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Makers of Pet Foods Voice Little Worry
Makers of Pet Foods Voice Little Worry
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH Published: December 26, 2003 Nancy Cohn's 16-year-old domestic shorthair, Sarah, has always been partial to fish-based cat foods. But Sarah has been off her feed lately and losing a little weight, so her owner, a state-employed executive based in Manhattan, had been contemplating adding some beef and liver to her menu. Then Ms. Cohn heard about the case of mad cow disease in the Northwest. "No way am I serving her beef now," said Ms. Cohn, who has ruled out even considering it for at least a year. "We're talking canned foods. Who knows how long they'll stay on the shelf?" Judith Freedman's 4-year-old Pekingese, Muffin, will not be eating any beef-based dog food, either. But then again, she never has. "She turns up her nose at anything that even resembles dog food," said Ms. Freedman, a psychotherapist in Scarsdale, N.Y. "Muffin eats everything that we eat, and we have every intention of continuing to eat steak." The reaction of pet owners to the nation's first case of mad cow disease - formally bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or B.S.E. - may range from horrified to ho-hum, but among Nestlé Purina PetCare, the Iams unit of Procter & Gamble and other players in the $13 billion pet food industry, sentiment is more uniform. Most are expecting heightened inspections, more paperwork and maybe some other headaches in operations. And some worry that Japan and other countries that have customarily imported large quantities of pet foods may cut back on their orders or insist on tighter inspections of plants and products. But few expect a catastrophe to their bottom line. "Concern over B.S.E. has not caused consumers to shift away from commercial pet foods in the past, and I don't think it will cause that shift now," said Stephen Payne, public affairs director for the Pet Food Institute, the industry trade association to which the companies are referring most calls about the effects of the mad cow case. Nervous tissue from infected cattle can spread the disease from one cow to another. Such tissue from slaughtered cows, which is barred in the manufacture of cattle feed, is diverted instead to the making of food for poultry and house pets, in which there is yet no documented case of its causing the disease. In any event, the industry says it both hopes and expects that the current case, involving a Holstein from Washington State, will prove isolated, like one in the Canadian province of Alberta last spring. Pet foods are a significant business. According to Mr. Payne, 55 percent of American households have at least one pet. That, he said, translates into more than 70 million cats and more than 60 million dogs, which together consume $12 billion in pet food every year. Exports drive the industry figure up an additional $1 billion. Until this year, the industry felt mostly immune to anxiety over the kind of mad cow outbreaks that had occurred abroad: the supply of domestic beef byproducts that often form the staples of pet foods has generally been more than ample to meet the industry's needs. But most American pet food companies have factories in Canada, too, and raw meats and finished foods alike had long flowed back and forth across the border. Both countries had long ago instituted beef safeguards, for example imposing a halt in 1997 to feeding cattle with meat and bone meal from other cattle. Although the safeguards were aimed at keeping beef safe for consumption by humans, their effects spread to the pet food industry, which, after all, generally uses the discarded parts of the same animals that provide filet mignons and sirloins. The United States and Canadian governments readily accepted each other's certificates of inspection. "Essentially," Mr. Payne recalled, "the border was porous." That all changed in May, when a cow carcass in Alberta was found to be infected with mad cow disease. Since then, Mr. Payne said, pet foods made in Canada have been barred from entry into the United States unless the plants where they were made are inspected by American officials. Even products that do not contain beef need that approval, "just to ensure that they could not have been contaminated with beef products," he said. But the case of the sick Alberta cow, which was born two years before the cattle feed rules took effect, appears to have been an isolated one. While the tighter restrictions still apply, pet foods are again moving briskly across the border. The appearance of mad cow disease in Canada was "disruptive in terms of moving materials," Mr. Payne said, " but it never stopped people from buying the products." Mr. Payne readily concedes that if inspections turn up more infected cattle in the United States, then the industry will have to do some serious rethinking about its supply chain and product mix: customers can always turn to fish and chicken products rather than those made from beef. Barbara Boynton, a Manhattan publishing executive, is probably typical. She is simply going to drop beef from the rotation of canned goods she serves Pumpernickel and Misty, her two cats. "The prices are the same," Ms. Boynton said, "so it makes sense to be careful." |
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This is informative- keep up the good info.
-- Barb I can only please one person a day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either. |
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This is informative- keep up the good info.
-- Barb I can only please one person a day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either. |
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wow this is really scarey i never thought about the fact that dog food could
be infected with mad cow. MY dog can only eat beef canned food or he gets sick . |
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wow this is really scarey i never thought about the fact that dog food could
be infected with mad cow. MY dog can only eat beef canned food or he gets sick . |
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