10/08/2024
Shared with commentary from Cat The Vet.
"Remember the campaign earlier this year alleging that Purina pet food was making pets poorly?
Well, the FDA have now released the results of their extensive enquiry and found…. absolutely nothing.
Online social media pages and influencers made claims that thousands of animals were being made very ill or even dying from these diets and managed to gain an enormous attention and cause huge amounts of concern.
They encouraged their followers very strongly to report to the FDA and over 6 months 1300 official complaints were received, but of these only 107 actually met the criteria to warrant further investigation.
This involved reviewing medical records, conducting interviews with the pet owners and testing the foods implicated for; mycotoxins,
excess vitamin D, bacterial contamination, pesticides, phosphine, rancid fat, nutritional imbalances, arsenic, cadmium, calcium, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, sulfur, thallium and zinc.
The FDA also tested brand new bags of food purchased from pet stores for the same things. Apart from a few of the opened bags containing a common environmental bacteria (which were not related to each other), absolutely nothing was found in any of the samples tested.
In addition, a prominent social media influencer conducted their own testing on diets sent to them by worried pet owners, and they also came up completely empty handed.
The FDA also conducted a 3 day investigation of a Purina production facility, the one that made the majority of the diets flagged as a concern, and apart from one small legislative point, found absolutely nothing.
This was a shameful campaign, orchestrated by people with a clear perspective and bias, that made pet owners frightened and feel guilty that they might have harmed their animals.
It is awful when a pet is poorly and it is very important to consider all options for the cause to help them get better, but to play up and on fears it might have been something owners did, is unforgivable in my opinion.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t always be vigilant to issues caused by pet food, problems do occur and raising the alarm is important, but this situation never demonstrated any of the hallmarks of concern.
There were no consistent symptoms, no food or facility in common and even with all the publicity pushing hard to reach as many people as possible, the numbers remained small in relation to the amount of meals fed from this brand.
If anything good comes of this debacle, I hope it is that we are all more aware of online hysteria, particularly that being whipped up by outlets with a clear agenda, and how damaging and misleading it can be.
Here is the official FDA report: https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/cvm-foia-electronic-reading-room/summary-purina-pet-food-adverse-event-reports-november-22-2023-april-15-2024-fda-actions-and "
Remember the campaign earlier this year alleging that Purina pet food was making pets poorly?
Well, the FDA have now released the results of their extensive enquiry and they found…. absolutely nothing.
Online social media pages and influencers made claims that thousands of animals were being made very ill or even dying from these diets and managed to gain an enormous attention and cause huge amounts of concern.
They very strongly encouraged their followers to report to the FDA and over 6 months 1300 official complaints were received, but of these only 107 actually met the criteria to warrant further investigation.
This involved reviewing medical records, conducting interviews with the pet owners and testing the foods implicated for; mycotoxins, excess vitamin D, bacterial contamination, pesticides, phosphine, rancid fat, nutritional imbalances, arsenic, cadmium, calcium, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, sulfur, thallium and zinc.
The FDA also tested brand new bags of food purchased from pet stores for the same things.
Apart from a few of the opened bags containing a common environmental bacteria (which were not related to each other), absolutely nothing was found in any of the samples tested.
In addition, a prominent social media influencer conducted their own testing on diets sent to them by worried pet owners, and they also came up completely empty handed.
The FDA also conducted a 3 day investigation of a Purina production facility, the one that made the majority of the diets flagged as a concern, and apart from one small legislative point, found absolutely nothing.
This was a shameful campaign, orchestrated by people with a clear perspective and bias, that made pet owners frightened and feel guilty that they might have harmed their animals.
It is awful when a pet is poorly and it is very important to consider all options for the cause to help them get better, but to play up and on fears it might have been something owners did, is unforgivable in my opinion.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t always be vigilant to issues caused by pet food, problems do occur and raising the alarm is important, but this situation never demonstrated any of the hallmarks of concern.
There were no consistent symptoms, no food or facility in common and even with all the publicity pushing hard to reach as many people as possible, the numbers remained small in relation to the amount of meals fed from this brand.
If anything good comes of this debacle, I hope it is that we are all more aware of online hysteria, particularly that being whipped up by outlets with a clear agenda, and how damaging and misleading it can be.
Here is the official FDA report; https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/cvm-foia-electronic-reading-room/summary-purina-pet-food-adverse-event-reports-november-22-2023-april-15-2024-fda-actions-and
