Reported by Kristin Anderson
(Channel 3 Morning News Anchor)
May 13, 2002

It's not listed on the bag, but there's something in pet food that might be making your dog sick.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Veterinary Medicine found that the same poison used to euthanize animals turned up in many top-selling brands.

Kibbles 'n Bits, Pro Plan, Dad's and 41 other brands tested positive for pentobarbital.

Veterinarians use it to euthanize sick pets. Slaughter houses use it to kill diseased farm animals.

The FDA says after the animals are put down, their carcasses are sent to meat processing plants and then sold to dog food makers.

Download dog food information See links at bottom of page to download chart What we don't know is if this poison can build up over time and damage a dog's organs.

So the FDA created this list of brands containing trace amounts of the poison.

Dr. Borys Pakush says poisons in general can build up in a dog's system and often attack the liver, kidney's and the central nervous system.

But he doesn't know if trace amounts of pentobarbital will shorten a dog's life and we may never know.

"I couldn't tell you today specifically if I dealt with a case of liver disease, is it associated with pentobarbital unless I tried to do high tech testing of the liver, which, who can afford to do that?" he says.

The FDA started studying the poison several years ago because veterinarians kept asking why it took more penibarbitol to euthanize pets.

The vets say the animals seemed to be building a resistance to the drug. But the FDA says the trace amounts they found in the food are harmless.

Although just released, these tests were conducted nearly two years ago. The FDA can't say whether the same brands on the shelf today have pentobarbital in them. For that information, you will need to call your dog food company's consumer information line. Some dog food companies are taking extra steps now to keep pentobarbital out of their products.


Related:

Chart listing all brands of dog food that were tested
(Word document)

Chart listing all brands of dog food that were tested
(Rich Text Format file)

Food and Drug Administration/Center for Veterinary Medicine
Report on the risk from pentobarbital in dog food

Report appendix, disclaimer

Center for Veterinary Medicine

FDA.gov

http://www.wkyc.com/news/national/020513dogfood.asp