More Pet Food Recalled

20 additional dog and cat products, plus pet treats, join foods with contaminated wheat gluten.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
Thursday, April 5, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, April 5 (HealthDay News) -- Twenty more dog and cat foods joined an already massive list of recalled pet products on Thursday as a key Canadian company expanded its potentially tainted products' list back one more month.

Menu Foods, of Ontario, announced the voluntary recall for "cuts and gravy" products back to a manufacture date of Nov. 8, 2006. Its previous recall on March 16, which involved more than 60 million cans and pouches for close to 100 brands, had covered a production period between Dec. 3, 2006, and March 6, 2007.

The new recall now covers five more cat food varieties and four more dog food varieties of the moist products, which were all manufactured with imported wheat gluten tainted by melamine, a toxic chemical used to make plastics. And it also includes seven new varieties sold in Europe.

An additional recall for pet treats made by Sunshine Mills of Red Bay, Ala., -- particularly dog biscuits sold by Wal-Mart under the Ol'Roy brand -- was also announced Thursday because the treats were made with the contaminated wheat gluten.

In a press release issued after U.S. health officials held a teleconference to announce both new recalls, Menu Foods said it was recalling all products that used wheat gluten from its former supplier, ChemNutra Inc. That company, Menu Foods said in its press release, has issued its own recall of wheat gluten it imported from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. in Wangdien, China.

The Menu Foods statement added, "The vast majority of the products affected by this expansion are already off retailers' shelves. No new brands have been added."

U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials, at their teleconference Thursday, did not have an exact list of the newly recalled products. But Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, the FDA's chief veterinarian, told reporters, "Consumers should (still) feel safe in purchasing products not on the recall list."

The recall includes about 1 percent of all the pet food in the United States, Sundlof, the director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, added. "So there is plenty of safe food for consumers to buy," he said.