Darwins dog food recall |
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My recommendation: Throw all Darwin's products in the trash and don't look back. They are obviously more interested in damage control than dog health. |
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And note that this article states that pet owners are also at risk when dog food is contaminated with Salmonella. And it's not just from handling the food--it's also from handling poop and receiving dog licks. What is wrong with this company that they want to minimize the danger? What they should be doing is making sure it doesn't happen again. |
Here is a link to Darwin's Dog Food's complete statement, and I have to say I'm HORRIFIED: https://truthaboutpetfood.com/darwin...food-recall-2/ A few things that horrify me (besides what I mentioned a couple of posts above): Quote:
"Professionals at zoos and racing greyhound kennels, who have historically fed raw meat, recognize the potential for contamination and attempt to decrease risks of foodborne illness. Raw meat may make up 50 to 75% of the food consumed by racing greyhounds in the United States (Chengappa et al, 1993). Sporadic fatalities and contamination of the environment with Salmonella enterica have occurred in greyhound facilities in which raw meat was fed (Morley et al, 2006). Unlike raw food advocates in the dog-racing industry, pet owners share their household and food-preparation area with their pet. The FDA "does not believe raw meat foods for animals are consistent with the goal of protecting the public from significant health risks, particularly when such products are brought into the home and/or used to feed domestic pets." Thus, the FDA has drafted guidelines for companies selling raw meat diets to pet owners (2000)." And: "Advocates of feeding raw meat, bone and eggs claim that pathogenic organisms in raw meat do not affect dogs and cats due to the lower stomach pH and shorter GI transit times in these species. Stomach pH and GI transit times are in fact similar among people, dogs and cats and do not lower the risk to pets. Dogs and cats succumb to foodborne pathogens and exhibit clinical signs similar to those in people (Fredriksson-Ahomaa et al, 2001; Gayle, 2003; Remillard and Wynn, 2005). Neither freezing raw meat before feeding nor purchasing freeze-dried commercial foods eliminates pathogens; freezing and freeze-drying are ineffective means for killing bacteria. In fact, both methods are used for long-term preservation of valuable stock bacterial cultures in laboratories." And the chapter on Food Safety goes on from there to describe in great detail how bacterial contaminants in dog foods can pass through the dog's body and get into the household and cause human illness. Another quote from Darwin's Dog Foods: Quote:
"In a study published in May 2017, almost 3,000 stool samples from dogs and cats were collected across the country between January 2012 and April 2014. Eleven laboratories then tested the samples for Salmonella. At the time of the stool collection, some animals were having diarrhea and some were not. Less than 1% (3/542) of cats and 2.5% (60/2,422) of dogs were positive for Salmonella. The study suggests that the prevalence of Salmonella-positive dogs and cats in the U.S. is low and continuing to decline. The study also identified a raw pet food diet as a major risk factor for Salmonella infection." What are they saying here? That Salmonella isn't common in dog and cat stool samples, except those that are fed raw food diets. And then the FDA links to the following article: https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary.../ucm373757.htm. The title of that article is "Get the facts! Raw pet food diets can be dangerous to you and your pet!" Then Darwin's Dog Foods goes on to speciously state: Quote:
Finally, there's this statement about how Darwin's "sterilizes" their food (and I use the word "sterilize" loosely, since they don't actually sterilize their food): Quote:
I'm in danger of using all caps here, so bear with me: DO YOU KNOW WHAT PHAGES ARE????? Sorry about that, I had to get that out of my system. Phages are viruses, and although their DNA has been sequenced, not much is known about how they affect human health. Here is a link to a 2017 article on Phages in the Human Body: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5378999/. Among many other things this article states is that "the influence of the presence of phages in humans has yet to be evaluated." The article notes that phages are genetic scavengers, and pick up and shuffle genes around when they infect bacteria. They are notorious for moving around genes that affect resistance to antibiotics, bacterial fitness at causing infections, and virulence genes. Phages are used in genetic engineering laboratories for this purpose, and when they are, you have to use high biosafety protocols to prevent releasing them into the environment. So Darwin's Dog Foods throws a bunch of phages into their dog food that are supposed to kill pathogenic bacteria and leave beneficial bacteria intact?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? What if the phages picked up a virulence gene from Salmonella and transferred it to the beneficial bacteria? Those bacteria wouldn't be so beneficial after all, would they? Admittedly, this occurs in nature all of the time, but I wouldn't go out of my way to do it. Like I said, I'm horrified. Darwin's Dog Food can keep their phages to themselves. I wouldn't bring them into my household. Other people can put their own health and the health of their pets at risk, but not me. Oh, and Darwin's Pet Foods admits that the phages don't do a complete job of killing Salmonella anyway and they're happy with that. |
Darwin's Dog Food's motto should be... "Darwin: Survival of the Fittest! What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger!" Sorry, I still haven't gotten their food recall statement out of my system. |
Clarification I may have gone off half-cocked in the following bit about phages and food safety: Quote:
The type of phage that Darwin's Dog Food adds to their raw food to kill bacteria is the virulent type, so it is "Generally Recognized As Safe" by the Food and Drug Administration as a food additive, and indeed, it is sometimes added to human food products to reduce the bacterial count. Here is a link to a typical FDA notification about phages being Generally Recognized As Safe for human consumption: https://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/.../ucm345473.htm This particular notification is about virulent phages used to reduce the amount of Salmonella in food products, so it's probably fairly similar to what Darwin's adds to their dog food. There's a lot of research out there about the differences between virulent and temperate phages, and there are some phages that can switch back and forth between types, but the FDA has accepted the results of studies that show that the types of virulent phage added to food to kill bacteria NEVER become temperate, and therefore are not a threat to food safety. The addition of phages to human and dog food to reduce bacterial count is only a recent phenomenon (since 2006), so I wouldn't go so far as to say there could never be any danger, but the track record has been good so far. Personally, I wouldn't knowingly eat food that has been treated with phages, but I suppose the old adage that what you don't know won't hurt you applies in this case. But still, the bottom line that the addition of phages to raw dog food doesn't kill 100% of dangerous bacteria still stands. |
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