Tainted pet food killed 200 dogs and cats: study

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials received thousands of complaints earlier this year about pets killed by contaminated pet food, but veterinarians said on Thursday they had been able to confirm just 224 deaths.

A major recall was begun last March after ingredients imported from China were found to have contaminated some pet food. Canadian manufacturer Menu Foods Income Fund was hardest hit, recalling 60 million packages of pet food.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it received 17,000 complaints of related pet deaths, although it had confirmed just 16.

A survey posted on the Internet, and widely publicized by the American Veterinary Medical Association, attracted just 500 responses and of those, only 348 cases of pet sickness met the criteria for kidney failure caused by the contamination, the team at Michigan State University found.

"It is easy to think that every death or every sickness is occurring because of the pet food problem," Wilson Rumbeiha, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

But when strict criteria were applied, it appears that far fewer deaths could be blamed on the pet food.

The deaths from contaminated pet food may have been caused by mixing two compounds -- melamine and cyanuric acid, Rumbeiha said.

"Separately, those two compounds are pretty harmless," Rumbeiha said.  Continued...