I fed this product to my own fearsome hound for years, and she did quite well on it; I've never hesitated to recommend it. The specific kibble I purchased was not among the recalled products.
The recalled products include Venison and Brown Rice canned and bagged dog foods, Venison and Brown Rice dog treats, and Venison and Green Pea dry cat food. Recent laboratory results show that the products contain melamine. We believe the source of the melamine is a rice protein concentrate. Natural Balance has confirmed this morning that some production batches of these products may contain melamine...Rice is considered a "quality" ingredient; the worst dog foods use corn gluten, which is made out of husks and other corn parts considered not fit for human consumption. (In America, corn is subsidized and therefore quite cheap.) The presence of toxins in a premium food constitutes a terrible irony.
The source of the melamine appears to be a rice protein concentrate, which was recently added to the dry venison formulas. Natural Balance does not use wheat gluten, which was associated with the previous melamine contamination.
We now face a new threat. Natural Balance uses human-quality ingredients. Could that "rice protein concentrate" have found its way into anything you or I have eaten?
Apparently, Natural Balance was under the impression that they had purchased an "all American" ingredient. But their American supplier was doing business with China.
The rice protein concentrate was imported from China by San Francisco-based Wilbur-Ellis. Herrick says the concentrate, which is being tested, is suspected to have melamine, as it was the only new ingredient. Recalled Natural Balance products include Venison and Brown Rice canned and dry dog foods, dog treats and Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.(Emphasis added.) Here's a summary of Wilbur-Ellis' business activities:
Wilbur-Ellis CEO John Thacher said his company sold the concentrate to five pet-food makers, but that most of it went to two firms. One of the primary companies was Diamond Pet Foods, which packs some of the Natural Balance product but doesn't use the concentrate in any Diamond-made foods, says Diamond spokesman Jim Fallon. The other major customer, which Thacher would not name, tested the rice protein and found no melamine, Thacher says.
A distributor for major chemical companies, Wilbur-Ellis sells animal feed, fertilizer, insecticides, seed, and machinery through outlets in North America. Subsidiary Connell Brothers exports and distributes industrial chemicals throughout the Pacific Rim.I'm not sure that a premium pet food concern should deal with a livestock supplier. One of the revelations of the Dick Durbin hearings (which I caught, in part, on CSPAN) is that there is always a certain degree of "cross contamination" when a manufacturer switches from one product to another, using the same equipment. Can we thus be certain that the melamine got into the rice in China?
3 comments:
Hey cannon, I'm in SC and many of my friends and I have been discussing all the stomach woes around here. We hope we have not been poisoned but also wonder. Everyone I know has had a bad upset stomach lately.
My dog had been eating one of the major high end DRY foods for the past few years now. I hesitate to mention it because we didn't have it tested.
He recently refused to eat it.
We've changed brands and I'm wondering when I'm going to have to make his food from scratch.
ok. i don't know from nothin' here, but from following this at sometnhing of a distance, i note that the culprits always seem to be some form of vegetable protein, wheat or rice....
these are the crops that have been recently tampered with at the genetic level, with genes from animals, viruses, bacteria, and foreign plants being inserted into these grains.
what we may be witnessing, i'm (wildly) speculating here, are the generalized symptoms from these effects. first the bees, then the birds, and now our small mammals....
the only thing we might be grateful for IF this speculation is anywhere near the money, is that these effects are happening so much faster than anyone might have predicted, given the causes at the genetic level.
like i said, i don't know from nothin' on all this, but ya gotta wonder.
i'll try to dig up the source of this quote (i think wendell barry, or an unnamed colleague of his), but i found it profound:
best not to mess with nuclei, of cells or atoms.
some boundaries seem so obvious....
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