Retired real estate developer Don Earl wasn't interested in playing detective when his cat, Chuckles, died in December of sudden and mysterious kidney failure.
Earl, a resident of Port Townsend, Wash., said he suspected he knew what happened to his 6-year-old orange-and-white longhair when he heard reports of thousands of similar dog and cat illnesses last winter and the recall of tens of millions of containers of pet food.
But his cat's food never made the list. Earl called the Food and Drug Administration, offering to send officials unopened samples of the food for testing, but he said they declined.
So Earl, like scores of pet owners determined to safeguard their animals or explain their pets' demise, took matters into his own hands and found a private lab to conduct tests at his own expense.
"If anything comes out of this, it's going to be through the efforts of people like me doing the research and testing on their own," Earl said.
"We're over three months into this thing and private citizens are finding evidence that no one else is even bothering to look for. And that's beyond unacceptable."
FDA officials and other experts, however, don't recommend the path taken by Earl, saying that consumers don't have the means to determine whether a lab is reliable.
Dr. Robert Poppenga, a professor of veterinary diagnostic toxicology at UC Davis' School of Veterinary Medicine, suggested that pet owners first contact their veterinarian if they suspect poisoned food. A pet's doctor can then determine whether to have food tested and how best to interpret a lab's findings, he said.
FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza seconded that recommendation but said consumers could also contact the agency to report a suspected problem. In some circumstances, the FDA will arrange to pick up a sample of the food for further testing.
Zawisza said she didn't know why investigators declined to take Earl's sample. The agency, she said, has picked up samples from consumers throughout the pet food crisis, which began with the March 16 recall of 60 million containers of dog and cat food manufactured by Menu Foods Income Fund of Canada.
Earl sent his samples to ExperTox Inc. of Deer Park, Texas, which said it found traces of the pain medication acetaminophen in several pet food samples, including Pet Pride Turkey and Giblets Dinner made by Menu Foods, which was one of the products Earl fed Chuckles.
