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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.

Hi there ---- here is something you will "maybe" find interesting in light of our previous discussions on Menu Foods -- here is an interesting timeline:

Timeline:

Feb 20th - Menu Foods receives first reports of problems with pet food.

Feb 26th - Menu foods commence tests on 50 animals.

Feb 26th & 27th - Menu Foods CFO sells half his shares for $102,900.

March 16th - Recall announced. Share price plunges

April 10th - CFO calls his stock selloff a horrible coincidence.

I understand you're trying to inject some sanity into a discussion that you perceive is running amok. But the problem with your entire premise is that the Banfield numbers were obtained PRIOR to the announced recall.

The increase in ARF cases observed by Banfield included cases during the recall period (early Dec '06 - early March '07), but BEFORE the recall was even announced (on March 16).

In other words, their numbers were not related to any over-reactionary panic caused by the announcement of the recall. So your premise about the numbers being skewed by panic and over-reaction is false.

I'm all for a rational, logical, scientific perspective to be applied here. But we also need to keep each other in check when we apply false premises to our logic. Sometimes, many heads are better than one.