WARNING: Purina pet food has started making pets ill

[issendai]

My coworker John told me that his cat was seriously ill--throwing up, lethargic, refusing food, dropping weight. The previously healthy 6-year-old, 15-pound cat had lost a third of her body weight over the last few months. The vet couldn't find anything wrong with her. Blood tests were clean, and she didn't have any known illnesses. Yet she was a

Comments

[dinahprincedaly]

yeah, we feed FF... one cat eats all and everything and the other is picky... yet there were a few types of FF the picky one would eat until a week, maybe almost two ago and he wouldn't even touch his usuals... i thought it was him, but its probably the FF

[dinahprincedaly]

so thanks for the heads up

[one_short_fuse]

Thank you for this. I just switched my cats' food to Purina One a few weeks ago. I noticed a few days ago my Bucky was vomiting but it was only stomach liquid. I'll be sure to get a new food straight away.

[issendai]

ACK. Yeah, that's worrisome. The good news is that Bucky should recover as soon as he stops eating Purina--I hope all goes well with him.

[issendai]

One of the posters on Consumer Reports got lab results back that indicated "toxins" in the food, but didn't say which toxins. I would be surprised if analysis showed that there weren't toxins. It's unlikely to be melamine, which causes kidney damage, not gastric issues, and which doesn't change the taste of the food. However, reading about what happens to "meat byproducts" before they go in pet food is a nasty, nasty experience. Don't do it within two hours of eating. If Purina is cutting corners in their meat processing, all kinds of foul things could end up in the food.

[pierceheart]

Consumer Affairs, not Consumer Reports - big difference.

[raincitygirl]

Thanks for posting this, I read it via a signal boost, and I've linked my flist to it to boost the signal further. I feed my kitty Natural Balance (which had its own recall last year, though only with a certain flavour of dog food) so I'm not personally affected, but I know people who buy Purina.

The fact that it's affecting both cat and dog foods, and various different flavours, suggests a major problem, rather than just a bad batch. Here's hoping they do a voluntary recall soon. I know companies hate doing recalls, but in the long run it'll probably do less damage to their brand than letting this go on. Yeah, consumers get worried when they hear about a recall, but they get plain old pissed off when their pets get sick.

[issendai]

The effects seem to be patchy, perhaps batch-specific, so hopefully your batch wasn't one of the affected ones. But yeah, changing brands is a good idea.

(I have so many cans of Fancy Feast to get rid of. Not. Pleased.)