before (like I said before, there are studies dating back to the 80's on this substance).  I still am concerned that there is a second player yet to be identified.  Medicine and science needs to be based in reason not hysteria.  I realize people calm down when they have a target, and that may be part of the reason they fingered melamine so quickly, but that doesn't mean they were correct.

ORIGINAL: ottoluv

  Medicine and science needs to be based in reason not hysteria.  I realize people calm down when they have a target, and that may be part of the reason they fingered melamine so quickly, but that doesn't mean they were correct.

I agree, but to question if the food is the problem is really rather ridiculous. Does anyone have a link to the internal investigation that Menu foods did prior to the recall where 6 animals died?

I think the investigations are excellent. We're finding out things we never would have imagined. It was easy to think that only the chinese would spike the protein levels, but then we found out that American companies were doing the same with the grain-free foods... I'm sure this has been going on for a long time, and its about time there was someone asking hard questions that had the power to get to the internal documents.

but to question if the food is the problem is really rather ridiculous.

 
I don't think anyone is questioning that the food is the problem, just what in the food is the problem.

However on the larger scale, the level of "melamine paranoia" caused by these websites certainly does not correlate with what actual information we have.

The FDA has had thousands of calls...they say that themselves. 
Now,,,  do you want to just go ahead and proceed as usual and wait for the month, maybe years that it might take to figure this all out? I don't!   I want someone out there keeping the lines and thoughts open,,,,maybe they alone will be the ones to MAKE someone do something about all of this.   I want them to make the food companies recall.... I want them to make it known there are more than 17 deaths dues to all of this.
I believe they are not just stopping at the melaline theory, I believe scientists..vets, whoever, are out there trying to figure it all out. But maybe if it weren't for itchmo or some of these sites...we would all be still feeding something that the pet company was covering up,,,,

An autopsy that shows acute renal failure is meaningless as well since we do not know the pathogenesis of this toxin, how can you definitively say it caused the failure?

 
  I think this is as close as they've come so far to answering that;  [linkhttp://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_503671.html]http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_503671.html[/link];
 
Researchers in at least three labs found cyanuric acid, amilorine and amiloride -- all by-products of melamine -- in the crystals of animals' urine, tissues and kidneys, according to Dr. Brent Hoff, a veterinarian and clinical toxicologist and pathologist, at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada; Richard Goldstein, associate professor of medicine at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine and a kidney specialist, and Dr. Thomas Mullaney, acting director of Michigan State University's Center for Population and Animal Health.
 
Michigan State's lab so far has found only the amilorine and amiloride, but Mullaney said he was aware of at least three other labs finding the cyanuric acid in the animals. The FDA asked labs involved in the pet food recall to test for the three chemicals.
 
Finding cyanuric acid is the more significant finding, Hoff, Goldstein and Mullaney said, although they are not yet certain how toxic it is to animals.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web site said, "When ingested (by humans ) in large amounts, the substance may have effects on the kidneys, resulting in tissue lesions."
 
Hoff, Goldstein and Mullaney said amilorine and amiloride were found earlier this week in low concentrations.

The findings have not been announced yet, because officials overseeing the research are seeking confirmation from as many labs as possible, they said.
 
All three are by-products of melamine, which researchers said they believe were formed as the animals metabolized the melamine.