Amy Peters loves her two cats.
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Hartz Flea & Tick Drops for cats. Image © 2004, FLORIDA TODAY[/font]"They're my babies," the Rockledge woman said.
To protect her pets from fleas and ticks, Peters recently treated both with a chemical product from the Hartz Mountain Corp. of Secaucus, N.J., one of the world's leading sellers of pet-related items.
One cat, 12-year-old Callie, had no major problems other than mild skin irritation. The other, 11-year-old Kahlua, suffered a seizure and nearly died because of the treatment, said Dr. Gregg Shinn, of the Rockledge Animal Clinic, where the cat was taken.
Hartz executives repeatedly have said their products undergo rigorous testing to meet Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
They also said they have no intention of removing them from stores despite complaints from all over the country that the products, in some cases, are making cats sick, or killing them.
Shinn said he first cared for sick cats treated with Hartz in the late 1990s. He said he has treated at least 15 who had adverse reactions to the company's flea and tick products. Four died.
"Animals still are suffering because of these products," Shinn said. "But Hartz keeps selling the stuff."
Shinn is not alone in his complaints about Hartz, although no one knows for sure why some cats have been adversely affected by the products.
Hartz, for its part, has been in the middle of a nationwide firestorm over these flea and tick products for cats since March 2001.
That is when the EPA, which regulates pesticides in the United States, began investigating complaints that first started surfacing in the late 1990's.
Complaints were coming from all over the country and still come in, but in smaller numbers now, Norman Spurling, an EPA official, said from Washington.
Spurling could not say precisely how many animals have taken ill, or died, after being treated with Hartz products. But he said the number has been in the thousands.
In late 2002, Hartz, in an agreement with the EPA, said it would pull hundreds of thousands of tick and flea products from store shelves and re-label them, which it has done.
"We are paying close attention to ongoing reports of incidents of cats and kittens and use of these (Hartz) or similar products," EPA spokesman Dave Deegan said.
But, so far, the agency has not taken any regulatory action, such as removing the product from the market, Deegan said.
The two Hartz products in question are the Hartz Advanced Care Brand Flea and Tick Drops Plus for Cats and Kittens and Hartz Advanced Care Brand Once-a-Month Flea and Tick Drops for Cats and Kittens.
"The re-labeling was not a recall," Dr. Albert Ahn, a licensed veterinarian and Hartz's chief scientific officer, said from the company's headquarters in Secaucus near New York City. "It was an orderly product exchange."
He said Hartz has sold 90 million of its flea and tick products for cats since 2000 and that "only one in 25,000 cats" has suffered a reaction.
Ahn also stressed his company has committed itself to serving millions of pets and takes that commitment seriously.
The new labels instruct users to apply only a single spot of the chemical on a cat's collarbone. The original labels instructed pet owners to spread the chemical in a stripe along a cat's back.
The application of a spot, rather than a stripe, reduces the opportunity a cat has to lick the chemical.
Still, many pet owners nationwide continue to go the Internet to tell their personal stories about the Hartz products.
One Web site, HartzVictims.org, contains numerous such stories, many of them mirroring that of Amy Peters, the Rockledge woman.
Peters, an artist, bartender and student, said she bought Hartz Advanced Care Brand Once-a-Month Flea and Tick Drops for Cats and Kittens at a Wal-Mart store in Merritt Island in early June.
The product is one that was relabeled in the agreement between Hartz and the EPA.
Peters returned to her cottage in Rockledge, opened the packets, and applied the chemical first to Callie, a long-haired calico, then to Kahlua, a long-haired tortoise shell.
The next day, Kahlua suffered a seizure, shaking uncontrollably.
"It was horrible," Peters said. "I was freaking and crying and grabbed her and rushed her to the vet."
Fortunately, the seizures subsided after Kahlua arrived at the Rockledge Animal Clinic, and she recovered after being administered fluids to flush out her system.
The veterinarians there also gave her Valium, and she continued to twitch the next day before recovering.
But Hartz' Ahn said that his product does not pose any dangers to animals.
"Obviously, one sick cat is too many, but we do not feel our product is at fault," he said, adding that the EPA has no issues with the chemicals Hartz uses in its products.
Ron Brakke, a Dallas, Texas, consultant for the animal-health industry agrees with Ahn, saying, "My view is all flea and tick products are generally (are not a danger) so long as the pet owner uses the product the way it is proscribed on the label."
But don't say that to Amy Peters. "All I know is I tried to help Kahlua by giving her a flea and tick treatment," Peters said. "And I almost killed her. It makes me sick to think about it."
(mine were in different packaging but same diff)
