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[road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com>]

On Apr 29, 2007, at 11:21 AM, Lucky.PIttman@murraystate.edu wrote:

> It's highly likely that no one will ever ascertain WHAT was in these recalled pet foods that caused the small numbers of pet deaths.  

While the official death toll may still be stuck at "small numbers", at least one major veterinary chain has reported kidney failure in cats during the time in question as showing a jump to 30% over the expected number.

This would indicate a *lot* of dead and severely ill cats. (Kidney failure in old cats is fairly common, so the background level would not be insignificant.) The official number takes a long time to update, partly because they have to test a lot of carcasses.

> melamine - it's essentially non-toxic at the low parts-per-million levels that were
> detected in some pet food samples.
> LD50 for melamine in mice/rats is on the order of 1-2gm/kg body weight.


Cats might be unusually sensitive to melamine; they react differently from most mammals to a number of things. If I have this right, part of the problem in determining whether the melamine actually caused the problem or not is that nobody ever tested this for toxicity in cats; as nobody expected it to end up in cat food. 

Of course, this possibility doesn't prove that it was the melamine that caused the problem. But it's risky to make assumptions between species.

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly