A carefully worded Purina webpage could easily result in a lawsuit against Purina from the raw pet food industry (and perhaps should).
On the Purina website, under the category of “Dogs” and “Nutrition” is this headline…
The headline only mentions “raw meat“, but Purina crosses the line into an attack on the competing raw pet food segment within the first paragraph; (bold added) “But a raw food diet is unhealthy for dogs…“
The quoted term in the headline “raw meat” is VERY different than the quoted term in the first paragraph “raw food diet“. “Raw meat” implies pet owners feeding their pet raw meat. A “raw food diet” specifically implies a commercial ‘raw food diet’.
The Purina article continues with this…
MYTH 1. Dogs need to eat nothing but meat.
Many people picture dogs fending for themselves in the wild, eating nothing but the meat off their prey. In reality, that’s not necessarily true. Dogs eat and digest plants as well as meat.
As unappetizing as it sounds, wild dogs often eat the whole animal, bones and intestinal contents included. Consuming the whole animal helps them obtain nutrients such as calcium that aren’t abundant in meat.
Pet owners who do attempt to approximate an animal’s diet in the wild often don’t have the expertise and resources to provide balanced levels of the many nutrients they need. Instead, it’s more of a guessing game — one that may lead to nutritional deficiencies.
MYTH 2. You shouldn’t trust commercial pet food.Purina’s quality pet foods are backed by years of canine and feline nutritional studies. To develop products, Purina scientists conduct research and look to veterinary colleges and animal nutritionists in Animal Science programs. They’re always looking for new information and innovations that can help pets live better lives.
Remember, no single food or food group can provide all the nutrients we need in proper proportions. Manufacturers of good quality pet foods follow the same philosophy, incorporating all the nutrients a dog needs during a particular life stage into nutritionally complete and balanced diets.
Think of it this way: The people who work at these brands are pet lovers themselves, and want to create a food worthy of their own pets. Instead of risking malnutrition and possibly disease, it’s always better to give a research-backed, prepared food made for a pet like yours.
Under “Myth 1”, Purina insults pet owners, claiming we are incapable. We are capable of preparing food for our human family – addressing nutritional needs of (as example) our children through diet, but we lack the “expertise” and “resources” to prepare food for our pets. Not true Purina.
Under “Myth 2 You shouldn’t trust a commercial pet food” Purina alludes that raw pet food isn’t complete and balanced. Not true Purina. All ‘Complete and Balanced’ pet foods – no matter if they are raw, kibble, can, cooked or dehydrated – are required by pet food regulations to ‘incorporate all the nutrients a dog needs during a particular life stage.’
And under “Myth 2”, Purina alludes that pet owners providing ‘raw food diets’ to their pet are “risking malnutrition and possibly disease” by doing so.
Shame on you Purina. Though you seem to disagree, pet owners are not stupid. Insulting us and providing misleading information about your competition isn’t the correct method to gain sales.
Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
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Hannie
February 6, 2019 at 7:09 pm
Looks like they are trying to smear competition……if you can’t buy ’em, smear ’em……
Pam
February 6, 2019 at 7:19 pm
Why can’t you all get along. Find way healthy safe food for our pets. With all of you companies fighting our Pets are the ones suffering.
Gdoggie
February 6, 2019 at 7:43 pm
You know it’s a lie any time Purina opens their mouth. I don’t trust them, never have trusted them. Their board members should be made to eat what Purnia says is food. Growing up with dogs, we probably fed her Dr. Ross dog food, in a can, no such thing as kibble. I believe Dr. Ross dog food was probably 100% horsemeat and the dogs did great with it.
Connie H.
February 6, 2019 at 7:44 pm
Gee, been feeding RAW here for over 22 YEARS…with extremely HEALTHY and robust pack here. Guess that shoots your article in the foot, doesn’t it, Purina?
J King
February 6, 2019 at 7:45 pm
Purina only says this because raw food doesn’t fit their business model of using the cheapest garbage they can find – they’d have to source meat that isn’t green, fuzzy and smelly, so no profit margin. Just because Purina can’t do raw, doesn’t mean raw food isn’t good for pets.
Sherri
February 6, 2019 at 7:46 pm
Kind of funny how they make themselves look stupid isn’t it! I’m one of those misguided owners who feeds a fresh, raw diet and I’ve never had such healthy dogs as these I have now. And why on earth would anyone trust commercial pet food with the recalls we see these days?! No thank you. I’ll continue to “attempt” to feed my dogs with REAL fresh food instead of commercial pet foods processed waste products.
Loraine Sullivan
February 6, 2019 at 7:49 pm
I find it incredible that Purina, of all companies, has the gall to tell raw feeders that they are harming their dog because we don’t know what we’re doing. This is a company that is still adding total junk to their dog food, is still adding food dyes, poultry by-product meal which is a dry rendered product of slaughterhouse waste, animal fat that they don’t even mention a specific animal, so this item could come from almost anywhere: roadkill, spoiled supermarket meat, dead, diseased or dying cattle — even euthanized pets. And what about menadione, a controversial form of vitamin K linked to liver toxicity, allergies and the abnormal break-down of red blood cells. And if they think their food is so safe then why have they had their share of recalls?
Sally
February 6, 2019 at 9:00 pm
All these companies are knocking each other saying they are the best and they are all lying !! It’s all about $$$$$$$. I am sick of all of these , except just a handful, companies and the ones that make human products too!!
Now they have found cancer causing ingredients in some of the human’s blood pressure pills and they state that ingredient came from China !! !! REALLY !
Wanda Vittek
February 6, 2019 at 9:20 pm
This is an article I found in 2014 to post on my Diabetic cat Forum if I may. This is information I have read from In conversation: http://www.animalendocrine.com/wp-conte … erview.pdf
In conversation: Mark E Peterson, DVM, DACVIM, has, for more than three decades, been advancing our understanding of feline endocrine diseases. My issue would be the care of senior and geriatric cats, especially dealing with issues of proper feline nutrition. It is well known that cats are obligate carnivores and have a high protein need. As cats age, however, their protein requirement continues to go up, which explains why many older cats develop sarcopenia of aging.
My favorite article in JFMS last year was written by Dottie Laflamme and Steve Hannah, entitled ‘Discrepancy between use of lean body mass or nitrogen balance to determine protein requirements for adult cats’ (JFMS 2013; 15: 691–697). Looking at lean body mass to determine protein requirements was very interesting, and the fact that they calculated minimum protein needs as 5 g/kg is important.That’s much higher than we might have expected, and helps explain why so many cats develop muscle wasting on the classic senior diet, one in which protein content is lowered. I think that feeding a better diet would help prevent such muscle wasting from developing in the older, geriatric cat.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23362342
Notation: Dottie Laflamme DVM and Steve Hannah are employee’s of Nestle Purina.
My question:Where else but by feeding raw meals do our cats get more muscle building protein. The per food Industry hypocrites.
guest
February 6, 2019 at 9:51 pm
Thanks for posting. We will no longer buy any Nestle Purina for pets or humans. Nestle makes lots of nutritionless chemical processed food for children. I hardly ever buy anything made by Nestle, as Nestle is a big monopoly of no nutrition chemical processed food products. Nestle Purina is crap food for pets and now they insult us and think that will buy them more customers. They must really think most americans and their children are tv watching brainwashed idiots. Of course that is partly true. Most people are clueless about health because they listen to the lies on TelLieVision. All the so called news are lies regurgitated to brainwash the low class masses. But some of us have done our research and we have evolved as our pets have taught us about health. I feed mostly frozen ground up raw meat, with a whole organic raw egg, and a big handful of thawed frozen asian veggies, a teaspoon of chia seeds for fiber for firm poop, several kelp tablets for iodine to prevent hypothyroidism, selenium, milk thistle for a healthy liver, a pet multi vitamin, green powder of spirulina and or chlorella, red powder of cranberry for urinary health and dribble a teaspoon of codliver oil on top of all the food to make it all taste good.
Poor nestle purina dogs never eat this good.
Reader
February 6, 2019 at 10:19 pm
I think it would be great if NESTLE Purina executives would all be required to only eat NESTLE Purina Dog Chow for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks for a full 30 days on video 24 hours a day to make sure this is all they eat. Lets see how healthy all the wealthy executives would be if they were forced to eat that crap in NESTLE Purina dog food. The only reason the executives make all that money, is because NESTLE Purina picks up for free, the free protein meat which is all the dead dogs and cats from all the killing centers that cooked and chopped up at their rendering factory, they pick up the free moldy cereal from the cereal industry, and pick up for free the rancid toxic fat in barrels left over from fast food restaurants. The dead pets ground up meat is mixed with the moldy cereal and it is all stuck together with toxic rancid fat and sent thru an extruder machine to make kibble pellets, and dipped in coloring to give it color. Read more by Pet Food Pets Die For by Ann Martin at amazon. The NESTLE Purina marketing dept actually thinks by insulting pet owners they will win buying customers. They sure are wrong. I will never buy any NESTLE or NESTLE Purina food items ever again.
I am waiting for the NESTLE executives to put their purina dog chow where their mouths are!!!
Brooke Prendergast
February 6, 2019 at 10:47 pm
Here is the irony. Many years ago, one of the only methods of feeding dogs was with canned “meat”. Dogs never had a problem with their teeth or needed to have them brushed or dental cleanings done yearly. With the invention of “kibble”, all of a sudden dental work is required. The kibble may well provide all the vitamins & minerals necessary to provide a healthy diet, but it appears to be at the detriment of a dog’s teeth! So, are our dogs (or cats for that matter) any better off?
Chris_B
February 7, 2019 at 5:31 am
And the better brands of canned food met the standards of the “National Science Foundation” and not the Animal Feed AAFCO.
Pet ~Owner~
February 7, 2019 at 7:45 pm
Well actually we don’t know that. More people fed “scraps” to their dogs, especially in rural areas. Dogs (not confined) could’ve been wild feeders as well (to augment their diets). Kibble (starchy) can contribute to plaque, but the dye is what stains teeth. Good/poor teeth also depends on the dog’s PH/genetics. Dogs (in previous decades) also ate lots more bones. In the 60’s (unless it was a big name like Purina) not all the dry stuff was complete & balanced. Our Vets recommended to feed meat as well. I shudder to think how horse meat got rendered in order to supply canned PF companies, but that is indeed what we fed. Dogs didn’t seem to be surccumbing to cancer as much, just “old age.”
Patty Jones
February 6, 2019 at 11:19 pm
Purina should stop and think about how many dogs died needlessly because of Beneful before they point a finger at anyone else. Pretty confident I can do better than that with raw diet.
Kay
February 7, 2019 at 6:49 am
What Loraine said. This takes the pot calling the kettle black to a whole new level.
RL
February 7, 2019 at 9:51 am
I don’t think this is necessarily intended to insult raw feeders. I’m guessing that Purina is aiming this nonsense at people who don’t raw feed but are thinking about it as it is becoming popular. Purina knows it is losing customers so this is damage control to keep customers who haven’t gone raw.
Chris Sollers
February 8, 2019 at 4:41 pm
Ludicrous coming from Purina with the garbage they sell.
Waleska de Lemos
February 11, 2019 at 12:24 pm
Purina sucks! Raw food rules!
J. U.
February 21, 2019 at 10:48 pm
Hey Purina, how’s the Vitamin D recall going for the commercial pet food industry?
Cherry
January 16, 2021 at 1:05 am
I think Purina is just trying to scare us.
Consequences
January 16, 2021 at 4:07 pm
Remember it’s not so much the format of feeding (raw, fermented, cooked) but the sourcing and balance of nutrients. In the PFI – it’s about process not concept. Technically they have the recipes. Purina might have it right (and did back in the day, when horsemeat was a straight forward protein) except that in modern day they’ve opted for profit and expediency instead. In exchange for keeping deceased animals from landfill (usually outlawed) they’ve struck a deal for rendering with little oversight. And certainly with no consequences for failures and mistakes (or even contaminated premixes). So nobody is ever going to see a correction in the PFI.
Except times are now a changing. Not only can meat (protein) be artificially created (manipulated?). There will come a day when Industrial Agriculture will be restricted from contributing to pet food products. They will be deemed inconsequential (as will the trend be towards discouraging pet “ownership.”) The (perception of) an environmentally friendly deal (notice, no political language here) will overwhelm other concerns and interests. So the PFI will be forced into adapting yet again, into new forms of sourcing (edible bugs, anyone?). By the time these lawsuits (usually initiated years ago) play out, a verdict won’t mean much anyway. Except to prove a point.
So the topic here is about whether a “raw food” diet is unhealthy. It is (as with any PF product) if the quality of sourcing and processing is at fault. ANY animal diet is. No matter what. That’s where the attention should focus. Not the war between brand names. In the meantime irrelevant accusations and legalese verbiage are distracting, deceiving (and certainly confusing) the public! It is because raw food (meat) diets depend more on Industrial Agriculture production, and impact the environment more than other formats, that the government will never straighten this mess out. They can only hope consumers will gravitate toward less impactful environmental alternatives, as they spread their message.
The question then becomes how can animals survive on artificially created protein and insect alternatives? What do long term experiments say (I mean, truly)?? WHO is going to be monitoring that phase of the PFI’s vested interest? And WHO will be incentivized to do so??
Questions for the decades ahead. Good luck everyone!
Cherry
January 25, 2021 at 10:27 am
I just realized Hill’s also agrees with Purina that a raw diet is unhealthy. https://www.hillspet.com/dog-care/nutrition-feeding/dangers-of-raw-diets-for-dogs