Pet Death Toll Rises in Tainted Food Recall

WEDNESDAY, March 21 (HealthDay News) -- The Canadian manufacturer of the pet food involved in a massive recall said Wednesday that it could find no causative agent for the animal illnesses and deaths that have occurred.

The pet food shows no signs of contamination, according to Menu Foods president Paul Henderson, whose Ontario-based company initiated the recall of 60 million pouches and cans of brand-name moist dog and cat food over the weekend.

The recall followed reports of kidney failure and death among dogs and cats, including nine deaths in cats being used in Menu Foods' own quarterly taste test.

"It is extremely disheartening," Henderson said in an interview with theAssociated Pressat the company's headquarters in Streetsville.

Henderson said tests performed on 10 cats that died showed only that the animals died of acute kidney failure.

The pet death toll as of Tuesday stood at 14 dogs and cats, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

But the FDA's lead veterinarian, speaking at a Tuesday teleconference, said that the toll was expected to rise.

Henderson said the company was looking at a single ingredient, which he would not identify, theAPreported.

But FDA officials on Tuesday said part of their investigation was focusing on wheat gluten, a source of protein that was used to thicken the gravy in the pet food.

"Our hypothesis is that it is that ingredient that, in fact, represents the highest probability as to the cause," Henderson told theAP. "But we have been unable to prove that through scientific information."

"We are reviewing the manufacturing process of [the] food," Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said Tuesday. "We are still looking at the wheat gluten and other ingredients."

Sundlof said the FDA continues to receive a large volume of calls at its consumer complaint lines. The number of calls has not yet been tabulated or evaluated, he said, but "we know that some of them are complaints of deaths."