A recent inquiry by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA), suggests that certain brands of dog food are giving pets a deadly disease.
Reports that date as far back as 2014, correlate predominantly “grain-free” dog foods with the contraction of DCM, a severe and sometimes fatal illness.
Canine Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a heart condition characterized by the hearts diminished ability to act in its primary capacity—as a pump.
Dogs with DCM often succumb to weakness, lethargy, weight loss, and can sometimes experience sudden death.
The brands Acana and Zignature, received the most complaints, numbering just above 60 cases for dogs consuming these brands on a regular basis. The former product, Acana, is produced by an Edmonton-based company called Champion Pet Food.
Another Champion product, Orijen, received more than a dozen reports of dogs with DCM.
In a statement addressed to the public, Champion Petfoods stated: “Our hearts go out to every pet and Pet Lover who have been impacted by DCM. We take this very seriously.”
“Our own research, and the millions of pets who have thrived by eating our food over 25 years, have shown that Champion pet foods are safe.”
According to CTV News, despite an absence of investigation by Canadian food agencies, the suspect products are still widely throughout Canada. Take Taste of the Wild and Zignature for instance. Both brands received more than 50 complaints and are easily available in Canada’s pet stores.
However, pet food is not regulated in Canada. Therefore, the hands of Canadian authorities have not been forced on this issue.
Notwithstanding, the FDA advises caution in jumping to conclusions. DCM can be attributed to a number of other factors, including genetic predisposition.
Indeed, Golden Retrievers, a breed that is implicated in a significant number of complaints, have a genetic predisposition to taurine-deficiency which has been found to lead to DCM.
Throughout their investigation the FDA has received reports of 560 dogs diagnosed with DCM, 119 of those have died. Moreover, little more than a dozen cats were found to have the disease, leading to the death of one-third.
The FDA research is very shotty. They concluded there there is no evidence to link the foods to DCM and that the only common link seems to be legumes and potatoes. It also has zero mention of possible connections to activity, exercise and lifestyle. It’s suspicious that none of the largest companies that produce foods with significant amount of filler (with zero nutritional value) aren’t listed anywhere in this report. I wonder what the stats are on all the garbage food products causing many more serious health problems such as obesity, diabetes, cancer etc. I’d suspect that the average of 24 dogs dying per year in North America that coincidentally ate these brands of food (out of the tremendous number that eat it) and were possibly genetically predisposed to the disease, would be a much smaller ratio that health issues and deaths caused by the garbage in the cheap big names.
Use your head and do your own research
Even if there might be opinions that the FDA has taken a cautious approach, the fact that none of them have been found to be explicitly linked with the disease is still too cautious. With the pet food industry globally about to reach 100 billion USD in the next couple of years, according to a Grand View Research report, and the U.S. having a significant number of pet owners, this move might be very risky for the industry.
Nice click bait.