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

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

Yikes!

Thanks -- I did not know that.

[hildakrista.livejournal.com]

Look, I don't mean to be contrary or anything, but that kind of thing happens with all pet food. The thing is, things that are mostly grain and aren't sealed get infested with pantry moths (Indian meal moths), especially in Sept-Nov and especially if a store has poor pest control. And especially in warmer climates. All grain-stuffs can become infested; human food is just normally stored better by both stores and consumers.

As for pets getting sick, well, they do. Most people blame it on the food because the precious little beasts can't actually tell you anything, and changing their food is just about the only thing their owners CAN do. The whole "since 2007" thing is related to the melamine-in-wheat-gluten scare. Ever since then, a pet gets sick, and many people automatically assume it's the food, because the news told them to assume it's the food.

Or, the pets may have developed a sensitivity to some ingredient. Go from Purina to a fancy grain-free food for a pet that's sensitive to wheat, and yeah, the dog's going to feel better if he's sensitive to wheat. Similar to a someone with a sensitivity to MSG feeling better after they stop eating certain soup. Is it the pet food company or the soup company's fault? Nope.

If your cats like Purina or Friskies or whatever, and they seem to be doing well on it, there's no reason to stop feeding to them. These pet food companies have a serious vested interest in providing products that keeps pets healthy, not make them sick. There's no news reports because there's nothing systematically wrong with the food.

Furthermore, consumers that jump to the conclusion that it's the food making their pets sick (rather than, say, something genetic, something foreign they ate, stress from a move or new baby, or even just age) without evidence, and report it as such to the companies that produce the food, are obfuscating real data that the QA dept may previously had been able to use to detect REAL potential problems. Ironic.

[moose]

http://www.raising-happy-kittens.com/purina-cat-food-recall.html