Rat Poison to Blame for Pet Food Contamination.

ABC News has learned that investigators have determined that a rodent-killing chemical is the toxin in the tainted pet food that has killed several animals.

A source close to the investigation tells ABC News that the rodenticide, which the source says is illegal to use in the United States, was on wheat that was imported from China and used by Menu Foods in nearly 100 brands of dog and cat food.

A news conference is scheduled for this afternoon by experts in Albany, N.Y., where scientists at the state’s food laboratory made the discovery a week after a massive recall of 60 million cans and pouches was issued.

The chemical is called aminopterin.

What investigators can’t say so far is whether this is the only contaminant, if it is in all of the recalled food, or if it’s in enough quantity in to sicken more animals.

Since Canada and the U.S. are both massive net exporters of wheat, the obvious question for dog and cat owners would be: Why is imported Chinese wheat being used in Canadian and American pet food? It is impossible not to assume that the words “dirt cheap” have something to do with it.

Now, I’m not slamming the manufacturers for being evil; they are merely following the rules that exist and selling a product to the public that the public is willing to buy. The regulations surrounding pet food are very different to those applied to food for human consumption, and that’s probably just as it should be. People simply need to keep their eyes and noses open as to what they’re being sold.

For hundreds and indeed thousands of years people kept dogs and cats as pets or as working animals, without the benefit of processed pet foods. Unless I’m mistaken, these foods really started to become popular after World War II, when everyone was looking for the latest convenient thing. It’s when pre-cooked and processed foods for human beings really took off too. These things seemed modern, intelligent, time-saving and clean. Nowadays, most people understand that eating TV dinners every day is not the best thing for one’s health. Yet, processed dog food is more popular than ever. Of-course the dogs don’t really get a vote in the matter.

There’s another piece today on ABCNews.com about home cooking for pets.

For the past nine, years Perrotti has been whipping up home-cooked meals for her three golden retrievers. And not just any old table scraps… she actually cooks turkey, free-range chicken and organic veggies just for her dogs and she serves it to them warm. She’ll even throw in some yogurt, bananas and apples.

“I have much healthier, happier, animals,” says Perrotti-Johns. “My vet actually thinks I’m crazy.”

Perrotti-Johns spends about $50 a week and is in the kitchen every three days making meals for her furry friends. It’s a little bit pricier and more time consuming than buying typical pet food, but she says it’s worth it.

“I noticed the difference in his coat. He didn’t get the hot spots like he used to, he didn’t get the digestive problems, he didn’t get the diarrhea and the runs. That all stopped … when I switched his diet,” she says.

That’s just anecdotal, of-course, and someone who is spending money on “organic” food for her three labrador retrievers is clearly a little batty, albeit in a harmless way. And then here is the other side, the kind of doom-laden warning that keeps people forking over their money for bags of processed Chinese wheat and who knows what else:

Veterinarians like Dr. Julie Churchill at the University of Minnesota say a home-cooked diet has benefits but one wrong ingredient could put pets in peril.

“The nutritional needs of pets are complex, and unique to each species, their life stage and lifestyle,” Churchill explains in an e-mail. “A dramatic change in diet can also cause intestinal upset for many pets.”

Well, yes, nutritional needs are always “complex” and “unique to each species,” but if your object is simply to feed your pet dog, rather than maintaining a well-fed zoo of lizards, apes and seals, it’s not as if the subject is really all that mysterious. Decades of indoctrination seem to have been effective at almost wiping out the collective common-sense that used to govern how people fed their dogs. There are certainly foods that you shouldn’t give to dogs. You can learn what they are in five minutes (one of them is rat poison, by the way). The fact is, dogs lived healthy and happy lives on table-scraps and the occasional hunk of meat long before the pet food scientists decided that they needed to have a perfectly balanced meal of carefully calibrated gunk all the time. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with what you feed your dog being a balance between what your own knowledge tells you is best for it, what you are — practically speaking– able to provide, and what actually agrees with your dog’s digestive system on a daily basis. The nice thing about giving your dog home-made food is that you know exactly what’s in it, and foods that cause problems can simply be eliminated. And if giving store-bought pet food is what you need to do, then that’s just fine, but understand that it’s a commercial product where the profit-margins are increased by using the kinds of low-cost ingredients that would not be permitted in food for human consumption. And that will continue to be true until you see the C.E.O. on TV eating it himself.

Please excuse me for this self-indulgence.

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