signal boost: Purina food could be hurting your pets

[cellio]

Thanks to siderea for pointing me to this post about problems with Purina pet food (dog and cat, at least). After seeing this I read the last several month's worth of consumer-affiars complaints, and older ones about the specific foods relevant to me. (Warning: can be gross.) This goes well beyond "ew, yuck" to "get that stuff out of the house before it contaminates anything else". Fortunately I don't use their dry food (infestations), but I do -- or did, until now -- use Friskies canned food (toxins) sometimes.

I didn't find anything on Purina's site about this. Since this isn't in the news I don't know how I would hear about a response from them other than searching from time to time.

Comments

[hildakrista.livejournal.com]

And if I may comment on people saying "the vet told me it's the food": none of these people actually say the vet TESTED the food, did they? That is from either lazy vets that don't do enough real blood tests, good vets that don't have a good reason that the pet is unhappy, so they say it's the food because they can't think of anything else, and pet parents who completely misunderstand what the vet meant. I can see at least a couple of complaints that indicated the dog is diabetic and shouldn't be feeding certain foods because of that. Doesn't mean the food caused the problem, just means that yeah, the pet has a health problem and needs a different diet. And there are vets out there that say it's the food because they are trying to push foods only sold in vet offices because they get a kick-back. Similar to docs that get a kick-back from big pharma, only it's more prevalent in the vet biz. Yeah, that happens. Poor-quality vets are harder to weed out than poor-quality docs

Think about this one, too: most vets know nearly diddly squat about pet nutrition. In vet schools, pet nutrition is usually an elective. If a vet takes the class at all, it's only one semester, if that. These people are doctors of veterinary medicine (treating illness), not nutrition and wellness (preventing illness).

I routinely feel sorry for people whose vet said "it's the food", but the consumer has no other info because the vet didn't say anything else, or they misunderstood. Especially with older pets. If your 16-year-old dog seems lethargic and can't handle the same food anymore, how is that Purina's fault? My grandfather's heart attack was not caused by the chocolate pudding he ate right before.