Itchmo is back on line Feb 18

Welcome to this forum, Rosella; and I join you in grief and anger over what has happened to the cats in Australia fed a supposed holistic kibble that tunred out to be slow poison - Orijen (Hororjen, as someone recently called it).  I agree with you that Champion Pet Foods had been very non-chalant and negligent in studying what irradiation would do to their kibble and the possible ramifications.  In one letter, they said that they assumed it was safe because the process was required by the Australian government.  Blarney!  How can one assume that "all will be well" when the food will be "nuked"?  Goodness!  A more careful food maker will say, "Wait a minute - how much irradiation?  Is that safe?  Where are the literature to prove it? Our kibble is supposed to be holistic, cooked at low temp precisely so that blah blah blah ---- will not irraiating the food defeat ou purpose?  and so on... they shouldv'e asked questions.  Didn't they think that irradiation would nullify the supposed benefits of their much vaunted low-temp cooking process?   Its like me cooking a fresh piece of steak to medium rare and then sticking the slab in the microwave for 10 mins!  Now how smart is that?!!! 

Goodness.  Bird food too?  This recall is ever-expanding!

Peg - click "cached" an then "text only version" - try that... it worked for me.

Interesting and alarming claim in Posts number 18 and 19 about Orijen in the link that Bonkers supplied.  Post #18 describes a cat named Maia whose legs turned wobbly after eating Orijen... Post #19 from the owner of Maia caiming that Champion Petfoods asked her for a retraction  

What's going on?  I find I can't dismiss these claims as mere coincidence!

Here are the links to our beloved Gizmo's story if itchmo ever comes back up.  

Multiple Myeloma
http://itchmoforums.com/help-with-my-sick-pet/multiple-myeloma-t2097.0.html

Gizmo has Multiple Myeloma
http://itchmoforums.com/help-with-my-sick-pet/gizmo-has-multiple-myeloma-t2117.0.html;msg26974#msg26974

Many Many tests for Gizmo
http://itchmoforums.com/help-with-my-sick-pet/many-many-tests-for-gizmo-t2178.0.html

Frosty - I'm impressed! 

  Kaffe, not sure if this is the one you were referring to but this is what I found. There is a person here who posted on February 9th whose cat was showing similar simptoms. http://www.theinternetpetvet.com/toxic-orijen-cat-food

That's it!  Thanks Bonkers!  I was already wondering if someone had it pulled!

OY! Guys!  We need investigative minds here now!  I'm going to comb the German forums... read a Malaysian one about Orijen... nothing turned up there that I could see - yet.  My goodness, my goodness...

First entry in the Gizmo threa dated Oct 3, 2007

Maincoonpeg:
"Still no REAL answers............
He was an absolute doll yesterday, despite them taking bone marrow from him.
Double cavity ultra sound
Many more x-rays
Blood and urine...........
4-7 days for the radiology interpretation"

Maybe we should read all of this thread again...  I wonder if Coontuffy kept a copy?  I copy all of my threads...

OK can someone contact the owners of the Itchmo site and ask them for access to that information? Somehow?

I remember seeing a link to their blog somewhre - was it on this site? when people were asking where has Itchmo gone?

We need that information.

Unfortunately the Itchmo server has gone down last Jan 27 or 28 and is still down... maybe due to the snow storms.  The owners of the site have been working or been in constant communication with their server provider to bring the site back up.  A few weeks ago, we could access cached pages rom the Itchmo forum if we knew the topic.  I tried to bring up a chached page of the Gizmo discussion from 2007-2008 with no success.

Coontuffy:  Was the topic title "We don't know what's wrong?..."or "Many Tests for Gizmo..."   something like that?

I don't think Coontuffy will mind if I answer for her here -do you Coontuffy? 
Anyway, Coontuffy (and our never-to-be-forgotten-Gizmo) is in the United States (as I am  ). 
There was one report in Dr. Jones' web blogg of another US cat displaying hindleg ataxia after eating Orijen... I'll see if I can find that.

Actually, we must thank the dear hubby of Catwoods (a friend I made at Itchmo)  for the hyperbaric therapy research.  She and her DH passed it on to me.

But gosh, Coontuffy... could Orijen be the cause of Gizmo's decline?  I remember his story vividly and how you combed vets for a diagnosis...  maybe someone should dig deeper into this... Orijen may not be fessing up totally to us and that the "unsubstatiated rumors" surfacing on various internet forums about kitties developing wobbliness while fed Orijen could be true.

Sometimes I wonder if the problem with Orijen is truly restricted only to Australia becuase I find stories of cats in other countries showing all the symptoms of orijen-poisoned Aussie cats.  Take this one example from the UK: the cat was fed Orijen and within a few months, developed wobbly legs then deteriorated rapidly and had to be PTS within a month of showing symptoms:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3018164

strangely, the owner feels that the cat's sudden paralysis is not food related even though the problem started at exactly the same time frame the problem surfaced in Australia  

what a femme fatale    she's a darling, for sure!

    Champion Foods did this to these beautiful creatures. It shall not be forgotten or left un-addressed.

My vet got back to me she said to say thank you for the hyperbaric information and she is doing more research.

Jo

Oh... I soooo HOPE that something of this therapy would help the kitties!

This is just to direct interested people to Natural Balance's "Buy with Confidence"
feature in their website that allows customersto check the [relative] safety of a particular batch NB food. 

"Our standard testing protocol includes testing for Aflatoxin, DON (Vomitoxin), Ochratoxin, Zearalenone (ZEA), and Fumonisin. As of September, 2008, we have added screening for E. coli and Salmonella. Stringent research, development and quality control practices have led to proven reliability and consistency of our tests. The accuracy and reproducibility of these testing protocols have inspired wide acceptance and use throughout the food industry. These tests have also earned official approvals and third party validations..."

http://www.naturalbalance.net/PetFoodScreening.tpl