Diamond’s Nutra Nuggets Lamb Meal and Rice Dry Formula Recalled
SOunds like we may be seeing more recalls from Diamond.
Thanks to KSEE24.com for this story and Itchmo for picking it up.
Dog owners warned about potentially contaminated food
May 21, 2007 – Dog owners are being warned about a batch of possibly contaminated food, sold at a Visalia Costco around mid-April, after at least four dogs fell ill.
Two of the dogs who became sick, a nine-year-old chocolate lab named Bob and his 1 1/2-year-old adopted sister, Pearl, have been staying at the Lone Oak Pet Clinic in Visalia, since May 11, after they began throwing up.
“We took them in… and her kidney was 80 percent shutdown,” said owner Ken Womack.The dogs are being fed through intravenous tubes and are regaining their strength, but their struggle doesn’t seem to be isolated.
Two other dogs apparently came in earlier with the same symptoms.
Veterinarian Dr. Matt Humason says “We began asking questions…we found the dogs all ate the same food from the same store at the same time… so we sent a sample to get it tested and it came back positive with melamine.”
All four dogs ate Nutra Nuggets brand food.
A sample was sent to a lab at UC Davis and Womack’s fears were confirmed. “All I’m trying to get people to do is notify the people and let them know we may have problem. Unfortunately I feel Costco has been very hesitant to do that.”
That’s because Womack and the owner of the other sick dogs threw out the bags once they took the pet food home.
They’re working with the distributor to track down the specific batch number. A Costco representative tells KSEE 24 news once it’s been tracked, they will immediately yank the product in question.
Follow this link to read the rest of the article and watch the video.
Itchmo was able to run down the exact brand of pet food affected.
We have been able to confirm that Nutra Nuggets (made by Diamond Pet Foods) is recalling their 40 pound Lamb Meal and Rice Dry Formula for Dogs. The contaminated batch’s product code is #NLR0404 and the Best Buy dates are October 9-10, 2008. We spoke with a vet at the Nutra Nuggets recall line and he said that so far, they had only heard of 2 cases in which the dogs had renal diseases (confirming the news report from yesterday).
He said that it was due to cross-contamination due to food being produced for Natural Balance (Natural Balance had recalls in mid-April). At this time, he said that no other food produced by Nutra Nuggets was being recalled.
Follow this link to the followup article on Itchmo.
So is this an entirely new recall?
Greenchick,
Yes, this is an entirely new recall. In fact, I’m watching this one closely because if this food was contaminated by having been near the really tainted stuff, I’m guessing that there may be problems out of that plant. As I understand, Diamond has three plants. I’m not sure which one produced this batch of contaminated food though.
I returned a largely unused bag of nutra nuggets dog food to costco as the dog that was eating it was throwing up and drinking huge amounts of water. The people at Costco were very unsympathetic and in fact insisted on telling me it was not on the list, instead of being concerned that this too may have been tainted.
I believe we will continue to find even more foods that are poisoned, but those selling it or making it stand to loose millions for every day it is recalled, so they may be a little reluctant to withdraw it or at least uninterested until forced to pay attention
Carol Baraby