Hi Patricia,
As you stated AAFCO does not approve foods AAFCO writes model food law which individual states may or may not adopt and they set means of how a food can claim nutritional adequacy. They do not test or regulate food. That is the job of your state feed control official in conjunction with the FDA.
But regulation oversite is sparse, and companies are free to claim things that are not true, like that their food meets an AAFCO nutrient profile when it does not, or that their food passed a feeding trial when they never conducted one, or that their food doesn’t contain X when it is made from X or that they only use free range humanely raised meats but source from conventional factory farms. Sometimes they get caught, like when Purina sued Blue Buffalo. but it wasn’t regulatory, more and more it is consumer driven class action suits trying to hold manufacturers accountable. The chance of oversite is virtually none.
I never judge a food by its ingredient list or claims of human grade, responsibly sourced blah blah blah. I look to see if I think the company IMO has a minimal basic level of honesty and integrity as best as I can judge those qualities, and I don’t set the bar very high because I haven’t found a company yet that doesn’t fall short.
Circling back to DCM, certain diets have been linked nutritional DCM, is the company “owning it” or are the making crap up to defend their profit? When megaesophagus was linked to a particular diet the company immediately pulled the food. That is what I want to see. If a company is putting out blatant misinformation and pseudoscience nonsense on their website and marketing materials than I don’t care what the label says, I won’t feed it
