Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Many of us have different kinds of pets which we feed dog and cat foods to...

The article below may be of importance to you. Hopefully many will be caught in time.

Ric

Mass recall of dog and cat food after pets die
POSTED: 2:01 p.m. EDT, March 18, 2007
Story Highlights
• Recall of wet pet food made by Menu Foods for Wal-Mart, Kroger, PetsMart, others
• Undisclosed number of cats and dogs suffered vomiting, kidney failure; 10 died
• Recall affects specific sizes of Iams and Eukanuba brands of dog, cat food
• See lists of recalled brands at bottom of story

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pet owners were worried Saturday that the pet food in their cupboards could be deadly after millions of containers of dog and cat food sold at major retailers across North America were recalled.
Menu Foods -- a major manufacturer of dog and cat food sold under Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and other store brands -- recalled 60 million containers of wet pet food Friday after reports of kidney failure and deaths.
An unknown number of cats and dogs suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, the company said in announcing the North American recall.
Product testing has not revealed a link explaining the reported cases of illness and death, the company said.
"At this juncture, we're not 100 percent sure what's happened," said Paul Henderson, the company's president and chief executive officer.
However, the recalled products were made using wheat gluten purchased from a new supplier, since dropped for another source, spokeswoman Sarah Tuite said. Wheat gluten is a source of protein.
'Cuts and gravy' food sold in cans, pouches recalled
The recall covers the company's "cuts and gravy" style food, which consists of chunks of meat in gravy, sold in cans and small foil pouches between December 3 and March 6 throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The pet food was sold by stores operated by the Kroger Co., Safeway Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and PetSmart Inc., among others, Henderson said.
Menu Foods said it makes pet foods for 17 of the top 20 North American retailers. It is also a contract manufacturer for the top branded pet food companies, including Procter & Gamble Co.
Procter & Gamble announced Friday the recall of specific 3 oz., 5.5 oz., 6 oz. and 13.2 oz. canned and 3 oz. and 5.3 oz. foil pouch cat and dog wet food products made by Menu Foods but sold under the Iams and Eukanuba brands. The recalled products bear the code dates of 6339 through 7073 followed by the plant code 4197, P&G said.
Menu Foods' three U.S. and one Canadian factory produce more than 1 billion containers of wet pet food a year. The recall covers pet food made at company plants in Emporia, Kansas, and Pennsauken, New Jersey, Henderson said.
Henderson said the company received an undisclosed number of owner complaints of vomiting and kidney failure in dogs and cats after they had been fed its products. It has tested its products but not found a cause for the sickness.

Recalled cat foods
Americas Choice; Preferred Pets; Authority; Best Choice; Companion; Compliments; Demoulas Market Basket; Fine Feline Cat, Shep Dog; Food Lion; Foodtown; Giant Companion; Good n Meaty; Hannaford; Hill Country Fare; Hy-Vee; Key Food; Laura Lynn; Li'l Red; Loving Meals; Main Choice; Nutriplan; Nutro Max Gourmet Classics; Nutro Natural Choice; Paws; Presidents Choice; Price Chopper; Priority; Save-A-Lot; Schnucks; Sophistacat; Special Kitty; Springfield Pride; Sprout; Total Pet; My True Friend; Wegmans; Western Family; White Rose; and Winn Dixie.

Recalled dog foods
America's Choice; Preferred Pets; Authority; Award; Best Choice; Big Bet; Big Red; Bloom; Bruiser; Cadillac; Companion; Demoulas Market Basket; Fine Feline Cat; Shep Dog; Food Lion; Giant Companion; Great Choice; Hannaford; Hill Country Fare; Hy-Vee; Key Food; Laura Lynn; Loving Meals; Main Choice; Mixables; Nutriplan; Nutro Max; Nutro Natural Choice; Nutro; Ol'Roy; Paws; Pet Essentials; Pet Pride; President's Choice; Price Chopper; Priority; Publix; Roche Bros; Save-A-Lot; Schnucks; Springsfield Pride; Sprout; Stater Bros; Total Pet; My True Friend; Western Family; White Rose; Winn Dixie and Your Pet.

I posted about this on another forum and some of the lists to recalled foods. Those that you listed are not all of them, unfortunately. And even more foods are being added to the lists with possible rumors of even some dry being recalled.

There are some science diet pouches recalled as well.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=196265&p=factset15
http://www.menufoods.com/recall/
If anyone is concerned they should check their pets food.
The suspected ingredient at this time is wheat gluten meal, this is not generally tested for toxins.

This is terrible....the shelves are empty. Glad to see you again Ric.

(strange_wings) Thanks for the added list of bad pet foods; one of them was going to be supper for a neighbor's border collie. They were contacted asap after viewing your added sites.

Thanks Terry.... Better to have empty shelves, than poisoned ones. It's going to be table food for many pets until this is figured out, and safe again.

So how many turtles do you now have? How is Nora doing?

Ric

Well Ric, I gave all my sliders to a friend who has a big pond this past summer, but just kept my little painter. I'm putting my own pond in this summer and will adopt a few. Nora is doing great, thanks to the vet visit and all your help (and lots of good past reading on this forum). She is up and eating well. Can't wait til she goes in her new pen. That's about all I have now. I am trying to adopt an Eastern but so far no luck. From what I have read they seem a little easier than the Ornate. Oh ...I forgot I have the little three toed, but he won't be ready to go outside for a while. What have you been up to? Any good recipes?
Terry

Nora looks great!

Regarding receipes.... I need a book..... But here are some tips...

A boxie's food preferences vary with the subspecies; and also with the individual boxie.

My ornate loved grasshoppers more than any other food although mine was not picky. And the grasshoppersa were loaded with greens.

They also really liked thawed pinky mice. Many times I have heard pinky mice were not a good source of calcium. I have found that to be completely untrue. The secret is to feed the entire thawed frozen pinky to your boxie and he/she will consume bones and all greedily. The thin soft bones are better than cuttlebone or any added supplement. It's too rich to offer often, but for a real treat; they love it, and the calcium ratios for the entire pinkie is actually quite high!

Stay away from frozen beef heart or liver even though some recommend it. It's very poor boxie food with calcium /phosphorus ratios at 1 to 48. Not too many boxies in the wild are eating cows.

Fresh fish is Ok rarely; frozen fish is poor. The freezing with fish changes the chemical makeup and causes frozen fish to bind with other necessary nutrients that boxies need.

Everyone knows that dandelions are super; but Turnip tops are fantastic naturally with an 8 to 1 calcium to phosphorus ratio.

When you purchase calcium dust only use that which is 2 to 0. That way when you dust most crickerts or mealworms which are very high in phosphorus they will have an acceptable Ca ratio and not cause shell deformities.

My ornates also loved mazuri fresh water turtle food soaked in very warm water with calcium D3 dusted on top. Serve it warm with grasshoppers on top or with cooked orange squash. Try those; my boxie cookbook will be available soon.

Ric

Florida Boxies below.

my boxie cookbook will be available soon.

Are you kidding? I can never tell when you are serious. If you ARE serious...I want one. Seriously...let me know.
Terry

Thanks for the 'heads up'. It's times like this that make me realize that making pet food for my menagerie is well worth the effort.

http://www.jmlamoreux.com/message/total.pdf

Forgot to include this list, it has everything in one place and is easy to print out.
I hope they can get this straightened out but until then the easiest fix for those of us feeding cats and dogs is to avoid anything that contains wheat gluten.

>>http://www.jmlamoreux.com/message/total.pdf
>>
>>Forgot to include this list, it has everything in one place and is easy to print out.

that was only a list of cat foods... is there a page for dog foods?
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PHWyvern

Sorry about that.
The one petsmart link has this pdf on it
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/19/196265/Customer_Handout.pdf

The menu foods site http://www.menufoods.com/recall/
has this under their dog food recall http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_dog.html

You can also check on some of the pet hobbyist sections for dogs and cats to see if they have even more info.

Why is this message in the box turtle forum. Reptile hobbyists should know not to feed their pets any cat or dog food because of the protein content.

Because a box turtle's diet is comprised of about 50% protein from various animal and insect sources, some turtle keepers DO feed their box turtles canned dog or cat food, either regularly or just occasionally, or in some cases only in a pinch.

Other keepers, however, do not consider these products to be optimal sources of protein for their turtles, due to salt, fat and/or preservative content, and so do not feed them to their turtles at all, in which case the warning is not necessary.

It's here because "pets" doesn't just mean reptiles
Many of us here have cats and dogs or know someone who does, and since this is serious it's simple courtesy to share the information.

Yes, I understand the courtesy intended and I'm not trying to make anybody mad, but this is the box turtle forum.

"Why is this message in the box turtle forum. Reptile hobbyists should know not to feed their pets any cat or dog food because of the protein content."

Funny this question should be raised.

In an earlier post I stated all the reasons for not feeding box turtles dog food, especially a sick turtle. It was a long post in detail. The response from the most avid posters besides myself concluded it was OK to feed your boxie dog food. There was a long thread on the issue. See link to post below.

I'm dead set against feeding dog food to boxies and have stated so many times...Especially with all the good food for boxies that is readily available.

This post was written as a service to all those boxie owners that I'm aware of that have other pets.... and those that do feed their boxies DOG FOOD as was advised by other advid posters.

Funny you didn't see the posts and pics of frogs and birds on this box turtle forum. Those I can have laugh at; but posting information that has a high potential for hurting boxies.. I disagree with. I even sent the individual who was feeding his boxie dog food; appropriate boxie food and I paid all costs and shipping.

Ric
Link

Even some zoos use dog food as an ingredient for turtle recipes.
Some of the rodent message boards have this warning posted by people who wanted to get the word out.
Although at this point I'd think there's nobody left in this country who hasn't heard something about this massive recall.
If this can affect anyone's box turtle then there is a valid reason to have it posted here.
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PHRatz

Is anybody here aware that if you do want to feed your box turtle canned food they do make it specially for box turtles. I think it's from ZooMed. You really should feed them veggies and for protein, maybe some tofu.

"Is anybody here aware that if you do want to feed your box turtle canned food they do make it specially for box turtles. I think it's from ZooMed. You really should feed them veggies and for protein, maybe some tofu."

Why would you feed a box turtle tofu? Can you explain the rationale behind your recommendation? Thanks.

I don't like the canned box food, it's got bad ingredients such as corn in it. Tofu.
Frankly mine won't eat commercial foods & I don't want any of them to eat it. I want them all on natural foods, although I am guilty of feeding dog food a year & a half ago to Chip the turtle who needed to eat something. He nearly died from injuries, even his vet said get him to eat ANYTHING we'll worry about what later, just get him to eat.
At the time dog food was all he would eat when he did eat, once he got onto a normal turtle diet he refused any more dog food.
Still.. dog food is used sometimes, I don't think many turtle keepers are using it on a regular basis but it happens sometimes.
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PHRatz

I got to thinking about the tofu thing.. it's soy bean curd isn't it?
The Tortoise Trust claims that soy binds calcium and/or has a negative Ca ratio so it doesn't make a good ingredient in foods for turtles and tortoises.
In fact legumes are completely off the menu for my sulcata & other tortoises with similar diets. Soy is a legume, my boxes are also desert animals so I'm just not going to feed it to my turtles either. In fact that's why I dumped Reptomin in favor of Jurrassi Diet for my aquatics the few times per month that they even get to have a pellet.
The Jurrassi contains no soy for the reasons stated in the article.
Tortoise Trust Dietary Info

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PHRatz

I know that it is alright to feed green iguanas tofu for a little bit of protein. I don't personally. Mine gets protein from the commercial food that I'll mix in with her collards once or twice a week. I've heard that it's not bad for tortoises.
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Mike D

1.1 Peninsula Cooters
0.1 Green Iguana
0.0.3 Southern Painteds

>>I know that it is alright to feed green iguanas tofu for a little bit of protein. I don't personally. Mine gets protein from the commercial food that I'll mix in with her collards once or twice a week. I've heard that it's not bad for tortoises.

Yes I've heard of people using it for iguanas.
Because of the fact it's a legume, I just never even considered using it.
I'm lucky to have what my tortoise needs growing for her, I don't need to feed her at all so I just don't do it.
With box turtles because they are omnivores they'll get the protein they need from insects & such.
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PHRatz