FDA Update on Grain-free Diets and Heart Disease in Dogs
excerpt from comments below
**** ****** says:
June 30, 2019 at 6:48 pm
I read the FDA reports and my impression is the FDA should have kept the names of the kibble manufacturers confidential because of likely referral bias. I’d like to hear their rationale for this.
Note that almost all the kibbles listed are high quality/high cost kibbles. I would have expected to see some of the mass market brands one can find in WalMart, Petco or your local grocery store. 3 days ago I took my Newf for a routine check for her SubAortic Stenosis at a multi-specialty clinic. The cost was $291.75. The FDA link isn’t totally clear, but it appears that most of the cases being studied are those for which the dogs have been evaluated with a cardiac echo study. I think it is likely that the same socioeconomic group that can afford cardiac echo studies correlates highly with the socioeconomic group that purchases costly boutique kibble.
skeptvet says:
July 1, 2019 at 9:53 am
Good points. Lots of possible confounders here. I think another one is that many of the brands on the list have made a reputation/market niche out of being “natural” or alternative to traditional diets in some way, and the grain-free claim tends to appeal to the same market segment–namely, mostly affluent owners who are drawn to alternative or unconventional practices and who find words like “natural” and “holistic” appealing.
However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that strongest common thread here is not brand or market segment but grain-free and legumes/pulses. Lots of other foods by the same manufacturers are not on the list and do not have this ingredient profile. It is also interesting to see “kangaroo” as a common ingredient in foods on the list given how rare it is in dog food generally (especially compared to beef and pork, which occur less often in the suspect foods), so the exotic protein source angle is still worth investigating
