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

Comments

[hildakrista]

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

[hildakrista]

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

[cellio]

I am trying very hard to respond to the content of your posts and not the delivery, which I am reading as very defensive

[hildakrista]

I'm sorry you thought my reply was defensive. I thought it was pretty straightforward, giving a different point of view. If my post about vets seems a bit miffed, it's true I do get miffed at poor quality care for animals, and who would blame me? I care a lot about peoples' pets

[cellio]

I'm sorry that I read something that you didn't intend. You have a good point about that web site. I assume that these days every major company has people who track what's being said about them out there (Google alerts and the like) and monitors the known complaint sites, but those people are probably in marketing and don't necessarily do anything useful with the information.

[woodwindy]

I respect that you're being even-handed and analytical about this. Having said that...

One of my beloved cats passed away unexpectedly not long ago, with two different major veterinary centers unable to pinpoint any primary cause of his dramatic decline. Guess what he was eating?

I don't honestly give a damn how Purina does or doesn't respond to the concerns, and I couldn't care less how anecdotal the evidence is. There will not be any more Purina food in our house unless the company demonstrates a major overhaul of its processes. There's just absolutely no reason to risk it when other brands are at the same price point and haven't had any reported issues.

[hildakrista]

I'm very sorry about your kitty... it's hard to lose a fuzzy family member! I also respect your decision not to use Purina, if you feel that's best for your family.

But I'm wondering why you think that other brands don't get similar complaints?

[woodwindy]

Sorry, I can see that my last sentence wasn't as clear as it could have been. I know that most brands have at least some complaints out there (although there are some that don't!). Consumeraffairs.com has a decent -- not perfect, but decent -- representation of active government investigations and consumer complaints re. a variety of companies, and it's pretty straightforward to see where there are significant, consistent concerns over a period of time vs. the "I switched my cat to this food with no transition period and now he has runny bowels, this food must be from teh debbil!" or "This food gave my dog melanoma" kind of things.

[cellio]

I think everybody in this discussion understands that correlation does not equal causation. That said, though, correlation is still...correlation. So given two otherwise-equal options, and recognizing that "don't know something bad about the other yet" is not the same as "nothing bad", I think the prudent path is to go with the other one. If the same problems turn up everywhere then the choices are to take your chances on one of them anyway (nothing in life is completely safe) or roll your own (which few of us have time/inclination to do).

Right now, for me and I presume woodwindy, Purina is at the bottom of the list. They may be no worse than anybody else, but we can only act on the incomplete data we have.

[xiphias]

I'm certain that, in most cases, the grain moths aren't a problem. Grain moths are quite tasty, according to my cats.

The thing is, though -- the melamine-in-wheat-gluten thing has never been adequately dealt with. There's nothing in place that will stop the same thing from happening again. Pet food doesn't go through the same FDA import controls as human food (which is totally reasonable), and supply chains are long and confusing enough that end manufacturers like Purina can't know each step. And China has neither the ability nor the inclination to stop it on their end.

Even if Purina DOES have a vested interest in providing quality pet food -- they can't control the entire process well enough to guarantee that.

[hildakrista]

My cat also eats pantry moths for fun... he loves them