Menu Foods, Inc. is the company behind the massive 60-MILLION-CAN pet food recall. They make grain-oriented base product for dozens of pet food brands. Budget to high-end brands use their product. The great folks at PetConnection.com have received over 2,400 submissions of pets that died from this awful disaster. Our Dog Blogger, Joy Ward has been covering this in great detail. Thanks to Joy and our members for getting the paw out faster then any single news source.

UPDATE: F.D.A confirms presences of other chemical, melamine, a fertilizer agent. Dry foods may now also be suspect. See breaking New York Times story.

The recall was first announced after healthy pets suddenly started dying of kidney and other organ failure. The company first claimed that curdled wheat gluten was the cause. The New York Times found out that Menu Recall killed 7 animals they test-fed to confirm their food was lethal.

Later the company admitted that it was due to rat poison having gotten into the food supply. Think about how much rat poison needs to get mixed into 60 million cans of food for animals to start dying within hours of eating.

Today the ASPCA released a very stern warning saying that rat poison alone could not explain the diversity of cause-of-deaths. I also have to point out the Menu Foods website is a disaster with no text or working images. For shame Menu Foods! For Shame.

Explains the ASPCA’s Dr. Steven Hansen, veterinary toxicologist, “There are so many inconsistencies in the purported link between aminopterin and the animals affected that we urge veterinary toxicologists and veterinary pathologists at diagnostic laboratories to continue looking for additional contaminants.”

If we love our pets as much as family, how can it be that our federal health policies require a fraction of the oversight in the pet food production as it does for human food? How many times will we have to say that pets are people too for a government to get off it’s duff? Why has their been no Congressional Inquiry? No thumping of chests about how they won’t stand for such disrespect of their constituents? Let’s demand legislation that puts food manufacturers of any sort equally scrutinized. If they want to be in the business of providing food for life, we cannot accept different allowances for failure.