Groesbeck, TX (FOX 44) –

On Dec. 16 of last year, ‘Manzanola Feeds’ recalled certain lots of ‘Top of the Rockies’ alfalfa cubes due to contamination.

Clostridium botulinum is the deadly organism found in certain bags of the Manzanola horse feed. Those contaminated bags landed in the hands of local horse owner Kristen Torinese who lost three horses shortly after feeding them the alfalfa cubes. She says hundreds if not thousands of other horses could be in danger.

“I know a lot of people feed this feed,” says Torinese.

She believes the announcement came too late for three of her horses.

“Those three horses ate the cubes as their main diet, the rest of everything they had was grass,” she said.

Her first horse died in September.

“At that time, they’d only said that the recall was for the November timeframe and that my case wasn’t part of that and there’s absolutely no question,” the horse owner said.

In an announcement released by the FDA, consuming the contaminated food can lead to dizziness, difficulty breathing, muscle weakness, and death.Torinese says all three of the horses that died displayed the same symptoms after consuming the horse feed.

“Because it was a different time frame. You know, I was questioning myself. I was like, well, no. I mean, you know, but then it started, you know, you saw more deaths attributed to it,” she stated.

‘Manzanola Feeds’ says there have been 45 horse deaths associated with this issue to date.

“There’s got to be hundreds or even thousands. I mean, there’s no telling there’s no telling what the scope of this is,” Torinese said.

The recalled 1-inch alfalfa cubes are packaged in a 50-pound bag and are labeled with the following codes: 111222, 111322, 111422, 111522 and 111622.

If you believe you have one of the contaminated bags, throw them away immediately. Additionally, you should clean out all the empty containers where the alfalfa cubes were kept by soaking them with a dilution of household bleach for 15 to 20 minutes.