Pet owners continue to worry about tainted food for dogs and cats

July 9, 2007

By LINDA LOMBARDI

for THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

For many pet owners, the biggest problem used to be remembering whether the cats preferred the salmon flavor or the tuna. But since the pet food recalls in March — when the deaths of dogs and cats were blamed on pet food containing Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine — that's the least of our worries.

These days, if pet food labels were books, they'd be on the best seller list.

Pet owners all over the United States now find themselves in the position of attempting to become instant experts on pet nutrition. It's not always easy, but most say they believe their pets are better for it, and even their own human diets have improved with their new awareness.

Take Rosalie Paoloni, a medical transcriptionist in Wolcott, Conn., with nine cats and two dogs, who says she's recently changed everyone's diets, with some extra effort.

Paoloni is trying to buy more organic and locally produced foods for her pets and her family. "I will not buy the old foods again from the big pet food companies," she says, and she is also trying to avoid human food produced by large corporations.

"I have to buy from small specialty pet food stores, and the prices are expensive and keep going up since the recalls," she says. "Plus, I'm using more gas shopping around. I have had to go without buying some necessities for my family as a consequence of this."

For some people, their awareness level has increased but, frustratingly, their options have not. Rosie Glorso lives with her two Scottish Fold cats in Unalaska, Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands.

When the recalls were announced, "I was really upset because there is a very limited selection of cat food in my town," and shipping is prohibitively expensive to a town where access is only possible by air or boat.

Glorso has continued to feed her cats a dry food that was not recalled. But she is looking forward to her move back to Colorado, where she hopes to switch to an organic brand.

Even those who have a wider choice of products may find that the problems don't end there. Pets don't always cooperate — cats in particular can be finicky and resist change.

Jan McCartney of Toronto, Canada, says that her cats will only eat a certain brand of cat food in small cans. They love it so much she dubs it "kitty crack."

So while McCartney has been able to switch her dogs to a grain-free kibble made in Alberta, the cats are a different story. "After quite a few weeks of trying different brands, they won't eat anything unless it's either Purina Fancy Feast or something mixed with Fancy Feast."

Traudi Wicks of Lawton, Okla., tried to wean her cats off of commercial dried foods after attending a holistic veterinary pet food seminar.

"They totally refuse home cooked food and one of them even refuses to touch canned food," she says.

Because Wicks lives in a rural area and needs to shop on the Internet, experimentation is not cheap. "Since this mess started I have spent close to $1,000 trying to find a canned food they like."

Pet owners say they still feel they often don't have enough information to make good choices.

For example, Paoloni wants to avoid all products made in China or containing ingredients from China. But pet foods usually don't label where their ingredients come from.

McCartney says now that she also thinks about her own food differently, she is distressed by the lack of labeling with it, too.

"We're looking at more organic food, more food that is grown locally," says McCartney. But "too many food items are 'made in Canada' but who knows where they really came from."

Even if labeling requirements were strengthened, it might be impossible to choose local ingredients in some cases. For example, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a dietary supplement industry trade group, 90% of the vitamin C used in the U.S. comes from China. There is only one Western company that still manufactures it, in Holland.

The result is a world where a sense of security in something as simple as grocery shopping — or feeding a hungry dog — may seem lost long ago.

Julie Paez, co-owner of The Big Bad Woof in the Takoma Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., says that their sales of premium, natural pet foods have gone up 20% to 30% since the recalls.

"They (customers) walk in the door and say, 'What's not going to kill my dog or cat?'" Paez says.