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ST. LOUIS -- Ron Hayes, who owns six cats and two dogs, said
he hasn't changed their diet since learning about the country's
first confirmed case of mad cow disease.
"It's called mad cow disease, not mad dog disease, right?"
he asked, but then checked to see if his pet foods contained beef
ingredients. He spotted beef tallow on a bag of dry food.
"I'll have to think about it now," he said.
Federal regulators and experts say there's still no reason to
worry about pets getting sick from pet food and no evidence to
suggest any tainted meat has made its way into the pet food supply.
Experts say the chances of cats in the United States contracting
the disease are slim, though not impossible. There's never been
a reported case of a dog getting it.
"There is no evidence that dogs have ever gotten this disease,"
said Alfonso Torres, associate dean at Cornell University's College
of Veterinary Medicine. "There's no evidence that cats will
contract the disease under normal circumstances."
Since 1997, the United States has banned the practice of feeding
cattle, sheep and goats any food that contains brain and spinal
cord material. Eating contaminated feed is the only known way
the disease spreads among livestock.
The Food and Drug Administration sought comment last year as
it considered a ban on using cattle brain and spinal tissue in
food for dogs, cats, pigs and poultry. An FDA spokeswoman said
no final decision has been made.
Mad cow has been found in a small number of cats -- about 100
-- in the United Kingdom, as well as a handful in other European
countries. Larger zoo felines that fed directly off infected carcasses
also died from the disease, Torres said.
Officials in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have said they
suspect the cats got the disease by eating cat food tainted with
infected meat. That suspicion is bolstered by evidence that British
cats contracted the disease at about the same time, and in the
same places.
"Your gut tells you yes, and the reports tell you yes, because
they're linked temporally and geographically," said Dr. Niels
Pedersen, a specialist in feline infectious diseases at the University
of California at Davis.
In the United States, pet food is closely inspected for quality
and safety, Pedersen said, in part because some of it ends up
eaten by humans.
"It would be highly, highly unlikely that nervous tissue
would end up even in pet food," he said. "It's one of
those products that is as vigorously inspected and quality-controlled
as canned tuna."
In a statement released Tuesday, Stephen Sundlof, director of
the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration,
said some animals declared unfit for people can be used in pet
food.
"But they must be processed in such a way that they are
deemed safe for the pets. This generally means that the pet food
must be heat-treated or the animal-derived parts must be rendered
to destroy any pathogens," he said.
The nation's $12 billion pet food industry feeds 76 million cats
and 61 million dogs, according to the Pet Food Institute, a trade
group.
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On the Net:
Pet Food Institute: http://www.petfoodinstitute.org
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