University of Guelph accepts funds from Hills

http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/343627

Twice already this year -- The University of Guelph gets the Poison Kibble award.

The University of Guelph just can't get enough of the pet food companies -- their money, that is. They've just accepted $5 million dollars for a "new primary health centre" to be built on campus. That's right, directly on the campus.

"Skills like communicating with clients and proper pet nutrition will be the new focus of the primary care centre." Like training vets in how to sell and prescribe untested and unregulated pet food products?

Once again, the University's Dean, Dr. Elizabeth Stone, insists that "we will retain academic freedom to teach the same way we do now."

Well I would venture to point out that that is the very problem. There is no academic freedom when a major multinational company gives this kind of money to a publicly-funded institution. Again, the University of Guelph is allowing their silence to be bought. Teach the same way they do now? Again, that's the problem -- vets prescribing and selling species-inappropriate, unregulated and untested pet food.

How is it that they are not seriously considering the major class action lawsuit launched by Maltzman Foreman in the US against Hills for misleading advertising? This lawsuit is currently headed to court. How can the university accept such a large donation when a company like this is being sued? Have they just chosen to ignore all these lawsuits and take the side of the pet food industry?

It's scandalous and the public should be outraged that their tax dollars are miseducating vets to be perpetual kibble pushers.

What many people are choosing to do is change vet clinics -- and send their vet a letter when they leave, letting them know that they will only be entrusting the care of their beloved pets to vets who do NOT sell these species-inappropriate, misleading advertising, prescription diet formulas.

Update on Florida class action lawsuit

In the many daily email updates I receive on the pet food issue, this one stands out:

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202422055276

The impact of this particular lawsuit will have major implications for the industry. The PFI has already attempted to have this case dismissed, but thankfully the judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit.

With Menu Foods settling, could it possibly be that this sets a precedent for the other class action lawsuits? It seems we now have what are called "cross border" settlements with respect to different jurisdictions in North America for dealing with these kinds of class actions. Another curious by-product of globalization.

"The defense claims the allegations in the lawsuit castigating the entire pet food industry are culled from the Internet."

What? Like all the blogs, discussion forums and websites talking about the illnesses caused by long term feeding of untested and unregulated commercial pet food products? And what, exactly, is their point?

That the public is talking about this openly on the internet? Well mainstream media certainly isn't covering the topic anymore, are they?

Mainstream media serves to only air all those glossy high production value ads claiming that pet food products are now being "reformulated." In these ads, the PFI are still blathering on about their formulations being "healthy and balanced" despite the fact that there are only short term acute toxicity studies, at best, being done on these products.

Mainstream media has dropped the story from the crawlers (which incidentially, seems to be the only form of reporting breaking news these days on cable news networks).

Is the defense claiming that the information "culled from the internet" means, in some way, that the issues being raised are not credible? That people's pets have not gotten sick from commercial pet food? That dry food isn't causing feline diabetes, chronic renal disease, cancer, inflammatory bowel syndrome, and urinary tract infections in cats? That people are learning that no cat should eat any form of dry food?

As people start to understand this, as they are on the blogs and discussion forums, dry food will start collecting dust on the shelves of health food stores, veterinarian clinics and supermarkets.

U.S. District Court Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga says in this article:

"Defendants do not assert that the FDA or any other regulatory body has specifically approved the advertisement or statements at issue in this action, and nothing in the AAFCO standards authorizes defendants to engage in false advertising," Altonaga wrote in her order.

Keep it kicking, judge. It would be fabulous if this case would set a precedent.

All of these lawsuits demonstrate a desperate need for genuine accountability in the industry. But maybe if that happened, they wouldn't be able to continue to dump massive quantities of corn and wheat to produce grain-based kibble, which is the main "species inappropriate" ingredient in commercial pet food.

The PFI should not be regulating themselves. Governments in both Canada and the US need to be able to issue product recalls. FDA reform will be one of the factors critical to re-shaping the industry over the next two years, as decisions resulting from these lawsuits emerge.

Then again, people can make other choices -- like refusing to purchase any commercial pet food product.

If you need proof of how healthy a cat can be NOT eating commercial food, and only eating a raw meat with ground bone (and minimal supplementation) diet, take a look at Makena, who is now one year old.

Now, isn't she a gorgeous picture of health and happiness? Wouldn't you want any cat guardian you know to have the same kind of healthy kitty?

Royal Canin's spin

http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/331960

Take a look at this article, published in the local Guelph paper. Royal Canin, owned by the multinational Mars candy bar company, has targeted Ontario as its base of operations for North America. It's building a brand new factory in the same town as the University of Guelph. Coincidence?

Royal Canin maintains that they will have "quality control" infra-red technology in place to spot contaminants. But this doesn't address the fact that all dry food is made with grains and cats cannot digest grains. Are they going to test products made of grains for grains? How useful is quality control for species-inappropriate ingredients?

You can see how ridiculous this discussion becomes. Is RC going to re-formulate their entire product line to be grain free and not made by the process of cooking and extrusion? And even if they did, the very existence of kibble products are like being told by your medical doctor to eat only diet bars for your entire lifetime. Or sugar frosted flakes. Yes, there is nothing good to be said about kibble.

What really needs to happen is that these products need to be removed from the market entirely. These products are untested and unregulated. There isn't even an iota of oversight into the pet food industry -- even Big Pharma has to engage in a more extensive testing process to allow new pharmaceuticals to enter the market. With pet food there is nothing in place. True, we know that even if regulatory changes are implemented, the PFI will continue to cheat.

Who in their right mind would believe that any living being can be healthy eating a lifetime of meat-flavoured cookies? Who would think they could live a long and healthy life without fresh food? Well the pet food companies claim that--- by saying that cats should only eat commercial kibble for their entire lifetime.

It's predictable that the industry would now start to talk about "quality control" measures, but it's really just their way to try create spin to get the public believe that their products are "healthy and balanced".

What is even more offensive is that RC is claiming that they are "victims" of the tainted gluten suppliers. That's hardly a credible or responsible position. It shows a total lack of accountability on behalf of this huge and secretive multinational corporation, which is owned by the Mars candy bar company.

So exactly what kind of research will this Royal Canin Research chair, at the University of Guelph veterinarian school, be engaged with involving feline and canine nutrition? How to continue to brainwash future generations of veterinarians into "prescribing" untested and unregulated kibble? Validating RC claims that it's okay to feed designer kibble with antioxidants, inculcating them into the false ideology of nutritionism?

"Prescription diets" -- are they a food or a drug? If they are being prescribed shouldn't they require a prescription and thus be regulated as such? If they are a food -- well, how is it that so many of these product lines are sold only in veterinarian clinics?

Would people continue to buy RC products if they knew their cat food was made by a candy bar company? Healthy and balanced? Hello?

I see Royal Canin talking about the problems the recalls caused them -- but I don't see a single word in the story about Royal Canin being sorry for all the pain and suffering they have caused. Or apologizing.

Menu Foods Canada-US cross border settlement

So Menu Foods has settled for $24 million dollars. Better than nothing, I suppose, but what will that change? Cat and dog guardians will not receive any money for pain and suffering under this proposed settlement, to be signed by the judge May 30, 2008.

Here's the link for the US and Canadian settlement. The documents for the US settlement are all there; the Canadian ones have yet to be approved by the courts but will be posted here when they are.
http://www.petfoodsettlement.com/

The court dockets for the United States can be found here:
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-njdce/case_no-1:2007cv02867/case_id-203642/

And, once posted, on this site for the Canadian court dockets.
http://www.canlii.org/

Like many others, I want to read the fine print to see precisely what the terms of settlement are.

The industry will undoubtedly try to say that they now have new "quality control" technologies in place to spot contaminants. But will they detect species-inappropriate grains, which form the basis of these products?

Doubtful, since these products are primarily composed of grain, which cats, as obligate carnivores cannot tolerate. Grains, an ingredient which sounds benign to the average consumer, are the source of many of the difficult to diagnose health problems in cats. This is why there are so many reports of cats who continuously vomit dry food -- it is indigestible for them.

Plus, none of these reports address the issues of veterinarians selling these species-inappropriate formulations in their clinics. For vets to be selling commercial pet food is like a medical doctor selling cigarettes or diet bars.

The pet food battle has just begun. The emperor has proven he has no clothes and it is up to the public to keep the pressure on, not to "make kibble safer" as some people might want us to believe, but to have these unsafe, species-inappropriate products stripped of their American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) labelling and removed from the market.

These products are often untested (all manufacturers need to do is submit a "nutrient profile") and as we saw from the recalls, unregulated. The claims of "healthy and balanced" over the long term feeding of cat or dog cannot be substantiated on the basis of short-term AAFCO feeding trials.

There is no form of dry food that is safe or healthy for a cat to eat. Period.

Makena's bloodwork

Makena has been on a raw fed diet since I got her, just after being weaned by her mother at 10 weeks old. She eats chicken, turkey, duck, cornish hen and rabbit with the ground bone and minimal supplementation. For treats she gets chunks of goat with the bone, chicken wings, chicken hearts and lamb stew bits with bone. She's a true gourmet kitty!

She has never eaten commercial cat food since I have had her and never will. Since I now know that any commercial cat food is like feeding a continuous diet of junk food, why would I ever feed my cat anything that would result in illness later on in life? And with all the reports of rotten meat, toxins, mouldy grains, carcinogens and other garbage being put into pet food, how can anyone who has actually read through these reports and stories justify continued long term feeding of commercial food?

Makena’s vet told me, “well I won’t be seeing you much, as long as you keep her on raw diet.” Then proceeded to tell me I was "totally compliant" with correct nutrition for an obligate carnivore.

It’s great to have a vet that finally understands correct nutrition for the cats and doesn’t sell poisonous dry vet kibble in his clinic.

How is it that these illustrious institutions like the University of Guelph Veterinary Program can’t retrain their veterinarians out of nutritional ignorance and teach them about correct nutrition for obligate carnivores? At the very least, they should not be allowing pet food companies to give seminars and free product to veterinarian students! This is the real scandal behind the pet food recall -- the miseducation of current and future generations of veterinarian professionals. There is definitely a problem in academia.

Are veterinarian universities so desperate for cash that they have to sell their integrity to the likes of Mars bar multinational Royal Canin? If people knew that a candy bar company was making their pet food, how would that change how they thought about the alleged "nutritional" value of these products?

How the University of Guelph and other universities across North American have handed over access to veterinarian students to the pet food companies, providing their only source of nutritional information, clearly demonstrates the very real problems of private-public partnerships. The end result is to produce generations of vets that have no training in nutrition. What's even more unsettling is that there is no documentation being done on the types of inter-generational health problems these products are causing -- cat guardians are left to discover that on their own.

In effect, the University of Guelph, by accepting a donation from Royal Canin, has allowed the silence of the academic community to be bought. The academic community should be the ones at the forefront of criticizing the poor quality, species-inappropriate ingredients in commercial pet food formulations, rather than doing research for the PFI and upholding the unproven claims of these products. Did we hear a single vet at the University of Guelph speak out during the recalls? Not one came forward.

Here are Makena's lab results at age 6 months, just prior to getting spayed.
Makena's CBC

Chemistry
ALT = 56. U/L (reference range 12-130)
UREA= 9.4 mmol/L (reference range 5.7-12.9)
TP = 71. g/L (reference range 57-89)
Na - 162 mmol/L (reference range 150-165)
K = 5.2 mmol/L (reference range 3.5-5.8)
Cl=125. mmol/L (reference range 112-129)


Hematology
WBC = 5.82 x 10^9/L (reference range 5.50-19.50)
LYM = 2.58 x 10^9/L (reference range 0.40-6.80)
MONO=0.42 x 10^9/L (reference range 0.15-1.70)
NEU= 2.43 x 10^9/L (reference range 2.50-12.50)
EOS=0.38 x 10^9/L (reference range 0.10-0.79)
BASO = 0.00 x 10^9/L (reference range 0.00-0.10)
%LYM = 44.3%
%MONO = 7.2%
%NEU=4.8%
%EOS=6.6%
%BASO=0.0%
HCT=38.6% (reference range 30.0-45.0)
RBC=9.6 x 10^9/L (reference range 5.0-10.0)
HRB = 14.5 g/dL (reference range 9,0-15.1)
RETIC=27.5 K/uL
%RETIC=0.3%
MCV = 40.1 fL (reference range 41.0-58.0)
RDW = 19.9% (reference range 17.3-22.0)
MCHC=37.5 g/dL (reference range 29.0-37.5)
MCH=15.04 (reference range 12.00-20.00)
PLT = 479.K/uL (reference range 175-600)
MPV=0.8%
PDW=16.2%

University of Guelph accepts funds from Royal Canin

And the poison kibble award goes to -- the University of Guelph!

I'm sure that the folks at Royal Canin just want everyone to forget about the pet food recalls or all the class action suits against them. They seem to have convinced one group that you thought would be educated enough to know better: The University of Guelph Veterinarian College.

http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2008/week17/Wednesday/0423025.html

Royal Canin Canada Commits $3 Million for OVC
Some excerpts:
"Guelph - The University of Guelph today received a $3-million commitment from Royal Canin Canada Company to establish the Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Endowed Chair in Canine and Feline Clinical Nutrition and support independent research and graduate scholarships at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC).

"This generous gift is a wonderful example of the importance of private sector-university partnerships," said U of G president Alastair Summerlee. "Royal Canin Canada's investment in an endowed chair allows us to develop the area of feline and canine nutrition."

Unbelievable. A publicly-funded institution accepts money from a company that is being sued in a national class action lawsuit here in Canada (see www.rochongenova.com) and also numerous class action lawsuits in the United States for allegedly excessive vitamin D toxicity, melamine and cyanuric acid in pet food, misleading advertising and "unjust enrichment." Never mind that the words "nutrition" and "Royal Canin" represent an oxymoron in the same sentence.

If you think that this is as outrageous as I do, send letters to the Dean and the President of the University of Guelph.

Here are their emails:

Dean:
Dr. Elizabeth Stone - estone@ovc.uoguelph.ca
University of Guelph President
Alastair Summerlee - a.summerlee@exec.uoguelph.ca

Take a moment to also send an email letter to the new Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, who is responsible for doling out funding for this public institution.

MPP John Milroy - jmilloy.mpp@liberal.ola.org

There needs to be a continued pressure on these individuals with respect to these issues. The dean as much acknowledged that there are "questions" now being raised about pet food, but accepting money from Royal Canin is hardly the solution.

There is no effective regulation of the pet food industry--they regulate themselves --- and even that is a completely voluntary endeavour. But this incestuous link between the industry and the education of the next generation of veterinarians is something that needs to be exposed and changed.

What kind of Dr. Jekylls of veterinary medicine will this research chair produce? It's bad enough that most veterinarians in Canada are pushing these carbohydrate-laden, expensive, poor quality kibbles that are producing so many illnesses in cats and dogs, now they want to justify it by hiring yet another PFI academic iin order to buy the silence of the university? It's an absolute scandal.

Let's not be deluded into thinking that there is some kind of "academic freedom" in place when a pet food company gives money to the University of Guelph for a research chair position named after the corporation.

The bottom line is that the research chair is bankrolled by a company with a strongly vested interest in ensuring nothing bad is ever said or concluded about its product lines.

Does anyone really think that any academic appointed as Royal Canin chair would ever criticize these species-inappropriate product formulations for pets?

What would Royal Canin do in the (unlikely) event that a Royal Canin research chair began to speak out about the truth of its product lines? Would Royal Canin say, "oh well, if our products are harmful, we can accept that being taught at the university?"

How can a university, a publicly-funded institution, be accepting funds for an academic research department from a pet food company that is being sued for allegedly excessive toxic and poisonous ingredients in its product line?

What kind of "research" will this chair be doing anyway? How about research into how commercial pet food is causing illnesses and intergenerational health problems?

How much research is really needed to understand that cats are obligate carnivores and should not be eating highly processed, "ergonomic" kibble (yes that's a Royal Canin term).

Pets for the Environment

The non-profit NGO Environmental Working Group has taken up the issue of pet food safety.

http://www.petsfortheenvironment.org/

No one likes eating flame retardants and mercury. They currently have a campaign on to:

--test 10 brands of canned wet cat and dog food for chemicals like mercury, lead, and bisphenol A
--test 10 brands of dry dog and cat food for chemicals like flame retardants and nonstick chemicals
--protect pets and humans by pressuring Congress for better standards

The full report is here:
http://www.ewg.org/reports/pets

Did you know that as our cats and dogs are tested for contaminants, these tests are revealing high levels of toxic industrial chemicals?

"Cats: notably high levels of fire
retardants, high levels of plasticizers,
and grease-proofing chemicals
46 chemicals detected - 96% at higher levels
in cats than people"

See the site for the full study.