Posted on 05/05/2012 9:13:43 AM PDT by ColdOne
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Fourteen people in at least nine states have been sickened by salmonella after handling tainted dog food from a South Carolina plant that a few years ago produced food contaminated by toxic mold that killed dozens of dogs, federal officials said Friday.
At least five people were hospitalized because of the dog food, which was made by Diamond Pet Foods at its plant in Gaston, S.C., the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. No pets were sickened, according to the Meta, Mo.-based company.
"People who became ill, the thing that was common among them was that they had fed their pets Diamond Pet Foods," said CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell.
Three people each were infected in Missouri and North Carolina; two people in Ohio; and one person each in Alabama, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the CDC said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Evidently you haven’t read the most recent Reader’s Digest featuring tips from vets.
I have.
Canidae, Natural Balance, Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul, Diamond, Diamond Naturals, Taste of the Wild.
Some of them are common in the Petco’s of the world, others more specialized. I’ve fed my dog Natural Balance (it’s “Dick van Patten’s”) recently trying to use it for her vegetarian diet instead of the more-expensive IVD strict vet diet.
I’ll have to warn my dog groomer’s business about the CSFTPLS and TOTW. They sell those.
I have learned to pick and choose my vets very carefully.
Most know diddely squat about the proper feeding of carnivores, and are in the tank for the pet food manufacturers. Did you know these compete to give free pet foods and other freebies to vets in training?
Did you know they teach next to nothing about proper animal nutrition in vet schools, and those course that are taught area backed by pet food manufacturers.
And since when is Reader’s Digest the latest on canine nutrition?
I say again, feed your dogs whatever floats your boat. I just offer my opinion to those who have open and independent minds, and who enjoy doing their own research.
RD is quoting vets from all over the country. 1 quote: don’t fall for the raw diet nonsense (yes, I say that too). They’ve seen more people AND pets get sick thanks to that.
Dogs are NOT wolves. They have been domesticated for eons, and are not used to eating raw any more than we are. As natural animals ourselves we don’t “cook”, so we should be eating raw meat, too, by that thinking. We are omnivores and that includes meat.
Sorry, but just on *millions* of anecdotal tidbits alone, I see nothing wrong with “kibble”. Our dogs are NOT dropping like flies. There’s no need to “re-think”.
You have no idea how much that p*sses me off.
Why am I paying over $60 a bag for ‘the best’ food when it's being made by that toxic waste slinging company, Diamond?
I stopped buying their crap back during the “dog chow of death” episode [one of my dogs got sick] and was assured that TOTW was made by someone else *for* Diamond.
They lied?
I'm *so* shocked.
Thankfully I have storage bins of Halo, Natural Balance and Salmon Sensitive Skin formula so I won't have to use the TOTW.
Still, there's $50 worth of TOTW I don't even have the bag for, anymore.
How am I supposed to return it to the store for credit?
Friggin’ idiot slackers.
Blue Buffalo has been included in several recalls over the years.
http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-recall/blue-buffalo-dog-food-recall/
They are *not* a foolproof safe brand.
Please do not ‘relax’ so much that you trust any pet food company completely.
What if Innova just doesn’t tell anybody?
http://www.itchmo.com/innova-testing-results-posted-by-ceo-of-naturapet-1845
“tested positive for acetaminophen and cyanuric acid”
That is *very* bad.
The more of these recalls I read about the more I think I will go back to feeding raw.
Actually, your dog’s natural diet is probably simply human leftovers and such. Kibble is a very very modern thing for dogs to eat. I’m not sure it’s helpful to say dogs are not wolves. They are the same genus, dogs came from wolves, and it stands to reason their nutritional needs would be quite similar. To say that if dogs should be eating raw meat we should too is nonsensical since humans and dogs are quite different, our systems and dogs are not comparable.
Now, having said this, I’m not a rabid raw food advocate, I think people should feed what they’re comfortable with. But I do agree that vets are often very uninformed in the area of nutrition. I worked for a vet, and I know where they get the majority of their information. Dog food companies.
The vet I had while I was feeding raw was quite against it when I started. But, when she saw the results she was very impressed. My old dog at the time (who lived to be nearly 13) had the cleanest teeth you have ever seen on an older dog, and never had them cleaned. I’m sure it was from eating bones every day.
Again, I”m not trying to change your mind. But there are a lot of good points in the raw food camp, and having done it myself for a number of years I assure you my dogs were quite healthy and my vet approved after her initial hesitation.
You are correct, Rebel, that our modern dogs will probably survive whatever crap is put up on the shelf by modern marketing, and will be bought and fed by people who just don’t think beyond the cute and clever commercials.
But, do these pet food manufacturer believers really trust, or want to live on Ensure, Lean Cuisine, NutriSystem, Slim fast, etc, year after year, themselves? Would they (or you) expect perfect health in the long run?
Our dogs will not drop like flies if we feed them crap, and neither will we. But do we really want to pay for all the consequences of eating that crap in the long run, or see them suffer the consequences?
Just because we don’t drop from a crappy fast food diet immediately, (and our dogs don’t either), it doesn’t mean it is a sensible long term strategy for our/their optimum health, and minimal health expenses/bills.
Please don’t get confused - I really don’t care what anyone feeds their dogs, or themselves, but it drives me nuts when people think a bag of over-cooked extruded pink slime, mixed with all sorts of stuff no dog would select out of a trash can, then spray -coated with a few basic vitamins, is equal to a fresh natural diet that includes raw meaty bones, some cheap organ meats, and a few cooked vegetable table scraps.
I just can’t understand why people who consider themselves conservative when it comes to politics can’t figure out how much they are manipulated by modern advertising in any other area but politics.
But, all of you, I don’t care what you feed your pets. I only offer my opinion for those who have ears to hear.
The rest of you would do our country much more good if you vented your spleen at the crappy bunch in DC. Pretty soon they will be telling you how much you can eat, of what, how it can be seasoned, and probably will be demanding that we turn in all our family pets as useless eaters.
Good info; a lot of people forget that the domestic dog is ~99% wolf: both are carnivores.
The point was not nutritional value to the vets. The point of the RD quote was BLATANT HEALTH RISKS - pets and their people who ended up with food poisoning because of their raw diets. I.e., salmonella, et al - the very thing in this recall. Poor strategy to bring up raw in a salmonella discussion.
Again, if humans have long since been cooking meats instead of raw - it also stands to reason that dogs have long been eating cooked along with them and their systems have likewise adjusted, gotten “soft”. Systems are different (not too much, compared to a horse), but we’re talking thousands of years of breeding and conditioning. Being the same species as the dawn of time doesn’t mean eating raw is still in them or us.
Hon, you really need to do a little more research before you start telling us about “what stands to reason”.
You are so wrong about all of your “ASSumptions” that I do not know where to begin.
I seriously doubt that it is even worth my time, since we aren’t even on the same page, scientifically.
You haven’t done any serious homework, and therefore have nothing to offer but your uneducated, misinformed opinion, and that is worth about what Harry Truman thought of being the vice-president.
If you want to insult me back, please know I won’t read it until tomorrow, if I get around to it.
Don’t you think it a bit silly to get into a snark squabble about what we feed our dogs? Aren’t there bigger problems to fight?
I’m nor impressed by someone probably “hand-selecting” some testing lab and posting the results on the Internet to elicit the usual overwrought comments by conspiratorists.
I would have to see an impartial authoritative source announce to the public that there is a problem before I would switch away from a brand that had recommended to me by a couple veterinarians and several people at animal rescue organizations.
Many of the chronic diseases seen today in domestic dogs and cats are a result of over-vaccination and poor (i.e.commercial kibble) diets. I keep hearing/reading about the “dangers of raw” and yet — it’s the commercial stuff that keeps getting recalled for exactly those pathogens warned about in raw!
Anyone who thinks kibble is species-appropriate nutrition hasn’t been paying attention. The reason it came into being 50 years ago or so wasn’t because dogs and cats were malnourished! On the contrary, actually. It was created to give the human food industry a way to profit on the leftovers from the slaughterhouses rather than having to pitch it (as in most cases they should have been made to do!) Owner convenience was a great selling point also — and clearly the years of brainwashing have worked since so many firmly believe that what they call “human food” is actually bad for domestic animals. Unreal!
No problem.
Here ya go.
You are correct.
With the exception of several human foods, such as broccoli in excess, onions, macadamia nuts, grapes, raisins, etc, a ‘home made’ pet food is superior to processed ‘fast food’ in every way.
My dogs have eaten raw beef [including hamburger] and beef organs for years and never gotten sick from it.
At least one, however, got very sick from ‘premium dog food’.
I feed a combination of high rated kibbles and raw.
As a caveat, you should *not* mix raw meat with kibbles.
The digestion rates for each are different.
Over-vaccination is a plague upon our pets.
It is also a very high profit margin ‘service’ for those who provide it.
The standard yearly DHLPP shot costs about $30, not including office visit charges but you can go to any farm store and buy it yourself for $6.
[be warned that the Leptospirosis vax provided is not even the correct serovar and is associated with severe side effects in many dogs]
Yearly titer tests are a far superior way to make sure your dog stays healthy.
See this also:
http://www.rabieschallengefund.org/education
I went through the rabies series myself last fall and I can tell you it was extremely unpleasant and I’m still not quite ‘over it’.
Imagine having to get a condensed version of that every 1-3 years but you can’t speak up and tell ayone how sick it makes you.
How many of you have had your vet tell you “it’s normal” for your dog to be ‘off’ for a few days after it had its shots?
I don’t think it’s “normal” at all.
Even my own vet, who still believes in the discredited mandatory ‘annual vax protocol” has my dogs stay at the clinic for 20 minutes, post-vax, in case they have a “reaction”.
After reading up on it some time ago I decided not to ever do the Lepto again, nor the Kennel Cough booster. Both of those are every 6 months and of course there’s no guarantee that the Lepto will even be effective against the strain your dog MIGHT get! (And Kennel Cough is pretty much ineffective as a vaccine anyway. No prevention there.) We will be titering for the “biggies” as I have no intention of continuing something which can be so counter-productive to our furbabies’ health. (And I have been following Dr. Ron Schultz’ recommendations very carefully - as has apparently the Vet community because they have adapted the rabies to echo the three year rec.) I think he’s working on a longer study now to prove the non-necessity of vaccinating even every 3 years.... Interesting stuff!
But it pays to do one’s own research and not accept everything the vets say out of hand. They are not gods and in some areas their education has been woefully deficient (which the honest ones will admit).
I could not possibly agree more.
I just don’t agree that it stands to reason (but I don’t insist that you agree with me). I know a LOT of people who feed raw. I have not yet known a single person who has had a dog come down with salmonella from it, and I never had it in any of my dogs —and I fed raw chicken). And no one in my family ever got sick, but frankly Im just on the other side of Mr. Monk when it comes to my kitchen. Is it possible for a dog with a poor immune system to get sick? Yes. But look, dogs are garbage eaters. They will eat anything they find. Generally if it’s bad they puke it right up. Their systems are short and acidic. They eat a LOT of things I wouldn’t eat on a bet and don’t get sick. They will eat out of the cat box, and most will eat the feces of other animals and it doesn’t seem to harm them. I don’t think it would be very good for us. Our systems don’t handle that. We are designed differently.
But, don’t take offense. I don’t demand that you believe me, nor do I demand that you change what you’re doing. In fact I don’t think most people are equipped to feed raw, as it takes some planning and a little more work than most people are willing to do. And that’s fine. I don’t care a bit. I prefer that they feed a high quality dog food. I used to tell my puppy buyers not to give their dogs human food. I have softened on that and now just say don’t feed them excess of anything, and if you insist on giving them human food don’t give them the same sorts of things that you know you shouldn’t be eating (or if you do nothing but the tiniest taste very occasionally). Frankly, moderation in all things. Including FR arguments. We disagree on this, but so what? We agree on most things. :)
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