Concerns about Science Diet
- Thread starter regdog
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Sad stories, all around. I wonder if Hills is getting the ingredients for their new formula from China?
My dog recently became paralyzed in the hind quarters - we put him on Science Diet canned food and he's had no problems of the sort mentioned. Many of those letters appear to be blaming SD because an illness already present got worse, which could simply have been the normal course of the illness. Lots of companies have recalls; doesn't mean all their products are dangerous.
There have been a lot of recalls and alerts lately. In the past year or two, I've seen recalls for Science Diet, California Natural, EVO, Iams, Eukanuba, Innova, Taste of the Wild, Kirkland, Natural Balance, Wellness Natural, Solid Gold, etc. It seems every time, I drop one of the foods I give my cats and dog, the new one pops up on a list. That and the huge recall list of jerky treats.
I'm reaching a point, where I'm tempted to consult with our vet and come up with a way to make their foods from scratch. I'm losing faith in the pet food industry.
I'm reaching a point, where I'm tempted to consult with our vet and come up with a way to make their foods from scratch. I'm losing faith in the pet food industry.
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The Halo wet food I found very iffy - one can was plain liquid, one can looked fine but made my cat ill and she knew there was something off with it. I get nervous about the larger brands that are parts of conglomerates.
As I said in another thread - Wysong kibbles are awesome, have a starch-free line, have more meat and protein than any other kibbles on the market, are made and sourced in the U.S., haven't had any problems and are cheap for a premium food (and the bag lasts longer because it's more meat, less filler, so they eat less).
I also do tinned Natural Instinct, sourced and manufactured in the U.S. (except for their rabbit, which they note right on their page is sourced from China), and Merrick, all sourced and manufactured in the U.S.
As I said in another thread - Wysong kibbles are awesome, have a starch-free line, have more meat and protein than any other kibbles on the market, are made and sourced in the U.S., haven't had any problems and are cheap for a premium food (and the bag lasts longer because it's more meat, less filler, so they eat less).
I also do tinned Natural Instinct, sourced and manufactured in the U.S. (except for their rabbit, which they note right on their page is sourced from China), and Merrick, all sourced and manufactured in the U.S.
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Something about Halo doesn't sit well with my pets. All three ended up with diarrhea, and that's after I did the slow introduction of the new food. A week into it, diarrhea was still affecting all three (and that's NOT fun on a long-haired cat), so I stopped and went back to Before Grain for my cats and Evolve for my dog. Those are not showing up on the recall/warning list, so I'm good for now, but with new foods appearing regularly, who knows how long it will last.
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A lot of people fall into the post hoc fallacy with diets. They change diet (which in itself often causes issues) or even are just feeding the diet, things happen, they blame the diet. It is normal psychology but bad reasoning. You can find similar anecdotal claims for every diet, treat, veterinary medication and detergent. It takes some top level process like adverse events recording to pick up when the problems are more than accidental associations and there is a real problem, confirmed when the adulterant or other problem is identified.
Vets don't actually get a whole lot of nutritional education unless they go out of their way to take nutrition electives in school, and even then, they're specializing in multiple species vs. human doctors than only have to worry about one.
I went to a dog nutritionist who got her degree in Germany where they offer such things. She is fantastic, and does online consults if you are not in Los Angeles. One of my dogs began having grand mal seizures in clusters several times a week, and would wake up from them blind and with his rear end paralyzed/partially paralyzed.
A friend with an epileptic dachshund recommended her. She put together a specialized diet for my friend's dog and it actually reduced his seizures. I had her do the same for my dog. After two weeks of being on the new diet, his seizures stopped. Two months later he had one small cluster. Ever since then he's been seizure free. It's been about two years now. He's never been on seizure medication, because my ex refused to let me take him to a vet. She saved his life, because if the paralysis had become permanent we would have lost him.
If you want to do home cooked, raw, or find a kibble formula that works she will work with you on all of those things and make sure you're supplementing with the correct types and amounts of stuff vitamins and things for that formula.
She's runs a website called The Dog Food Project, which compares and contrasts different brands and formulas, and has a lot of good educational material about food and nutrition. It also lists all the recall information for various brands as it comes out.
http://www.dogfoodproject.com/
If you'd like her consult business contact info PM me and I'd be happy to share.
Thanks for the link. I'll look it over when I have time. My bigger concern is my cats. I know taurine is essential, so they really need a specialized diet. For now BG seems to be okay, and it's what they like, so I'll stick with it.
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Or not changing diets causes issues. The norm evolutionarily is a varied diet. What would happen if we only fed you bean paste and brussel sprouts? And the next decade was bean paste and brussel sprouts and on and on?
Dogs are more carnivore than us, but more omnivore than say a cat, but they need variety. There is no one diet that is good for a creature's entire life. Even if it's to prevent boredom, if you are going to use commercial feeds, pick 3 or 4 and rotate among them.
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Indeed. My approach is to change up diet regularly and suppliment with whatever is fresh and available. It makes for a robiust gut.
Keep in mind that the ingredients for feeding raw would add up to a similar level of recalls. Fresh raw meats for the raw diet have a history of testing positive for salmonella.
If you do follow a home diet I would suggest that you buy a supplement for crucial trace elements like taurine and l-carnitine.
Keep in mind that the ingredients for feeding raw would add up to a similar level of recalls. Fresh raw meats for the raw diet have a history of testing positive for salmonella.
If you do follow a home diet I would suggest that you buy a supplement for crucial trace elements like taurine and l-carnitine.
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You also might look for a better pet food store - there's a specific pet 'health food' store in my neighbourhood. They stock mostly smaller brands, some larger, but they know exactly where stuff is made, sourced, what's in it all. They sell digestive enzymes, supplements, all that sort of stuff and have plentiful samples on offer, will offer advice about what might help a diet, etc.
The only "pet food" store in my area that isn't a grocery store is a Tractor Supply, and the foods they sell are on the recall list. We used to have a locally owned pet store, but it shut down. That leaves Petco as the next option, and it's 40 miles away.
In asking my vet, he always recommends the vet formulas of Science Diet, which I won't do. The first five ingredients on the formula he recommends are junk:
Chicken By-Product Meal, Brewers Rice, Corn Gluten Meal, Whole Grain Corn, Pork Fat.
So I don't really trust my vets word, there used to be a holistic vet, but she closed her practice. Given that, I do my own research, and for now Before Grains is the option the pets like that hasn't made recall lists, so it's what I'll stick to.
In asking my vet, he always recommends the vet formulas of Science Diet, which I won't do. The first five ingredients on the formula he recommends are junk:
Chicken By-Product Meal, Brewers Rice, Corn Gluten Meal, Whole Grain Corn, Pork Fat.
So I don't really trust my vets word, there used to be a holistic vet, but she closed her practice. Given that, I do my own research, and for now Before Grains is the option the pets like that hasn't made recall lists, so it's what I'll stick to.
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Bah. My vet's office stocks Science Diet (big wall of it) as well and feeds it, unless otherwise indicated, to animals there overnight. So did the high-kill shelter where I got kitty. Both gave me a bag of Science Diet with a coupon attached. That should kind of say something.
However, when I actually asked the vet, she said there were many options and said the Wysong was very good, so I think it may be a matter of the practice takes the $$ and won't say outright but if asked will sidestep. Which is still crappy, imo, but ...
The practice has a holistic vet working there as well, does alternative medicine in addition, but I've not spoken to her.
Sucks you don't have a better place near you, but at least we're in a time of info and shipping at your fingertips!
However, when I actually asked the vet, she said there were many options and said the Wysong was very good, so I think it may be a matter of the practice takes the $$ and won't say outright but if asked will sidestep. Which is still crappy, imo, but ...
The practice has a holistic vet working there as well, does alternative medicine in addition, but I've not spoken to her. Sucks you don't have a better place near you, but at least we're in a time of info and shipping at your fingertips!
The merry-go-round of recalls just baffles me, and it leaves me feeling very inadequate about knowing how to feed my dog.
We were feeding Blue Buffalo, but it started to smell funny and she wasn't eating it very enthusiastically anymore. Now we've switched to Merrick, and she seems to be liking that pretty well.
But at the vet today, she was deemed "fat!" And now we have to figure out how to get the weight off her. The vet immediately recommended the Science Diet they sell at the office. I just flat-out told him I don't think it's a good food and that with her issues, I'm not going to switch her food now that we've found one that seems to work. They really just peddle that stuff...
But he said he understood and went to the Merrick site and said the food looked like a really good food. So now we're just going to try more exercise and fewer treats.
We were feeding Blue Buffalo, but it started to smell funny and she wasn't eating it very enthusiastically anymore. Now we've switched to Merrick, and she seems to be liking that pretty well.
But at the vet today, she was deemed "fat!" And now we have to figure out how to get the weight off her. The vet immediately recommended the Science Diet they sell at the office. I just flat-out told him I don't think it's a good food and that with her issues, I'm not going to switch her food now that we've found one that seems to work. They really just peddle that stuff...
But he said he understood and went to the Merrick site and said the food looked like a really good food. So now we're just going to try more exercise and fewer treats.
I've heard from former workers in my vet's office that the commissions on prescription diets is as high as 40 percent, so they're going to push them every time. There's a local spay/neuter program who give a handout with everyone that brings their pet in that says always read the label and if the first five ingredients are not a combination of meat/poultry/fish, meat/poultry/fish meal, vegetables/fruits and a grain like barley or brown rice, it's not worth buying. So I try to stick to that principal. They recommended Taste of the Wild, so I was using that, but it's on the recall list now. I know some say salmonella won't affect pets and that it's not worth worrying over, but when our cats sleep with us and salmonella is transferred from pet to human, I'd rather not run the risk.
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I'm going to defend veterinarians here. I worked for a vet for seven years and we stocked Science Diet. I can tell you we did NOT carry it for the big fat profits it brought in. The profit margins on dog food in general are slim and Science diet puts the squeeze on vets a bit more each year. That previously quoted markup of 40% is closer to 35%, and in retail 40% is nothing, far below the 100% "keystone" markup (also known as the minimum amount of profit to make retail worthwhile). You have to provide storage space for the products and that storage space has to be temperature controlled. You have to pay employees to stock the food and do inventory and keep up with expiration dates. You have to go to extreme lengths to ensure that your stock is protected from mice and roaches.
From a financial perspective, it would have made far more sense to not sell pet food at all and convert the storage area to additional kennel space. Better profit margins and if it's not being used you can turn off the A/C. From a patient care perspective, however, we had to carry pet foods.
It's very easy for pet owners to say "Oh, try this other brand. It uses all-natural/raw/super-duper/current-fad ingredients. However, most of those brands don't offer a line of prescription diets, and say what you will, I've personally seen prescription foods work wonders. When you have a Shih Tzu with a bladder stone the size of a hen's egg and the options are feeding the dog prescription food for three months or having surgery to remove the stone, the food is obviously the way to go, both for the dog's health and the owner's wallet.
So why Science Diet and not some other brand?
Like I said before, not many brands do the prescription diet thing. Science Diet is stupidly expensive. We knew that perfectly well. Do you think we WANTED to charge people that much for dog food? After one particularly nasty price hike from the company we started researching other companies, trying to find a replacement. Royal Canin and Eukanuba are both reputable companies that manufacture prescription diets and we looked into both of them as options. To our surprise, however, their prescription diets retailed for even more than Science Diet. They did offer slightly higher profit margins to the vet, but we couldn't stomach the idea of charging our clients still more, so we stayed with what we had.
I have no problems with people criticizing Science Diet, it's not perfect after all, and there are certainly unscrupulous vets out there who will squeeze patients for every penny, but the two aren't necessarily related.
Did we hand out Science Diet coupons? Absolutely. We'd also keep them at the front desk and apply the discount to food as we rang it up. We didn't do this to encourage sales of Science Diet, but to help our clients in what small way we could. We did the same thing with any other coupons that came our way.
Why is it so hard for people to believe that maybe, just maybe, most vets have the best interests of pets AND owners at heart? That they're telling you to use modern flea products because Dawn Dish Soap REALLY WON'T eliminate an infestation? That they're pushing vaccines not because they're greedy, but because it sucks to see a sweet wonderful pet die of a preventable disease?
/End Rant
From a financial perspective, it would have made far more sense to not sell pet food at all and convert the storage area to additional kennel space. Better profit margins and if it's not being used you can turn off the A/C. From a patient care perspective, however, we had to carry pet foods.
It's very easy for pet owners to say "Oh, try this other brand. It uses all-natural/raw/super-duper/current-fad ingredients. However, most of those brands don't offer a line of prescription diets, and say what you will, I've personally seen prescription foods work wonders. When you have a Shih Tzu with a bladder stone the size of a hen's egg and the options are feeding the dog prescription food for three months or having surgery to remove the stone, the food is obviously the way to go, both for the dog's health and the owner's wallet.
So why Science Diet and not some other brand?
Like I said before, not many brands do the prescription diet thing. Science Diet is stupidly expensive. We knew that perfectly well. Do you think we WANTED to charge people that much for dog food? After one particularly nasty price hike from the company we started researching other companies, trying to find a replacement. Royal Canin and Eukanuba are both reputable companies that manufacture prescription diets and we looked into both of them as options. To our surprise, however, their prescription diets retailed for even more than Science Diet. They did offer slightly higher profit margins to the vet, but we couldn't stomach the idea of charging our clients still more, so we stayed with what we had.
I have no problems with people criticizing Science Diet, it's not perfect after all, and there are certainly unscrupulous vets out there who will squeeze patients for every penny, but the two aren't necessarily related.
Did we hand out Science Diet coupons? Absolutely. We'd also keep them at the front desk and apply the discount to food as we rang it up. We didn't do this to encourage sales of Science Diet, but to help our clients in what small way we could. We did the same thing with any other coupons that came our way.
Why is it so hard for people to believe that maybe, just maybe, most vets have the best interests of pets AND owners at heart? That they're telling you to use modern flea products because Dawn Dish Soap REALLY WON'T eliminate an infestation? That they're pushing vaccines not because they're greedy, but because it sucks to see a sweet wonderful pet die of a preventable disease?
/End Rant
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I don't think there's a big profit margin on the stuff - I kind of assume they're paid to stock it. Paid for the placement, same as a supermarket or bookstore.
I don't think saying 'here's this brand of food that MANY vets offices stock, though it's made of crap,' is the same as 'use proper flea products or 'vaccinate.' There's a reason to be suspicious of the former, imo.
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I can tell you for a fact they're not paid to stock it. The company does offer some benefits to vets, but they're not really that awesome.
1) A 100% return policy. They'd take back any product for any reason, opened or not, and give a full refund, which meant the vet could also give clients a full refund. This was most commonly used when terminally ill animals passed away. The owners could return that half-used bag of food for a full refund and put that money toward cremation expenses or whatever else they needed.
2) Good shipping fees. Any order over 50 lbs earned free shipping. Some of the other companies aren't as generous, and dog food is heavy/expensive to ship.
3) It's widespread. We've had people come into town on vacation only to run out of their pet's prescription diet. They'd come into our clinic and we could, at the request of their normal vet, fill the prescription. This benefit was particularly useful in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when a lot of people's normal vets were completely shut down and owners had evacuated with their pets all over the country. The ability to find your normal dog food is a big deal for animals with kidney or heart disease, and a similar product from a different brand would still carry the usual risks of stomach upset that can occur with dietary changes.
That's pretty much it. Useful things, certainly, but not the be-all/end-all. There aren't kickbacks, the food isn't sold on "commission" as one person stated. It's a product, not the greatest product in the world, but the best option at the moment when you consider the range of factors a vet has to take into account. The minute a better quality product that offers the same range of prescription diets at a better price comes on the market, I guarantee vets would switch over in a heartbeat.
See, to me it IS the same kind of mentality. The people who have problems with *insert flea product here* say, "Vets just want me to put poisons on my animal. They get a lots of money for the flea stuff and then they get more money when the poison gives my pet kidney disease and I have to pay for treatment. They don't care about animals at all. Anyway, everyone knows dish soap kills fleas just fine. If vets were honest, they'd just admit it instead of trying to sell me this overpriced stuff. The whole thing is just fishy. Since most vets push this stuff, they're clearly in the pocket of the manufacturers."
Frankly, when someone comes into your workplace and accuses you of such things, it's offensive. It's an undeserved attack on the character of people who are doing their best for their clients and patients.
Like I said. Science Diet isn't necessarily the most wonderful food in existence. However, that doesn't make it BAD food. That's like saying a salad isn't healthy because it's not made with organic lettuce.
Our vet sold Science Diet, but he also recommended a couple of other brands, and there are so many fly by night companies out there that he couldn't keep up with all of them. His mentality was, "This is what I sell, and it's a solid product. If you'd prefer something else, go for it. As long as the animal is healthy, I don't really care what you feed it."
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Science diet is pretty good and they lead the way in things like low sodium diets for pets with heart disease. Overall I have no trouble saying that I think they make a good range of pet food, especially the special diets for pets with chronic health issues.