The expanded recall by Menu Foods today essentially moves back the manufacturing dates that they feel may have been contaminated. Since they already recalled all of their products in the stores, this expanded recall would only affect someone who had been hoarding the stuff from last fall.
As you may recall, the only dry food to be included in the pet food recall so far is M/D Dry feline diet, a Hill’s prescription diet manufactured for diabetic cats (and also used as a weight control diet alternative to W/D, R/D, Feline LIGHT, etc.). Our only patient on this diet that was feeling sub-par proved to have normal kidney function when tested, thank goodness.
At that time, I contacted Hill’s to ask what their policy would be on helping to cover the cost of this type screening. Their first reply left me pretty cold: "We can’t do that." My feeling was that if it had been five cats, they would have paid in a heart-beat, but that they had cold feet about say, five thousand cats. Here’s the problem: if it’s the right thing to do when you can "afford it", then it’s still the right thing to do when it’s going to be pretty expensive. The cost doesn’t change what’s right and wrong.
It’s kind of like that old joke, "What kind of girl do you think I am?" "Honey, we done established that. We’re just haggling about the price now."
Turns out that Hill’s has seen the light. I got a fax today stating that now they will in fact provide a one-time payment of up to $100 per patient tested, providing they were actually eating the recalled diet, etc. etc. etc.
So we feel better about Hill’s again. Too bad they couldn’t step up to the plate the first time I called. Corporate decision making is probably a lot more complicated since they were acquired by Colgate-Palmolive.