Cat deaths linked to Orijen

[coontuffy]

I watched the videos of Gus and Maurice.
I found myself sobbing my eyes out.

My husband came in and asked why I was crying.
Without saying one word, I showed him the videos.

His only comment was that those poor kitties look exactly like Gizmo looked, before he died last January.  Gizmo was dragging his hind quarters and flopping all over.  I cried even harder.  I'm sorry, but I still miss him horribly and despite 5 different vets and specialty vets, we were given 5 different diagnoses. 


Mu husband asked what was wrong and I told him that these were the poor Orijen AU kitties.

My husband got my Gizmo diary and we read back through our whole ordeal.
Gizmo was eating only Orijen as dry.  He was the only one getting it regularly, as we were trying to maintain his weight with both wet and dry.  The other 5 would only get 2-3 pieces of the kibble.

Makes me wonder if the bags were irridiated before the food went in and was shipped to the US.

Kaffe, how I wish I knew of the hyperbaric therapy.  Bless you for that fantastic find and I pray it will be of some benefit to the affected kitties.


I shall continue to keep all the kitties and their people parents in my prayers.
Maybe that will help a little.              

[kaffe]

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.

[The Cats Mother]

Here's the reply I received

Permission to blog and cross- post.






T        – Champion Petfoods regrets the terrible circumstances surrounding the irradiated cat food in Australia and as pet owners ourselves we know this is a difficult and emotional issue.

 

I would like to point out a few things in your email that perhaps merit your closer attention.

 

Two shipments made to Australia that were irradiated. We stopped and returned the 3rd shipment before it reached the irradiation chamber.  This is where the ‘2 shipment” number comes from in all of our printed and spoken references.

 

The ORIJEN compassion fund is established to help the people of Australia whose cats are affected. The terms and conditions of the fund were developed through discussions with vets in Australia regarding the costs associated with treatments.  From your email letter below, it appears you have misinterpreted the terms of the fund and I suggest you contact either myself or our customer service department if you would like to gain a fuller understanding of the funds’ purpose and function.

 

If Champion Petfoods made a mistake, it is from not having complete knowledge of the irradiation process prior to entering the Australian market and, once we learned about the irradiation process, making the reasonable assumption, that the process was safe.  Champion made several enquiries and to Australian authorities regarding the safety of irradiation and were assured of its safety.

 

There is regrettably very little available research that addresses the effect of  irradiation on dry cat food. We hope that recent events in Australia will change that.

 

Champion Petfoods remains committed to aiding the people Australia affected by the irradiated cat food.  Our company and staff deeply regret the circumstances surrounding what can only be described as a heart-breaking matter.

 

 

Peter A. Muhlenfeld

Champion Petfoods Ltd.

www.championpetfoods.com

[The Cats Mother]

I watched the videos of Gus and Maurice.
I found myself sobbing my eyes out.

My husband came in and asked why I was crying.
Without saying one word, I showed him the videos.

His only comment was that those poor kitties look exactly like Gizmo looked, before he died last January.  Gizmo was dragging his hind quarters and flopping all over.  I cried even harder.  I'm sorry, but I still miss him horribly and despite 5 different vets and specialty vets, we were given 5 different diagnoses. 


Mu husband asked what was wrong and I told him that these were the poor Orijen AU kitties.

My husband got my Gizmo diary and we read back through our whole ordeal.
Gizmo was eating only Orijen as dry.  He was the only one getting it regularly, as we were trying to maintain his weight with both wet and dry.  The other 5 would only get 2-3 pieces of the kibble.

Makes me wonder if the bags were irridiated before the food went in and was shipped to the US.

Kaffe, how I wish I knew of the hyperbaric therapy.  Bless you for that fantastic find and I pray it will be of some benefit to the affected kitties.


I shall continue to keep all the kitties and their people parents in my prayers.
Maybe that will help a little.              

Coontuffy, where do you live please? In what country I mean?

This plus reading the link to the lady in the UK on the linked thread gives me great cause for concern.

I can tell everyone with certainty that the goods were gamma irradiated in Australia. That's all I am free to say at the moment but I can assure you that is the case.

[raggiesrule]

I remember saying to my vet once you have seen a cat affected by eating Orijen it is something you will always remember.

Coontuffy so sorry for what happened to Gizmo - I know what it was like here when it first started to happen no one knew what was happening and we were testing and trying to find out what was happening to our cats. We had some of the earlier affected cats and when we lost our first cat - it appeared an isolated incident of renal failure and despite being strange we did not do an autopsy on Rob because our vets could not see we would gain anything and were not concerned about our other cats. Two weeks later we started having cats showing wobbley walking and paralyse. If we had only known earlier what was happening. And I don't blame our vets they were on the same horrid learning curve we were on.

When did you lose Gizmo and how long had he been on Orijen? sorry just trying to get a time line on what happened. Also given Peter whatshis name's comments about turning around a shipment it does give me grave concerns about what happened with that product after it left the factory and where it ended up?

Hugs

Jo

[maxymia]

In relation to the response from Champion.

In true Champion form they have once again ignored questions and gave some heartfelt response with no actions.

Judging by the paperwork needed to be signed BEFORE irradiation and people I have spoken to at AQIS I find it hard to believe that Peter would have been assured of the safety of the product after irradiation.

If they are committed in aiding us in this situation, they would have pulled the product off the shelves 2 months earlier and made sure the word got around to all people who fed this poison to their beloved animals. If Champion recalled Horrorjen when the link was found my cats would have only eaten it for 2-3 weeks. I know there are many others in the same situation. If they cared perhaps our cats would have been saved from the spinal cord damage, brain damage and spasticity they are now suffering from.

Anyone who feels strongly about this send Champion an email to let them know how much your life has now changed or how you feel about the situation in Australia.

Coontuffy I am so sorry what we are going through is making you relive your horrid experience. We really need to find out if this is happening elsewhere. My first thoughts, maybe the irradiation in Australia has just worsened the effects of what we are starting to hear on other countries. I do remember reading about 1 case in England, another possible case in Singapore and now you. Guys we need to gather all our strength and keep looking into this.

[maxymia]

Coontuffy Could you please let us know what country you are in and also contact details of the Veterinary Association (or similar) so I can contact them to see if they can help. Hopefully they can help us figure out if there are any other cases as you described with unkown cause to see if there is any link between your cat and Orijen

[kaffe]

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.

[Frosty]

Now is the time I wish we could access itchmo forums - there is just so much information written there that may be able to help. There are many threads about beloved Gizmo there.

[The Cats Mother]

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.

Maxymia is absolutely right we need to do some serious digging here.

When the pet food association of australia has started to hint something about Canadian manufacturers then clammed up (which they did to one colleague of mine) there might be a smoking gun we need to look for the bullets.

Of course the pet food assoc of Aust could just be mischievously protecting its own manufacturer members in Australia by creating some concern about imported food from Canada but it's still worth following up.

So if Coontuffy can bring herself to respond in spite of the feelings this might churn up, in Gizmo's memory perhaps, we would greatly appreciate it. We may be able to show something that would save future cats from this terrible death/paralysis.

Also does anyone know notsoape from the UK site? We could perhaps contact her also.

I think it's important we do this, am in total agreement with you Maxymia.

Thanks everyone.

[Perseus]

coontuffy, I well remember reading posts and emailing you about poor dear Gizmo and what you both went through, and I also remember you feeding the Orijens.  I know it's hard to relive these memories, but thank you for posting this for our Australian friends.  

coontuffy has been a long time trusted poster so if she says it happened, it did.  I didn't even connect the dots until I read her post below.

Yes, it's Champion typical reply of blaming everyone and everything else, even blaming the vets like it was them who said, don't pay them anymore as they won't need it.

As maxymia points out so correctly, Champion had mounds of paperwork to prepare before the food left the port so this is complete BS that they "just made a mistake".  I sure hope they get to tell a judge that some day.  Maybe it will catch on and all criminals and murderers can just stand up and say they "just made a mistake" and everything is okay after that?  Is that what we're expected to believe here?

And the mysterious third shipment to Australia, for the first time, we are told it was returned.  Returned to where?  It would have to be the States since it departed from here.  And then where did a whole ocean container of pet food go?  What proof does Champion have that it was returned BEFORE it was irradiated and where did it end up?

[Bonkers]

  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

[Frosty]

You might want to 'google' this  "itchmoforums.com" and use the cache link. You could also try other search engines for results.

Here is a link that will take you to 'the way back machine' - they archive many pages:
http://www.archive.org/index.php

paste this in the little 'box' and hit search
www.itchmoforums.com

It will take you to a page that lists a few pages. Follow a link and then there should be a link that says,
"Search for all pages on the site itchmoforums.com/"

Click on the itchmo link and a bunch more pages will come up.

 

[kaffe]

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?

[Frosty]

Here's the search link - I checked out a few pages and the cached pages work for me.

http://www.google.com/search?q=itchmoforums+Many+Many+tests+for+Gizmo&hl=en&filter=0