TEXAS EXECUTION DRUG IN POPULAR DOG FOODS

Dozens of dog food brands mainly owned by Smucker's are pulled from shelves after investigation triggered by a dead pug found they contained a EUTHANASIA drug used to put down canines, cats, and horses

BY Ariel Zilber

Daily Mail
February 15, 2018

Retailers have removed at least 31 types of dog food mostly owned by Smucker's after an investigation triggered by a canine who died of poisoning discovered they contained traces of a euthanasia drug used to put down other animals.

Lab tests conducted by the Food and Drug Administration showed that many brands of dog food were found to have been contaminated with pentobarbital.

Pentobarbital is a drug used to put down animals, including dogs, cats, and horses.

It is also prescribed to humans suffering from insomnia, according to eMedicinehealth.

Smucker’s, the company that owns many of the brands in question, said it would voluntarily pull its products from shelves, including Gravy Train, Kibbles ‘N Bits, Skippy, and Ol’ Roy canned food, WJLA-TV reported.

Walmart, the country’s largest retailer, said it had removed the brands from all of its 4,700 stores.

The investigation began after Nikki Mael, a resident of Washington state, noticed that her four pugs were acting unusually after feeding them Evanger’s Hunk of Beef with au jus canned wet food on New Year’s Eve 2016, KATU-TV reported.

‘I fed them one can and within 15 minutes, they were acting drunk, walking around, they couldn’t … they were falling over,’ she said. ‘So I grabbed them all and took them to the emergency vet.

‘And when they got there, they were just limp. They weren't moving or anything. And so they were in ICU. Tito and Talula ate the most [food] and Talula passed away,’ Mael said.

The three surviving dogs came home, but they are still suffering from complications.

‘Tito, we got to bring him home today,’ Mael said.

‘He still suffers from seizures. I don't know if there's any long-term [effect] on the other two, but it's terrible.’

Evanger’s told KATU News that they investigated the incident.

‘We at Evanger's are deeply horrified about this,’ the company said.

‘We take the safety and quality of our products as top priority.

‘We need to investigate and act upon this issue immediately and would require the LOT code found on the bottom of the can.

‘Please email or get in contact with us. We also feed our own dog, Lilly, this food.’

The family sent the remaining food to a lab. They also drove Talulah’s corpse to a veterinary pathologist for a postmortem exam.

‘Poisoning from the dog food. That’s what killed her,’ Mael told WJLA-TV.

What was even more shocking was that the poison contained in the food was pentobarbital, a lethal drug used to euthanize dogs, cats, and even horses.

WJLA-TV had another lab, Ellipse Analytics, test other dog foods for potential contaminants.

After months of tests, Ellipse Analytics found that samples of the Gravy Train brand of wet food given to dogs were positive for pentobarbital.

The chemical likely made its way into the products through a process used by the pet food industry known as rendering.

Rendering works by gathering together the carcasses of dead animals including diseased cattle, tumor-ridden chickens, road kill, zoo animals, dogs and cats.

The corpses of the dead animals are then heated before the moisture and fat are removed, according to Healthy Holistic Living.

Chemicals and additives are then added to the mix, creating a stew that is used in pet foods.

While the amount of pentobarbital traces found were not considered lethal, federal law bars any level of the contaminant.

Gravy Train, which is produced by Big Heart Pet Foods and owned by the Smucker’s company, generates $40million worth of sales every year.

Big Heart Brands also makes other popular pet foods like Meow Mix, Milk Bone, Kibbles’n Bits, 9 Lives, Natural Balance, and Pup-Peroni, among others.

Both the FDA and Smucker’s refused to comment on how pentobarbital ended up in dog food.

Smucker’s did release a statement to WJLA-TV saying: ‘We launched and are conducting a thorough investigation, including working closely with our suppliers, to determine the accuracy of these results and the methodology used.’