Dog food warning (TW)

[babsbunny]

I hate repeating things from FB, but just in case this is a problem, I would rather mention it than not mention it and see it confirmed. My FB friend has a dog trainer in northern new england who just purchased a new bag of purina pro plan complete essentials chicken and rice. Overnight 3 dogs experienced GI issues and another passed. I am so sorry for their loss. 

I know we have a lot of dog owners in MA and north. If this might affect you, maybe extend what you have and not buy new for a few more weeks to see if this is an actual problem or not. Hopefully it was something not related to the food and therefore not impacting anyone else.

Stay safe y'all (and your puppies). 

[starburst604]

Oh yikes. That’s exactly what I feed my boys. I have a new bag that Chewy just delivered. I’ll do some research on this.

ETA: I just found the FB post you mentioned. How sad. 😔 I’m not normally alarmist about FB posts but I may hold off on opening this new bag and give them something else for now.

[bittybomb]

I’m on Long Island and my guy gets the purina one pro plan with venison and turkey. He is so incredibly picky and will not eat anything else. We are only halfway through a huge bag (and he’s been fine since starting this bag) so I’ll definitely keep an ear out before getting a new bag.

How sad for those families. Thanks for the heads up.

[dexteroni]

Oh how terrible. For anyone looking for a switch, we’ve been feeding our dogs Blue Buffalo Life Protection for years without issue. It’s similar in price to Purina, and just from glancing at both, has better ingredients. It’s been pretty gentle on all of our dogs, so it should be an easy switch if you can taper for a few days. I hope everyone’s doggies are ok.

[nicolewi]

I did not Google this, but I have seen similar warnings before. I think this is misinformation/urban legend type stories that periodically goes around the internet. I think Purina has responded directly to these claims in the past. Unless this is something new.

[cohmom]

Full disclaimer, I have not seen the Facebook post however I work in a space adjacent to this. There are very few things in a food that could kill a dog immediately. Average stomach transit time for dog food is about four hours. Much like the listeria outbreaks and salmonella outbreaks, we will experience more and more of this because of deregulation . There were never huge amounts of regulations for pet food to begin with, but the deregulating of raw materials makes it harder for everybody who makes a finished product. Nobody at large companies wants pets to die. The bigger companies do their best to test both raw materials and finished products. I promise you millions are spent doing this. However, in some cases, they don’t even know to test for the things that are poisoning the pets, for example, melamine no one even knew to look for that because it had never been contaminant in the past. That one cost cats and human infants their lives.
I’m sure both Purina and the FDA are investigating. And I hope that they reach a conclusion quickly. I would hope also that they’re looking into both viral and bacterial causes. In my area, we have a flu outbreak in dogs that is presenting very strangely. Fortunately, we had a savvy investigator who picked it up or it would’ve landed as the fault of the dog food or heartworm medication or something else.
The deregulation that happened in the first Trump administration and taking the teeth out of FDA and CDC will cost us all in ways that won’t seem apparent to everyone. Combining that with the rise of disinformation and marketing that seems like science we are in for a tough couple of generations.

[babsbunny]

Nov 23, 2024 9:32:51 GMT -5 nicolewi said:

I did not Google this, but I have seen similar warnings before. I think this is misinformation/urban legend type stories that periodically goes around the internet. I think Purina has responded directly to these claims in the past. Unless this is something new.

This is very new, and the food is suspected but not yet proven to be the cause.

On FB, the dog trainer is Green Mountain K-9 if people want to see their post and follow their story. (I should have mentioned this last night but completely missed they had a company page.)

[adalove]

My parents had an issue with this food being moldy about 6 months ago. The first time they thought that it was because it was too humid where they were storing it, but then it happened again when they inspected a new bag. Their dog was barely eating and seemed to not be hungry before they realized, but he is okay now.

[Susie]

cohmom , liking in appreciation for the perspective, obviously not the underlying content.  

[cjcouple]

I'll be following the page but my dog uses this food and hasnt had any issues.

they did say, they are getting a necropsy and the food tested. So hopefully those results will be quick. Our bextopsy in the bird was done in 2 days.

there was an article in July 2024 where FDA cleared Purina after investigating 170+ complaints.

I will say, it's possible listeria may be found in various dog foods at some point too. Even OUR adult foods are being recalled a lot lately.

Lastest yesterday was ground beef for e-coli. A couple days ago were carrots for listeria. It's getting scary

[cohmom]

Nov 23, 2024 11:14:34 GMT -5 Susie said:

cohmom , liking in appreciation for the perspective, obviously not the underlying content.  

It’s rough out there, all of those in the industry vet space have pets as well. The rise of disinformation and anti-science is killing us all.
I saw X-rays the other day of a 5 month old puppy with nutritional secondary hyperparathyroidism from eating an unbalanced raw diet. I routinely see things like this now, and expect more in the future. Owners want to do the right thing and are very influenced by content they see on social media. It’s heartbreaking

[thegan]

I tried to transition my puppy to Purina Pro puppy and she got bloody stool. I immediately stopped and consulted vet, and it went away. I wanted her on a higher quality product and had heard such great things about Purina Pro, but the experience definitely scared me from ever trying their products again.

[starburst604]

cohmom that’s really helpful info, thank you. On this FB post there are so many comments saying Purina Pro is garbage, they only feed raw blah blah. It gives such “do yer reeserch!!” energy.

[cohmom]

The raw food, people and grain free people are very passionate about their beliefs. It’s a kind of disinformation that’s rooted with a somewhat truth at the center of it, making it the hardest to fight. Dogs evolved from wolves. We see the earliest evidence of “friendly”wolves with people at gravesites 30,000 years ago in places all around in the world. About 10,000 years ago, humans settled down and decided on agriculture. Dogs co-evolved in their genome to require similar kinds of nutrients from carbohydrates that people do. The average Morkie or Franken-doodle has a little in common with a wolf from a nutrition standpoint.
I don’t know if this specific Purina product will eventually get a recall or not. Nor do I know the specifics of Purina’s testing program, but given the fact that their parent company is Nestlé I know for sure that it is robust. I have some colleagues that work there who are of the highest scientific and ethical standards and would want this pulled off the shelves immediately if there were something wrong with it.
I will say that scientific communications needs to do better to reach people. I am always amazed when people tell me some niche brand that they feed and how much better it is for their pet….on the backend whatever celebrity endorsed product it is, It’s usually the same. A recipe from the 1950s that they’re feeding, which is fine but not very updated, it’s fancy marketing terms attached to it and beautiful on the pictures on the bag .

[tiki]

I follow the rescue we adopted our dog from plus a handful of their foster people. They all feed Purina Pro Plan Chicken & Rice to dogs both up here in New England and where they do intakes in southern states. So far all posts from the rescue are normal, but I'll share if I see them say anything unusual.

[tealblue]

How horrible for those pups.

We used to use Purina Pro Plan but our dog suddenly got GI related issues around this time last year. Vomiting and diarrhea. We stopped, did chicken and rice only for several days along with a trip to the vet. She was ok and then I slowly reintroduced the purina and again got GI issues. At the same time there was a similar Purina Pro fb post going around and Purina released a statement and said there weren’t any issues. We switched our pup to Blue Buffalo basics along with continuing to make her some food on top (veges, venison, chicken, some fruits and rice) and she’s been fine for the last year. I gave her leftover Purina pro to my family with the caveat that she got sick but they used it without any issue. It may have just been her stomach or a sudden sensitivity to the food but we’d used that food for a few years without any issues.
No problem on blue buffalo so far.

[mcppalmbeach]

I will be paying attention to this. We have been giving my kitten Purina Pro Plan dry and wet food. I purchased a new bag of food a month ago and it had a complete infestation of bugs. I went back to the store and a manager went back with me to look at the bags and the two bags remaining on the shelf (all different expiration dates) were infested. The manager told me that he wished I’d been the first person to be having issues this week. He said they had been having issues with Purina all summer although mainly in the dog food and that he believed there had been a supplier change that was causing the problems.

[dexteroni]

Ok I’m the furthest thing from a raw food / grain free zealot, but I’ve heard too many bad things about Purina (like the ones being shared here) and way too few good to ever use their food. There are plenty of similarly priced options with better ingredients (no corn, no by-products) and better reputations.

[nospaekae]

Nov 23, 2024 18:15:19 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

Ok I’m the furthest thing from a raw food / grain free zealot, but I’ve heard too many bad things about Purina (like the ones being shared here) and way too few good to ever use their food. There are plenty of similarly priced options with better ingredients (no corn, no by-products) and better reputations.

Pet foods are actually a really, really good way to utilize by-products. If you've ever seen a dog catch a rabbit, squirrel, chicken etc. what do they go for first? They typically go right for the abdomen - the digestive tract and organs. These are really good sources of protein that really aren't in demand for human foods.

[nospaekae]

This is sad to hear. I hope this is an isolated case and not widespread.

I've only fed my pets Purina, Eukanuba, Royal Canin, and Hill's. Current pup is doing well on Eukanuba and kitty is on Royal Canin. I studied animal nutrition a lifetime ago before jumping to the human research side of things and these brands always stood out because in addition to meeting AAFCO guidelines, they also conduct on-going feeding trials. A lot of the boutique brands will meet AAFCO guidelines, but do not back that up with feeding trials.

[havarti]

Nov 23, 2024 9:01:28 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

Oh how terrible. For anyone looking for a switch, we’ve been feeding our dogs Blue Buffalo Life Protection for years without issue. It’s similar in price to Purina, and just from glancing at both, has better ingredients. It’s been pretty gentle on all of our dogs, so it should be an easy switch if you can taper for a few days. I hope everyone’s doggies are ok.

We loved Blue Buffalo with previous dogs, but now have a pup who’s allergic to chicken. Unfortunately BB uses chicken fat as a stabilizer in pretty much all it’s flavors.

[aspentosh]

Interesting. I am so sorry for them

We used to feed our dog this food, but she would randomly boycott it and go an entire day without touching her food (but would eat treats or other food just fine). I got tired of fighting he so we switched, but it makes me wonder if she was sensing something? She never really had GI issues and her vet always said she was healthy, so I am 99.9999% sure it's correlation and not causation for us.