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Sorry, but when 615 vet hospitals see 284 more cats with kidney failure than usual during a period in which pet owners are being bombarded with warnings to rush Fluffy to the vet immediately at the slightest sign of symptoms (many of which symptoms these pet owners never previously realized were symptoms of kidney failure), this proves precisely NOTHING about the incidence of food-related kidney failure.
Frankly I’m surprised the number isn’t a lot higher. The background rate of kidney failure in cats is huge, and you’d expect that even without a single case of actual kidney failure, with this avalanche of warnings, at LEAST one cat owner out of every vet hospital’s usual clientele would rush Fluffy in based on having recognizing symptoms that had never been looked for previously (like increased water drinking and urination). But the vet hospitals in this chain have averaged less than half a cat extra. And they haven’t even mentioned how much increase there was in their total volume of visits, i.e. how many more people than usual brought their cats in to be checked, either just as a precaution or because of other minor symptoms of illness that wouldn’t normally have prompted an immediate trip to the vet, and were found not to have kidney failure.
The much lower estimate from Veterinary Information Services is probably a lot closer to the mark.
Anytime you want to say “It looks like you were right”... I’ll be right here.