good to know about this, but i believe it was the irradiation upon entry into Australia was the source of the contamination.

i HAVE BEEN FEEDING MY 18 YEAR OLD CAT ORIJEN AND CANNED FOR THE PAST YEAR AND HALF, SHE IS THRIVING, ACTIVE, HUNTING YOU NAME IT. 3 YEARS AGO SHE WENT FROM 12 LBS TO 6 LBS (HYPOTHYROID & KIDNEY ISSUES) GIVING HER HOMEOPATHY, SUBCUTANEOUS FLUID & HIGH QUALITY FOOD TOOK HER FROM DYING TO THRIVING. i TOO BELIEVE IT IS THE IRRADIATION THAT COMPROMISED THE INGREDIENTS.

It's a shame to pay so much and be rewarded with ill cats for doing so.

There's a new article in the Australian press about this.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,250...

I have been using Orijen dry cat food since August 2009. I was given a stray and I was feeding him regular corn filled cat food for the first two months I had him. I noticed he was gaining a lot of weight, fast, so I decided to try something new. I had read that corn and wheat were not meant for cats so I discovered Orijens food. Since he has been on it he has gone back down to a healthy weight and has stopped biting everyone (which was a problem before). Before I changed his food to Origins I was cleaning out a full litter box every day which is not normal. Now he is going normally, I'm happy I found Orijens and I feel lucky that I live in Canada so that I can still feed it to my cat safely.

Here's a study from back in 1969 that indicated irradiation of cat diets could be problematic. They didn't need to harm any cats to figure this out, they just studied the food itself.

(The study also showed how the effects of irradiation on some preservatives was not what one would expect.)

http://la.rsmjournals.com/cgi/reprint/3/1/39.pdf
"Only one experiment was done with the cat diet, and until more
evidence is available it seems advisable to increase the vitamin A content of the original diet or to give a separate supplement to animals receiving the irradiated product. Some caution in the use of irradiation for experimental diets of purified ingredients is clearly necessary. Some of the vitamins were less stable in this type of diet, the most susceptible being vitamins A, E and B6' and thiamine. Furthermore, destruction of these and others was grossly exacerbated by relatively small changes in composition such as
increased moisture or inclusion of antioxidants. In experimental diets that are to be irradiated, therefore, it would be safe practice to include a generous level of vitamins in the original formula or, if an unusual chemical substance is incorporated into the diet for the purpose of, for instance, toxicity studies, to give a separate vitamin supplement which is sterilized independently."

Hi, this video is of my 2 cats Gus and Maurice who have been poisoned by Champion pet foods Orijen. I urge you to boycott this company for what they have done to my cats and all the other affected cats in Australia. Gus and Maurice cannot run, roll in the sun, climb their cat trees,wash themselves, play with each other and be naughty jumping on the kitchen bench. I don't know if my cats will survive or regain the use of their hind legs or further in time have a major organ failure. This is what 4 months of eating Orijen cat food for 50% of their diet, the rest fresh meat, did to them. Three cats have died of seizures, one of a spinal tumour. Fifteen have been euthanized. Dozens of cats have been affected please join our forum to see our fight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEaXvEbLTVg&feature...

The vet report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kO5GsmKt24

.
Can you trust such a negligent company as Champion with your pets health, I did, like everyone else in Australia who thought they were buying the best for their cats and look what they have done to my beautiful cats. It should not matter if only 1 or 20 cats have died in Australia, they died because Champion petfoods sold their irradiated food here for profit, that does not sound like a caring holistic company to me

This is a letter to Champion pet foods from topcat3 whose cat Colette is very ill
My cat is totally paralyzed, incontinent and cannot drink or feed herself nor defaecate without enemas.

Your lack of due diligence before entering this market, admitted by you during our telephone conversation of 19 December 2008, and your failure to stay fully informed of what your importer was doing at all times in signing authorities to gamma irradiate not on one shipment, as you claimed in our telephone conversaton, not on two shipments as Michelle Grainger claimed but on THREE SHIPMENTS has caused this devastation among Australian cats.

Both your importer and you knew something was wrong in September/October of 2008 when vets first spotted a link between the syndrome and Orijen cat food. It took you until almost the end of November before a recall was announced and even then many of the retailers were not given a full explanation so they could not tell their customers who were still feeding their cats from recently purchased bags.

HunterBengal, his words after his cat died, Hunter was totally paralyzed from eating Orijen

Hi all,
Sorry I have not posted since Christmas. Personal circumstances did not allow.

I have the saddest of news. Hunter passed away last week. He continued to get worse and needed to be given water with a syringe daily and then had a seizure. We are absolutely devastated and really struggling especially since he was showing some signs of improvement in his back legs.

I just can not express the grief the we are going through as he was our little baby and was only 3 yrs old.

Once I regather strength I will be going after Champion, the distributor and Australian Quarantine to make sure this never happens again.

I wish you all the very best in your cats recovery.
I just don't know how we are going to cope without him anymore.


Thank you for any support you can show us

Rosella

I follow your posts for quite a long time and must tell that your posts always prove to be of a high value and quality for readers.

Amanda? You might want to check your dates. What year?

Should also consider Canola Oil as a contributing factor. It was so in the UK.

I have to say I am very disturbed by this article. Especially considering that three weeks ago I tried the "Orijen's dry cat food"(fish) for my two boys. One of them has a history of urinary crystals, but no symptoms in the past 4 years. He was on this food for 3 DAYS and was put into a severve episode. I have never had him howl and in so much pain in his 8 years. as soon as we discontinued and put him back on a different holistic food and treatment, it stopped.

It troubles me to think that there has been so much trouble with this product and NO ONE is looking at it and taking it off the market. Or at the very least have warnings posted on the bag

I have been feeding my cats Orijen chicken flavor for years with good results. I recently bought the new fish flavor. My cats liked it the first day or two and then refused to eat it. I no longer force my cats to eat what they rehject, ever since I made them eat the poisoned recalled pet food against their protests

I put them back on the chicken formula

I can't say how long two, three weeks , and my older cat Ogre was hiding sick and constipated. Two enemas later I realized he was not urinating any more either.

He had had a blockage years ago when I switched him to Walmarts premium dry kibbles It happened the same way a week or two after starting the new food. Then he was catheterized,

This time he had crystals, and a bladder infection. I caught it earlier so he was able to urinate as they started to cath him. Buprenex, clavamox antibiotic, and a drug to relax his tract and he is recovering, I hope.

Meanwhile at the same time my himi got really sick fast. She had gotten an eye inflamation and has teeth falling out. She started drinking water frantically and urinating more. The vet said she was diabetic. She is on oral antibiotics, eye antibiotics, and we are trying Glipizide for the diabetes. She already had tooth problems, but the eye infection and diabetes started at the same time ogre got sick.

Did the pet food push her over the edge?

They have returned happily to orijen chicken with no problem, and I am giving ogre a royal canin pouch for urinary, and the himi is getting canned paul newman mixed with a bit of pure meat baby food and pumpkin (since her heeth are mostly missing and she will accept this)

They both still want the orijen chicken

I am glad I stopped at this site researching orijen. I think my chicken formula is good, but both cats got bad after eating the new fish formula.

Thanks to all for sharing their information

i live in vancouver canada and have been feeding my dogs origen puppy food for a while now one i have had on it for alomst 2 years and the other about six months(hes new) my older one is on puppy food because he has to have high protein so the vet said to keep him on puppy food. so i did thinking origen was the best thing for him. he is a small dog no more than 11 pounds and recently i noticed his skin turning black, he started getting sick as well as the younger one. he lost his spunk and was always moping around and started to refuse to eat the food,( which for him is not normal) i went and looked in his fod dish and there was chicken feathers plastic and chunks of what looked like bone in the first bag and all three of those plus what looks like oil drips in a second bag. i have repeatedly tried to contact origen with them promising to do somthing about the matter and call me but they still have not and its been a month now. PLEASE IF ANYONE ELSE HAS THEIR DOGS GETTING SICK LET ME KNOW AND KEEP YOUR BAGS OF FOOD AS EVIDENCE DO NOT !!!!! RETURN THEM.

varina. anderson @ hotmail . com

To all of you with ill pets, including the paralysis, black skin, etc. Check out nzymes.com. I know the value of these products personally from experience with two dogs that went down in the hind legs. Within 2 and 4 days respectively, both dogs were up and walking, then running. It's simply enzymes that the body needs. They will talk with you on the phone and never try to sell anything. They only care about your pets. Honestly. The granules and Oxedrops are the best. It's worth a try, they have a guarantee, which I've never had to use.

To all of you with ill pets, including the paralysis, black skin, etc. Check out nzymes.com. I know the value of these products personally from experience with two dogs that went down in the hind legs. Within 2 and 4 days respectively, both dogs were up and walking, then running. It's simply enzymes that the body needs. They will talk with you on the phone and never try to sell anything. They only care about your pets. Honestly. The granules and Oxedrops are the best. It's worth a try, they have a guarantee, which I've never had to use.

I do not hold Champion responsible for these tragedies at all. I have been feeding their foods for quite some time and only have seen amazing results. And I am not alone in my network of Orijen feeders/breeders that believe in this food. It is a unfortunate that this food took the blame when there are hundreds of other "less expensive, less impressive" foods that have caused just as bad of damage if not worse problems and have not seen this amount of press for it. If individuals would do their homework they would see that the food was irradiated at levels 3x the level of what they irradiate food used in the NASA program, and that this only happened in one country, it is obviously clear that it is a matter in the Australian government fault and their irradiation standards. Either way, it is a sad tragedy what has happened, and the assumption could be made that if you are viewing this site you are on the side of being an animal lover and we wish no animal suffering and pain, nor the pain that accompanies the loss of an animal. But what good needs to come of this, is that we should be taking a closer look at what foods are irradiated, why, and why are they not labeled as so. It is startling when you do the research. It is sad that a company who has put a product out on the market of such superior standands has to take a hit when there are so many other companies out there who still use ingredients that they know will make us and our pets sick. I am so sorry for all of your loses, but to pin a company down for a governments mistake is not right either.

I too do not hold Champion responsible for what happened in Australia. My two dogs and four cats have been on Orijen for over two years and I couldn't be more pleased with their health and condition. We recently lost one of the cats due to old age (she was well over 18 years) and the three others are all in their teens and all are extremely healthy. One of these cats had nearly died due to urinary tract infection because of the cat chow he had been receiving and although I was advised to keep him on the F/d cat kibble prescribed by my vet (which could only be purchased through the vet at extreme expense), I eventually changed him and the others over to Orijen with excellent results. Losing one's beloved pet is always a tragedy and my sympathies go out to those who lost their cats in Australia. But I too feel that it is the Australian government who should be held accountable in this case.