[Drew M]

In response to anon101’s thoughts:

First, keep in mind that veterinary research is generally underfunded. We don’t have nice big studies. One of the major flaws often leveled at veterinary nutrition departments is that they get a lot of funding from pet food companies. Why do you think they’re trying to get donations to fund their pet food research? It’s so they can maintain independence and do research that is not at risk of bias, or the perception of bias. We all hate being asked for money, but also keep in mind that the people asking you for money probably don’t even use the same break room or work in the same building as the people researching pet food or diagnosing your pet.

As far as trusting your veterinarian to keep you informed: trust isn’t really correlated to accuracy, unfortunately. Many people “lose trust” in a veterinarian who doesn’t confirm what the client wants to believe, for example. Who we trust is based on very emotional, gut-level thinking.

Veterinarians are a much better source of information than, say, a website written or maintained by a non-veterinarian, and in general I think it’s great that you trust your veterinarian. But we are susceptible to marketing too. If your veterinarian and a veterinary specialist disagree on a topic that the specialists have devoted their lives to studying, it’s probably a good idea to take the specialist’s advice.

With all of that said, the article from Tufts is a very preliminary discussion. It’s too soon to start speculating, changing diets, rotating diets, or anything else; if you’re worried, probably the only change that makes sense is to switch to a mainstream, high-quality commercial diet.

[Drew M]

Thanks Aimee for your reasonable opinions here!

After reading the article from Tufts, I don’t necessarily see that they are asserting that any particular ingredient caused the problem. From their use of the term “boutique” as well as mentioning home-prepared diets, it seems to me they’re more concerned about the general ability of many of these companies to ensure the right balance of nutrients is maintained in the food throughout processing.

Remember that when we were seeing taurine deficiency, it wasn’t about diets being too low in meat. The taurine was lost during processing; it didn’t stand up well to heat or storage. Many companies now add taurine in towards the end of processing to prevent this issue.

While there may be an issue with the ingredients themselves, I think it has more to do with the explosion of new pet food companies that people trust due to marketing claims, packaging, and the errant belief that you can assess the quality of a food from looking at the ingredient label. These companies may not have done enough research, hired the appropriate experts, or invested enough money into testing and quality control to ensure that the healthy-sounding ingredients they put in result in a nutritious diet in the bag.

[Author]

Posts