Implications of Pet Food Recall Continue to Unfold (Updated)

Yesterday I was deluged with hits on my post on the pet food recall. As major media outlets have caught up with the story and word has gotten out that has a subsided a bit but I’m still receiving a lot of traffic on it. I’m not sure that the media appreciate the scope of the story and I think that this is just the beginning. Menu Foods, the largest producer of pet foods in North America, produces pet foods for Iams, Purina, Hill’s (update: possibly—not completely sure of this), Nutro, Ol’ Roy, and dozens of house brands. by my reckoning that means that this has affected something between 65% and 85% of the brands sold in the United States and Canada.

Note:  my updates on the pet food recall are here and here.

The stock of Menu Foods Income Fund, the parent company of the pet food producer, has taken quite a hit:

Time is of the essence for the Menu Foods Income Fund as it strives to track down what killed about 10 cats and dogs that ate its “cuts and gravy” style pet food.

A quick solution to the mystery would let the struggling trust – North America’s biggest supplier of pet food sold under store brands and made under contract for such international names as Iams – move ahead with its recovery, observers said yesterday.

Menu Foods is conducting tests through Cornell University in New York state to determine what caused kidney failure in an unspecified number of American pets. So far, no Canadian problems have been reported, but a massive recall includes canned and pouch-packed food distributed in Canada.

Menu Foods said the recall announced late Friday afternoon of 48 brands of dog food and 40 types of cat food could cost as much as $40 million. The trust scraped out a profit of $6.4 million for all of 2006 on sales of $356.2 million, after a 2005 loss of $54.7 million.

The recall came as the trust, which has not paid distributions to investors since December 2005, was showing signs of health after being hit hard by rising costs and the strong Canadian dollar.

The news knocked its stock-market value down 26 per cent Friday and a further 25 per cent yesterday. Menu Foods units traded as low as $3.02 during the TSX session and by the close ended up at $4.15, down by $1.35 on the day – and down from an 18-month high of $7.47 just before Friday’s recall announcement.

The legal shoe has yet to fall. If you check the comments to my post cited above, you can see that there must be quite a few distraught pet owners out there, many convinced rightly or wrongly that their beloved cat or dog died as a result of eating the contaminated food. Thousands or, possibly, hundreds of thousands are rushing their pets to the vet and incurring expenses. I suspect that we’ll see some legal action against retailers, pet food companies, and Menu Foods. Sounds like that’ll cost more than $40 million to me.

In its frail financial condition I wonder if MFIF can survive the onslaught.

Update

Oh-oh. Menu Foods may have known about the problem for a month before the recall:

As many as one in six animals died in tests of suspect dog and cat food by the manufacturer last month after complaints the products were poisoning pets around the country, the government said Monday.

“That’s a huge number, considering when you feed pet food no animal should die,” says CBS News The Early Show veterinarian Dr. Debbye Turner.

A federal investigation is focusing on wheat gluten as the likely source of contamination that sparked a recall last Friday of 60 million cans and pouches of the suspect food, said Stephen F. Sundlof, the Food and Drug Administration’s top veterinarian.

“I’m certain someone’s going to figure this out because there are a lot of pet foods involved, a lot of pets involved and a lot of veterinarians who are upset,” Dr. Ann Hohenhaus of New York’s Animal Medical Center told CBS News.

Wheat gluten, a protein source, is commonly used as filler.

Agency investigators are looking at other ingredients as well. The wet-style pet food was made by Menu Foods, an Ontario, Canada-based company. The FDA on Monday had investigators at Menu plants in Emporia, Kan., and Pennsauken, N.J.

Menu Foods told the FDA it received the first complaints of kidney failure and deaths among cats and dogs from pet owners on Feb. 20. It began new tests on Feb. 27.

During those tests, the company fed its product to 40 to 50 dogs and cats and seven animals — the mix of species was not immediately known — died, Sundlof said. The contamination appeared more deadly to cats than to dogs, he said.

“Cats seem to be more susceptible to acute renal failure, what which is what this toxin is causing,” Turner told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

The recall now covers dog food sold throughout North America under 51 brands and cat food sold under 40 brands, including Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba. The food was sold under both store and major brand labels at Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway and other large retailers.

1 comment… add one
  • merle Link

    go to google search type in ..euthanized dog and cats used for dog foods, this is what some vets are doing and this is what your pets are eating, cancer , other diseases,killing medications, and euthanizing agents…type in ..euthanized dog and cats used for dog foods..thanks merle.

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