New Cat Food Recall Hopefully Won’t be Linked to Serious Illness
Another pet food recall was announced yesterday. This recall affects two types of Nutro Brand cat food. No dog foods are affected. Nutro issued a press release yesterday. Here is a quote.
This recall is due to incorrect levels of zinc and potassium in our finished product resulting from a production error by a US-based premix supplier.
Two mineral premixes were affected. One premix contained excessive levels of zinc and under-supplemented potassium. The second premix under-supplemented potassium. Both zinc and potassium are essential nutrients for cats and are added as nutritional supplements to NUTRO® dry cat food.
Based upon the limited information I have seen I am optimistic that this recall will not lead to serious illness in many cats. Zinc can be toxic in very high doses. Although I have not seen quantitative information on the amount of zinc contained in the recalled foods, it is unlikely that their zinc levels are high enough to cause problems.
Low potassium also can lead to a host of problems. However, they usually develop slowly.
In either case, I’m optimistic that switching affected cats to a nutritionally balanced diet will prevent major issues from occurring.
However, contact your veterinarian immediately if your cat has been eating a recalled food and he or she experiences lethargy, weakness, lack of appetite, vomiting, diarrhea, or any other unusual symptoms.
For more information, click here to read the entire press release.
A note about comments: emotions tend to run strong when pet food is discussed. Please keep your comments civil. Thank you in advance for not forcing me to delete your comments.
You have questions. 
Please post the symptoms of an animal with an excess of zinc or a deficiency of potassium so that pet parents have an idea of what to look for if they’ve used the foods.
Also, here’s a good reference I found
Zinc Toxicosis in Small Animals.
http://vlsstore.com/Media/PublicationsArticle/PV_24_09_712.pdf
Since I was a turnip that fell off the truck in 2007 with my trust in the pet food industry, I’ve been rolling around long enough now, to not believe it is not in the dog foods. There’s too much coincidence in the number of dogs & cats claimed to have similar problems as what this represents now. And, a test at pfpsa.org showed high zinc levels in dog foods some time back.
Nutro says the FDA isn’t investigating, FDA does a release saying they aren’t. Consumer Affairs takes the FOIA to court & lo & behold,, here’s a recall. Turnip, yup, makes me feel like a turnip again.
A friends cat became ill from this food. She stopped eating, stopped drinking water, she was meowing a lot. Saw the vet, nothing worked, she came around, had a relapse and is doing better.
I expect that other products will be added to the list. They say there were no complaints!???
Is this a company that deserves our trust, our money?
NOT!
Two years ago, Nutro Brand cat food was the brand that caused the demise of my much loved Miss Hollywood Swinger. My attempt to communicate with them was met with silence as they feared legal action.
Now they are being careless yet again. And they chose to NOT be forthcoming about their defective products.
AND, it appears they are buying their “premix” products from the Chinese yet again. Do they farm out their lab work to the Chinese, as well? If they cannot manufacture a quality product on their own, using qualified, on-site lab testing, they should just shut down their plant…or the government should do it for them.
I actually bought this a couple of months ago but my cat wouldn’t eat it so it went to waste. Thank goodness that she didn’t eat it…