My vet told me yesterday they cancelled all routine and vaccination appts., because they have a high number of sick animals with kidney failure, and were fed food on the recall lists.
I was also told they expect this to get much worse.
I talked to a friend tonight from another county, and her sister’s dog, which was being fed food from the recall lists, is in the vet hospital with the same symptoms.
I’m not crying wolf. I fed my dogs and one cat some recalled food before I found out. I want to read, and know, everything I can about this. Those who don’t might want to go to another thread.
BTW, I also have been reading, from other “reputable” sources, not bloggers, that the number of pets sick and dying is much higher than has been reported.
I didn’t say that you were crying wolf. I said that the reason why there may have been a lag in people taking this seriously is because there have been so many false reports like this in the past. I have run a dog list for 10 years now and I have had dozens of junk emails come through making false claims very much like these. You see, in the past some people have cried wolf, or out and out lied, and therefore it causes problems when there is really something to worry about.
This is the reason why I never post them until I have checked them out. I recently called Purina because we had one come through about their Beneful product that didn’t pan out.
In the 10 years I have been running a dog list only twice have these types of claims about food turned out to be genuine. One was the Diamond Food recall earlier this year and then this one.
When you run an animal related list you get dozens of these types of emails come through. I’ve had the killer Swiffer emails, the killer Febreeze emails, the clorox bleach false reports etc. Food is a very common one. Sometimes it is done maliciously by animal rights activists that want to hurt a company financially, sometimes by whole foods and BARF feeders that hate all kibble and don’t want any dogs eating it and sometimes people are looking for a company to blame with deep pockets to sue when their dogs die. Usually the cause of death in almost all of these claims is either liver or kidney failure.
When a company has to recall a product it costs quite a bit financially. While they have a responsibility to the public they also have a responsibility to their employees and shareholders not to over-respond to every hysterical and unsubstantiated claim that goes through a blog or email list.
What I was trying to say before you became personally offended, was that it is these types of false claims that may be partly to blame for the lag time. Should a company pull their products everytime some nutjob decides to have a bit of fun with a chain email that claims a dog or cat died?
These claims take time to prove out. I’ve called and emailed many a company in my time trying to get the scoop on these types of email forwards. Very few of them have ever panned out. So when I first heard about this latest one I had my doubts and took a wait and see approach.
As soon as some official word came that there was a problem and a recall it was at that time that I shared this information with the rest of my list members.
I’ve been a reader of FR for many years and the past couple of years there are a few threads where I swear I’ve stumbled onto the DU. Gheez!