Menu Pet Foods announced Friday afternoon that its pet food is again safe for consumption.
Menu President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Henderson said that all the pet illnesses and deaths that had been reported could be tied to adulterated wheat gluten from a Chinese source. According to tests by the Food and Drug Administration, the gluten contained melamine, a substance used to make plastics.
Henderson said during a teleconference phone call that the supplier has been discontinued and no Menu food made after March 6 contains the contaminated gluten.
“Let me be clear on this — we have removed the problem from our system,” Henderson said at a press conference Friday. “I can say with confidence to our consumers ... that our products are safe.”
In an earlier interview, menu spokesman Sam Bornstein said the Menu Foods plant in Emporia should re-open no later than Monday. The employees have been out for about a week on unpaid leave while the plant responded to the recall. Employees who had vacation could use it to cover the days off, Bornstein said.
Sixty million “chunks and gravy”-style pet food produced at the Emporia plant and a plant in New Jersey were recalled March 16 after reports of death and kidney failure among pets that ate the food. At least 16 pets have been reported to have died from eating the pet food.
Henderson said Friday that Menu would pay veterinary bills for those pet owners who could prove their animals grew sick or died as a result of the tainted pet food.
Contrary to some media reports, Menu Foods never recalled all of its wet pet food products. It did at one point say it would recall all of the specific product types mentioned in the recall regardless of date as a precaution, but other products under the same brand names remained available.
“The step did not expand the recall, but provided the remaining retailers with an efficient means of withdrawing the recalled product,” Menu’s corporate offices in Ontario said in a press release.
The company said that no problems had been found in any of the other products produced by the Emporia and Pennsauken, N.J. plants.
Last week, scientists at the New York State Food Laboratory said the gluten appeared to have been contaminated by a rat poison called aminopterin, but the FDA could not confirm the finding. Both studies found the melamine.
“What’s important for us is that all of the irregularities came from that particular source of that wheat gluten, and it has been removed,” said Randall Copeland, Menu’s executive vice-president of sales and marketing.
Menu bought the gluten from a U.S. supplier, Henderson said, but that company in turn had purchased it from China. Wheat gluten is a high-demand ingredient around the world, used in everything from food additives to wallpaper paste, so finding enough of a supply can be difficult. Even though North America produces a lot of wheat, Copeland said, it is a net importer of wheat gluten.
No one has said yet how the melamine might have been introduced into the gluten. Menu tests its food for a wide variety of molds and toxins, as well as for items such as the level of protein or the amount of water. But according to company officials, no screening test by any pet food company would have detected melamine or aminopterin — mainly because nobody ever thought the situation would come up.
“It is so bizarre, so out there, that nobody tests for it,” Bornstein said.
The name of the gluten supplier has not been released, pending further investigation by the FDA.
Melamine resins have a number of uses, including the making of plastic dishes under the Melmac brand name. Aminopterin is not approved as a rat poison in Canada or the U.S. but is used that way in some other countries. It has been used in chemotherapy.
Henderson said that by the company’s best estimate, the recall has cost Menu between $30 million and $40 million.
All together, 42 cat food brands and 53 dog food brands were affected by the recall, including products for well-known labels such as Eukanuba and Iams. No dry pet food was affected by the recall.
A complete list of the recalled products is available at www.menufoods.com/recall. Customers can also call 1-866-895-2708 for information.
Henderson said the company has received more than 300,000 calls in relation to the recall.
Last week, the Kroger grocery chain, which includes the Dillon’s stores, said it would pull all Menu-made wet pet food as a precaution. Similarly, the Wal-Mart chain decided last week to pull all Ol’ Roy and Special Kitty wet foods from its shelves.
“They’ll only return when we’re convinced that all the issues have been resolved,” Wal-Mart said March 23 on its Web site.
From Menu’s perspective, those issues finally have been resolved.
“We’re doing a very thorough job of going back to basic ingredients that have been proven safe,” Copeland said Friday.