Dog Dies after Owner Feeds it with Pet Food Containing Pentobarbital
It was extremely a sad moment for Nicki Mael when her once health and energetic dogs slowly loose breathe and eventually die. She says it was one of the most devastating experience to see her dog die after feeding it with a can of Evanger’s pet food. While speaking to the CBS 12 after the ordeal, Mael admitted that she doesn’t expect anybody to suffer the loss that befell her. She asserts that given another chance, she would do anything possible to guarantee the safety of her dog who was healthy, strong and revitalized and had started climbing walls and running up and down.
It was a great blow to her when it was confirmed that her dog Tula was no more after consuming the pet food. Samples from the food that Mael fed her dogs with were taken to a lab for testing and analysis to exactly ascertain what happened to the dog. A postmortem was also carried out on the dog and Mael said Tula succumbed from poison that the dog food contained.
After carefully carrying out a number of tests on the dog food, CBS 12 found out that the food contained pentobarbital in both Gravy Train and Evanger’s. These pet foods are manufactured by Big Heart Pet Food which is owned by J.M Smucker. The company is also popular in dealing with other foodstuffs that include canine carry outs, meow mix, milo’s kitchen, alley cat, snausages, and many more. It should be noted that the company earns over $40 million every year from selling the pet food.
Any pet who consumes food containing pentobarbital exhibit symptoms including dizziness, great loss of balance, failure to properly stand, drowsiness, nausea, excitement, and nystagmus where a pet’s eyes moves back and forth in a jumpy way. In a statement released by FDA on 16th February, it says that ingesting high levels of pentobarbital is fatal and results in coma and at last lead to death.
FDA, after testing the Gravy Train food, concluded that the levels of pentobarbital were too low to cause any serious threat to pets. They argued that the levels found could not pose any risk to any pet that consumes the food. But this statement didn’t go well with CNN where they reported that even the slightest trace of pentobarbital in any pet’s food is an infringement of Federal Food, Drug act Cosmetic act and this is a great violation of existing laws.
As the debate continues on what really caused the death of Tula, and whether a small trace of pentobarbital could be harmful to pets, the company has come up with an explanation. They have pointed out the problem to have been caused by a particular supplier. In a statement released, the company said one supplier incorporated a minor ingredient to the pet food during production in one of the manufacturing facilities. “We are a company that strives to uphold quality in pet food production. We love pets and we have made it our responsibility to produce a high-quality pet food that our customers will pride in”. The statement read. The FDA created a page where pet owners and affected retailers can get all the information they need.
