Pentobarbital in Pet Food
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Talula died on New Year’s Day, 2017, a casualty of pentobarbital-adulterated pet food.
Pentobarbital is the active ingredient in the sedative Nembutal. People who rely on this habit-forming drug over a long period of time develop a tolerance to it, requiring ever-higher doses to achieve the desired sedative effect. Veterinarians use pentobarbital both as a sedative and as a humane euthanasia agent.
In the 1990s, several veterinarians contacted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to express concern that some of their companion-animal patients had become less responsive to the drug. They worried that the animals might have developed tolerance to the effects of pentobarbital as a result of chronic exposure to low levels of the drug in pet foods.
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