when i go to the pet food recall site, the deaths total doesnt seem acurate?

Question

it will say 16 deaths an one said 100 deaths. it seems nation wide an even in the small town i i live in i have friends who have a cat that died from this. how come the number they post seems so low , surely theres more deaths total then that

omg txharley, im so sorry to hear that. that makes me so mad that they will make it so hard for people to get help. this company has been collecting money for so many years they need to pay out for there mistake to the innocent people

Answer 1

Because they're the manufacturers who are responsible for this and they don't want to admit the true death count. They twist the truth to fit their needs. It says 16 deaths, but they aren't telling you that this was for only one vet, or one town, for instance. Maybe the 16 deaths was only for one particular brand of food. This is how they do it. Don't trust the manufacturers' sites as far as truthful reporting in this regard.

Answer 2

A considerable amount of documentation must be done to "prove" the death is from the food. Say if you feed your cat a recalled food but he goes outside - it's almost impossible to prove he did not get into any antifreeze so His death would not be on the count. This being said - the word of mouth probably exaggerated the other direction since the natural conclusion is to credit any similar symptoms to the recall, and sadly other things can cause the same symptoms.

Answer 3

You are right, there are a lot more deaths. I lost 3 dogs, myself, and may lose a 4th.
The reason the numbers are so low is that the companies involved have to investigated each death before they make it public news.
Most vets charge between $1000.00 and $3000.00 to do a post mortum autopsy on a dog to determine cause of death.
Most vets do not have a payment plan available for this.
None in my area do. They require payment of it all up front.

The companies involved will not do anything unless they have a notarized post mortum test results from a vet. Even if you have the food containers and your reciepts showing when and where you bought the food. (I know just went throught it with my dogs.)
The FDA won't even do anything without those statements of post mortum from a vet.
My husband and I didn't have the money to pay for even 1 post mortum autopsy. We can't borrow it from a bank because our credit is very bad due to previous marriages and divorce.
Our friends and family don't have that kind of money to lend us, either. (We called everyone.)
We only have 1 vehicle that my husband needs for transportation to work and the title loan co. won't loan us money on it because the car is too old.
Because my husband was out of work for awhile, we don't have very many things we can pawn to get it.
Also, Legal Aid won't help because we don't have the post mortum autopsy. Just my vets opinion without the actual tests
doesn't matter.

Answer 4

http://community.whptv.com/forums/permalink/1483113/1483113/ShowThread.aspx#1483113

The FDA has admitted they are to busy to count them. Aside from that, there has been no centralized delegated source for veterinarians and consumers to register with to report them to.

So basically, aside from the malpractice lawyers, nobody's counting.

Update: Banifield Veterinary Hospitals have been so gracious to submit statistics they have so far - and they've indicated there is a 30% increase in renal kidney failure cases in pets during the recall period.

If you have time, you certainly may want to watch the Senate Hearings that will start tomorrow.

Answer 5

Even 100 is low. A lot of pets were already buried before the recall and since they couldn't test the buried pets then the rating is even lower. But it's probably just for one brand of the food.

Answer 6

As I understand it, the total is the number of deaths that have been verified by the FDA. States have their own verified totals, so the numbers are higher in actuality, they haven't been verified by the federal government.

My heart goes out to all of those who have lost their pets, or whose pets have been sickened, in this ordeal.

Answer 7

i believe that the 16 they are talking about are the ones that died in the test that they ran on the food before they recalled it.they will never admit the true amount of pet deaths.My cat is in bad shape from eating the recalled food and now he is going to die soon.So there is one more to add to the list..

Answer 8

go to pet connection.com and it will show the right count. Pet connection is mad at FDA and menufoods because it is not showing the right count. it is over what they say.