Years ago, Deanna and I moved Ptolemy over to Hill's Prescription Diet Feline c/d Dry because she was suffering from urinary tract problems. The low-magnesium diet helps prevent the urinary tract crystals that were causing her serious discomfort (and she's actually quite happy with the taste.)
When the news started to break about the hundreds of brands of pet foods that were being recalled for causing serious illness and death, we breathed a sigh of relief knowing that they were only wet foods produced by Menu Foods and Ptolemy eats a dry food made by the Hill's company.
This evening I read that the FDA knows of a manufacturer of dry food that uses the same tainted filler that's apparently at the root of the problems in the recalled wet foods. In the same story, it's noted that Hill's has recalled it's Prescription Diet Feline m/d Dry (not the same as what Ptolemy gets, this one is for overweight cats) because it contains the problem filler. The FDA won't say if it's Hill's that they're investigating or some other manufacturer.
After several minutes of anxiety (we're in Boston for a few days and Ptolemy's at home with a big bowl of c/d) I located the actual Hill's recall, and we're relieved to learn that the problem is limited to just that one Hill's m/d formula and none of their other lines contain the dangerous filler.
This is great news for us and for Ptolemy, but I can imagine the anxiety that the rest of the dog and cat families out there who aren't on a "known good" food must experiencing. What are they supposed to be doing? The FDA is telling them that there's another manufacturer making potentially deadly pet food but they won't say who. Likely thousands of animals have already died as a result of this tainted food and the FDA won't even tell us whether this new manufacturer they're investigating is Hill's or yet another company. Just saying "Yes, it's Hill's" would give a lot of comfort to a lot of people. Alternately, if it's not Hill's saying even that would be better than saying nothing. Saying "we know, but we're not telling" is the just horrible. Time is the difference between life and death in kidney failure situations and not releasing any and all information that could help save pet lives is unacceptable.
I'm a big fan of high-quality "complete" commercial pet foods, and it would be going against the recommendations coming from some respected vets, but if you're one of those pet families that doesn't know whether your cat or dog food is eating a deadly poison, you might consider temporarily moving them over to a homemade diet, even for pets that need specialty diets. I wouldn't recommend this as a long-term program when high-quality, nutritionally complete foods are available at reasonable prices, but I don't believe that there's anything wrong with playing things safe for the next little while -- or at least until the FDA will stop putting business interests ahead of the lives of our non-human family members.
