FDA pet food probe checks 4,000 pet deaths

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating reports by American households of at least 4,000 pet deaths to determine if any are linked to pet food contaminated with melamine from China, the agency said on Tuesday.

Thousands of U.S. dog and cat food products sold under some 150 brands have been recalled in recent weeks because melamine was discovered in vegetable protein concentrate shipments used by pet food makers. Melamine is typically used in plastics and fertilizer.

To date, the FDA has confirmed 16 pet deaths from the tainted food. Officials are sifting through thousands of telephone calls from worried consumers to determine if more deaths are linked to the food.

"The agency has received as many as 17,000 calls ... regarding this pet food incident that are alleging some form of animal illness or death," Michael Rogers, head of the FDA's field investigations unit, told reporters.

Of those, information obtained from 8,000 calls has been entered into the FDA's database and "roughly 50 pct of those allege an animal death," Rogers said.

But government officials emphasized the actual number of pet deaths directly caused by the contaminated pet food may be much lower.

"Those reports of deaths are just that -- people who called in and reported deaths that might be related to the pet food," said Ken Petersen, a veterinarian with the U.S. Agriculture Department, who spoke at the same news conference. "We have not confirmed those that are related to the pet food and that will take some time."

Some of the imported vegetable protein was also used to make U.S. livestock feed consumed by an estimated 3 million chickens and 6,000 hogs, according to the FDA and USDA. Officials said the health risk was "extremely small" for humans who ate meat from a pig or chicken that had consumed the tainted food because of the tiny amounts of melamine involved.

Most of the chickens that ate the suspicious feed were slaughtered and sold as human food in February, according to FDA officials. An estimated 5,500 of the hogs that ate the tainted feed are still alive and will not be slaughtered for human consumption, they said.

Two FDA investigators are in China and working with the Chinese government to determine how the melamine contamination occurred and whether there might be other incidents.

"Clearly that is a concern, as to whether this has been going on for some time," said Dr. David Acheson, who was named the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection earlier on Tuesday.