Sludge Watch ==> Sniffing out answers in pet food scandal- Pet Owners go to private labs

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

This is just like sludge victims who have to sample their own paper sludge 
and sewage sludge samples for contaminants.  In Ontario, Atlantic Packaging 
papermill was using responsible for providing all the lab testing for the 
paper sludge they were spreading on Brock township farmlands.
But it turned out they were using an unaccredited laboratory - Fine Analysis 
Labs.  The test results for the paper sludge contaminants were at sharp 
variance from the split sample analysis that community residents forced the 
Min of Environment to undertake at their own laboratory.

Subsequently Fine Analysis was convicted of fraud- in creating false 
laboratory reports.

Again..at the police press meeting on the laboratory fraud  the Ministry of 
the Environment was noticeably absent -no one sat in the press conference 
chair with their name place.  The Ministry had continued to allow the use of 
unaccredited lab reports for years after they knew the reports failed to 
meet standards of accuracy.

Again and again we are seeing regulators who fail to regulate.  The public, 
as evidenced in this story , do not believe they can count on public 
officials to regualate pet food, or other aspects of their public health and 
safety.

Here are some reports on laboratory fraud:

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/1c8df3f8736388b0852572a000650bfd/188950458f61f18f852570d60070fa17!OpenDocument

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/media/item.shtml?x=586


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CONSUMER WATCH

Sniffing out answers in pet food scandal
Owners who don't trust the FDA are sending samples of suspect products to 
private labs. Tests can cost $100 and up.
By Abigail Goldman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2007


Retired real estate developer Don Earl wasn't interested in playing 
detective when his cat, Chuckles, died in December of sudden and mysterious 
kidney failure.

Earl, a resident of Port Townsend, Wash., said he suspected he knew what 
happened to his 6-year-old orange-and-white longhair when he heard reports 
of thousands of similar dog and cat illnesses last winter and the recall of 
tens of millions of containers of pet food.

But his cat's food never made the list. Earl called the Food and Drug 
Administration, offering to send officials unopened samples of the food for 
testing, but he said they declined.

So Earl, like scores of pet owners determined to safeguard their animals or 
explain their pets' demise, took matters into his own hands and found a 
private lab to conduct tests at his own expense.

"If anything comes out of this, it's going to be through the efforts of 
people like me doing the research and testing on their own," Earl said.

"We're over three months into this thing and private citizens are finding 
evidence that no one else is even bothering to look for. And that's beyond 
unacceptable."

FDA officials and other experts, however, don't recommend the path taken by 
Earl, saying that consumers don't have the means to determine whether a lab 
is reliable.

Dr. Robert Poppenga, a professor of veterinary diagnostic toxicology at UC 
Davis' School of Veterinary Medicine, suggested that pet owners first 
contact their veterinarian if they suspect poisoned food. A pet's doctor can 
then determine whether to have food tested and how best to interpret a lab's 
findings, he said.

FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza seconded that recommendation but said 
consumers could also contact the agency to report a suspected problem. In 
some circumstances, the FDA will arrange to pick up a sample of the food for 
further testing.

Zawisza said she didn't know why investigators declined to take Earl's 
sample. The agency, she said, has picked up samples from consumers 
throughout the pet food crisis, which began with the March 16 recall of 60 
million containers of dog and cat food manufactured by Menu Foods Income 
Fund of Canada.

Earl sent his samples to ExperTox Inc. of Deer Park, Texas, which said it 
found traces of the pain medication acetaminophen in several pet food 
samples, including Pet Pride Turkey and Giblets Dinner made by Menu Foods, 
which was one of the products Earl fed Chuckles.

Menu Foods disputed ExperTox's findings, however, and said FDA tests were 
negative.

Zawisza could not confirm that the agency tested Pet Pride food, but she 
said it had obtained at least five samples of food that consumers believed 
had been tainted with the pain reliever, and that each tested negative.

In addition, the California Animal Health and Food Safety Lab at UC Davis 
tested a different sample of the same product that Earl submitted to 
ExperTox and also did not find acetaminophen, Poppenga said.

"There's no evidence of a widespread problem," Poppenga said. "A lot of 
people are getting worked up about something that may not be real."

Try telling that to Earl and other pet owners whose animals got sick or died 
for reasons still unexplained. Their pets' foods were not included among the 
thousands of varieties recalled because of melamine-tainted ingredients 
imported from China.

Earl began his quest shortly after the recall was announced, before the FDA 
identified the toxic chemicals making animals sick. Without knowing what 
specific chemicals to look for, Earl paid an Oregon lab $400 for a broad 
test of a variety of common toxic chemicals — not including melamine — and 
the results were negative.

Those results didn't stop him any more than the findings at UC Davis.

"I'm looking for a third lab to see if they can duplicate the ExperTox 
results," Earl said. "The FDA didn't want to do testing…. After each recall, 
they'd say everything else was safe, until the next week when they came out 
with another recall. After a certain point, you stop believing them."

That could be the crux of the issue: some pet owners' unwillingness to trust 
the government to get to the bottom of the issue.

"This situation with pet food has been unlike anything else we've ever seen 
in recent memory in terms of the volume of complaints, the intensity of 
people's reactions and concern about beloved pets," said the FDA's Zawisza.

"From the side of a consumer, you want to know right now, is this pet food 
safe for my pet?" she added. "I can imagine why people would say, 'I'm going 
to take things into my own hands,' and not wait for the government."

Since Earl launched a website three weeks ago devoted to the issue, which 
posted several pet owners' ExperTox lab results, he's gotten 10,000 hits, he 
said.

Sharon Kotwitz, a 61-year-old administrative assistant in Plano, Texas, said 
she engaged ExperTox after reading about other pet owners' experience with 
the lab and deciding that private testing was the only way to get answers.

Although her 12-year-old black cat, Pete, had to be euthanized after 
succumbing suddenly to kidney failure — the same symptoms suffered by the 
animals who ate foods on the FDA recall list.

But when ExperTox tested her pet's food, it found acetaminophen and cyanuric 
acid. The pet food maker did not return calls for comment.

"I don't want any reimbursement or whatever; I just wanted it to come to 
light for other people who have lost pets," Kotwitz said.

Poppenga said the UC Davis lab had fielded hundreds of calls from members of 
the public seeking tests of their pets' food. Not even the nationwide E. 
coli-tainted spinach scare last year prompted that kind of interest, he 
said.

Although the lab generally works through vets, it did agree to take a few 
cases from members of the public because of the high demand, Poppenga said.

The lab has tested about 650 samples for melamine and cyanuric acid, the two 
contaminants at the center of the tainted pet food scandal — the majority of 
which were submitted by vets, Poppenga said. Of those, 35% to 40% tested 
positive for one or both of the compounds, he said.

The UC Davis lab is subsidized by the state, so tests for melamine and 
cyanuric acid cost California residents $100; those out of state pay $200. 
Checks for additional chemicals have additional fees.

ExperTox, which mostly works for individuals, companies and crime labs 
testing human tissue and fluids for alcohol, drugs and toxic chemicals, said 
it had tested 100 to 150 pet food samples. About 70% of those were requested 
by individual pet owners, the company said.

In all, about five or six came up positive for acetaminophen, said Donna 
Coneley, the company's lab operations manager. She declined to identify the 
brands, citing client confidentiality.

An ExperTox test for a wide array of chemicals costs $200, with an 
additional $100 charge to determine how much of a particular chemical is in 
the product.

--http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lab1jul01,1,7618298,full.story?ctrack=1&cset=true