UPDATED: Tainted pet food stories are getting crazy

by Blair Lovern

Headline from the DMN's tainted pet food story this past Saturday: Pet food recall causes uproar.

I'm guessing the copy editor who wrote that headline had just finished reading this very important Onion story from way back when.

This past Monday night, the DMN ran as its main website lead another pet food story: Pet owners on watch after recall - with video to make damn sure you know someone is watching.

During the Great Peanut Butter Freakout in February, this was the most apocalyptic headline in the DMN I could find: "Stores, parents act after recall of peanut butter." (I'd link it if I could find the damn thing on their site again. Good luck, sucker searchers!)

Ah, yes. They just vaguely acted. They did something, whatever that was. Several hundred poisoned humans will get over it soon enough.

But screw with our pets?! Get me some shoulder-fired missile launchers. No, wait. GIVE ME A FULLY LOADED APACHE ATTACK HELICOPTER RIGHT NOW AND MAKE SURE IT IS RIGHT NOW. EVEN NOW IS TOO LATE, I NEEDED IT FIVE SECONDS AGO, JERK!

As things stand now, no medical examiner has declared a death caused by tainted peanut butter. But several deaths are being investigated because some people think there was a direct link between their demise and that peanut butter.

We had some tainted peanut butter in the cabinet during the Freakout. Guess what my reaction was after I found out? I took the jar, went into the TV/fireplace room (It's not a living room, not a den, not a front room, I don't know what it is), where my wife was watching TV. I said, "Hey, we've got the bad peanut butter!" For some reason it felt like I had won the lottery. I don't mean the mega-million stuff. Something more like winning $2 from a scratch-off game after I had spent $10 trying to get a winning ticket. Whatever, I didn't set fire to four houses in my neighborhood. I put the peanut butter in the trash can and, uh, that was pretty much it.

We've got two cats and one dog, so when I heard the pet food news I thought - hmm, I wonder if we've got that stuff. I checked. Nope. In this case I didn't get the chance to riot.

If you read the DMN "uproar" story linked above, you'll notice it's written by the AP and that the word "uproar" appears nowhere except the headline. The second DMN story has some harrowing animal episodes, and I'm not belittling those. I love animals. They taste great! (Sorry, I just say that around vegetarians.) Seriously, I really do love animals. But even the DMN's second story mentioned no animal deaths and had this buried near the end of the story: "Neither Petco nor PetSmart have reported significant drops in sales from Dallas-area stores."

And this quote by a man at the end of the story:

"You see all these things with human food going on, but with a dog, it's more concerning," the Plano resident said. "They can't tell you they're ill, and you don't know it until they're really ill."

I never know if my pets are feeling under the weather until they throw up, which is sometimes kinda like people. Can an infant human tell you exactly what's going on? I don't see how this pet thing is worse than sick or dead people? I'm just not understanding this at all. Like I said, I love animals, believe me, I would be devastated without our household of animals. But who are the ones who fix these creatures when they're in trouble? Show me a dog that can take another dog's temperature - I'm not even going to bother with crazy stuff like a dog neutering another dog (vicious bites don't count) - and I'll shut the hell up right now.

I've read that there are about 60 million cats and 75 million dogs in the U.S. Do you know how many cats and dogs have apparently died from bad food? Ten. Wait. About 10. Maybe 8 or 11 or who knows. Does anyone really know? Anyway, if my math is correct, that would be about 0.000007 percent of the total cat and dog population. I've read several figures, but the American Humane Association says that 9.6 million cats and dogs are killed in shelters every year. So you tell me where the mysterious uproar should direct its attention - 10 or 10 million?

More pet food stories from scandal shee- er, mainstream news companies:

All I'm saying is just keep this in perspective, which seems impossible sometimes.

UPDATED: The drug Aminopterin, used to induce abortions, treat cancer and kill rats, was identified on Friday as the likely culprit that prompted the recall of 95 brands of "cuts and gravy" style dog and cat food. Scientists had no theories on how aminopterin got into the products of Menu Foods, which makes pet food for most of North America's top retailers.

Menu Foods expanded its recall Friday to cover each of the tens of millions of cans and pouches produced under the affected brands. The original recall covered only pet food produced from Dec. 3 to March 6.

Officials said there is no risk to pet owners from handling the food, but Donald Smith, dean of Cornell's veterinary school, said he expected the number of pet deaths would increase.

The federal government prohibits using aminopterin for killing rodents in the U.S. State officials would not speculate on how the poison got into the pet food, but said no criminal investigations had been launched. Stephen Sundlof, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's top veterinarian, said the agency hasn't ruled out sabotage, but doesn't have any leads — nor any theories how the drug could have contaminated the pet food.