The laboratory that identified the poison believed to be responsible for the death of pets around the country has started testing individual components of the tainted pet food to determine which ingredient was contaminated, officials said Monday. Scientists at the New York State Food Laboratory on Friday identified aminopterin as the likely culprit in a poisoning scare that prompted the recall of 95 brands of "cuts and gravy" style dog and cat food.
Have you been following this pet food poisoning story? I looked up aminopterin on Wikipedia to see what it is, and here is what I found:
Its antifolate activity was first used by Sidney Farber in 1947 to induce remissions among children with leukemia.[1][2] Although more potent than the closely related compound methotrexate, it was replaced by methotrexate in the 1950s, due to unpredictable toxicity. Now in a more pure preparation, aminopterin is back in clinical trials for patients with leukemia.[3]
The compound was used as an abortifacient in the 1960s and earlier, but was associated with congenital malformations.[4] The name for its teratogenic effects is fetal aminopterin syndrome. When a similar cluster of abnormalies appears in the absence of exposure to antifolates it is referred to as aminopterin-like syndrome without aminopterin.[5]
Aminopterin can be used as a rodenticide, although it is not approved for that use in Canada or the United States.[6] It has an LDLo of 2.5mg/kg when orally administered to rats.[7]
So, it suppresses immunity, can cause chemical abortions, can cause birth defects, and is used as a rat poison. Great. Imagine all the pets that didn't die. Will this cause a host of birth defects in our pure bred dogs over the next few years? This is more than just a poison.
Further, I am seriously wondering if this might have been a "test run" by a terror organization to see how vulnerable our food delivery system is in the US, and how we would respond to an emergency. I could be paranoid about this, but how does such a chemical get near, or, worse yet, mixed in, a batch of FOOD?! Seems mighty weird to me.
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