You make some valid points. It is your mandate to care for pet's health. But there's a serious issue with what veterinarians are telling their clients with regard to the inconclusive data being consistently put in the news by Freeman and others. Just to be on the level; I too am in the pet business and have a financial stake in this situation. The primary issue I have is that the conclusion of the explanation offered to pet owners with regard to the DCM issue is consistently; "You can only feed Purina, Hill's and Royal Canin." Why? "Because those companies are the only ones who have board certified vets and do the proper testing." The problem with that? 2015, Purina, propylene glycol and Beneful sickened and killed how many thousands of dogs? 2019 and Hill's vitamin D. Millions of pounds of Hill's products recalled... Let me repeat that; millions of pounds of products. And again, hundreds if not thousands of dogs sickened and killed. What does this say about mega-company oversight? Nonexistent? Only when pet's start getting sick and dying? From what I see, smaller brands cannot approach quality control with this level of inattentiveness because they can't afford a multi-million dollar judgment against them and stay in business.

The majority of pet owners are suspicious when they take their pet to the vet and are told to avoid "boutique" stores and to only shop at the grocery stores and big-box retailers. More often than not this impugns the veterinarian in the eyes of pet owners. To follow that with a recommendation to feed Purina? Most pet owners aren't buying it. In fact, it confuses them. More often than not we hear a baffled statement like; "Ahhh, my vet told me something about getting off of grain free foods and to buy Purina." Often their association with Purina is that it's a not quality brand that informed pet owners feed their pets. 

If the advice being given was based on ingredients, I would not be sharing my thoughts here. The FDA's premature focus on correlative and not conclusive brands and their role in diet related DCM is at this point, specious at best. In addition, the veterinarians who are now applying the word "boutique" to independent pet retailers followed by a warning to not shop at; "those kinds of stores" are offering a baseless assertion not backed by science. I would go so far as to question the business practices and ethics of these assertions. Even the cat litter and collars we sell are now dangerous? This all rings of some ulterior motive that might have some basis in pet health but is being delivered with vigor for some other reason(s). And again, this comes down to the ingredients used in kibble because virtually every product is made using the same equipment, manufacturing process and is packaged in virtually identical packaging.

If veterinarians want to properly address this issue, they need to focus on ingredients, not brands and what type of retailer might be available for pet owners to purchase their pet's food and other products. To clarify the dubious nature of this slander, it's not every veterinarian who is on this bandwagon of bashing smaller brands and the stores who sell them. Many times I've asked a customer that has been shopping with me for years; "Did your vet warn you about DCM, boutique foods and independent pet supply stores?" and they respond; "No. she/he didn't say anything about any of that." So apparently this is not something that is being mandated from on high but an assumed liability issue being taken on by individuals. I've even heard of instances where articles and vets told pet owners that they don't need to bother reading ingredient panels on pet food. To push this sort of thing to the limit; I have a local vet near me who feeds raw to her own pets but admonishes any pet owner who divulges that they would dare to feed raw, followed by that "Purina recommendation." How about the millions of diabetic and overweight dogs? Where's the FDA report on that? Where's the furor over feeding chicken flavored corn to dogs? Hardly. All of this is over less than .001% of the dogs in the United States and still, has NO conclusive data behind it.

I've had tens of thousands of pet owners purchase products from my store. I have yet to have one customer assert that me or my staff were negligent in the food recommendations we have made. We talk about ingredients. We educate, not alienate. If a company has proven themselves to have a track record of consistent quality control and a focus on quality ingredients, we recommend them. Recently a customer brought in a bag of Royal Canin. After several minutes of close examination, it was still unclear what the source of animal protein was in the product. Or how about a product formulated to deal with diarrhea with corn starch as its first ingredient? Seriously? Corn starch as the first ingredient? I would gather that this would pretty quickly solidify the stool but what about the roller-coaster effects on blood glucose levels? If a brand shows a fealty to profit over pet health, you won't find their products on our shelves. If the final part of the DCM conversation was to recommend a brand with a proven track record of putting pet health over profit, stores like mine would be well stocked with those vet recommended products. The truth is that I hear scant attention being paid to a company's actual track record and the ingredients they choose to put into their products. Trust me; my customers have every opportunity to learn the difference between meat-meal and sustainably sourced, grass-fed angus beef.

Let the studies show conclusive evidence. Let the industry as a whole respond to the ingredient issues. STOP following the FDA's lead and confusing your clients with chicken-little tactics about "brands you can't trust." Or don't and stores like mine will just keep recommending the veterinarians in our area who never use the word "boutique" to describe our businesses and who are infinitely more concerned with ingredients and their conclusive effects on pet health than the logo on the bag or the research grant that helped fund their education.

The vet cardiologists what work for Tufts and UC Davis have absolutely no ties to the pet food industry?  Seriously, are you dense?  Their buildings and much of their research is funded by Purina.  So sure, they are completely objective.  Secondly, the FDA has already proved their hypothesis WRONG.  Boutique - because some of the foods on the list are from larger companies, eg. Fromm (I don't consider them Boutique), Nutro (Mars), Merrick (Purina), Taste of the Wild, Nature's Domain, and 4Health (Diamond), Blue Buffalo (General Mills), Natural Balance (JM Smuckers - who also owns Rachael Ray, Gravy Train, 9 Lives).  In fact over half of the 10/16  listed are owned by large manufacturing companies).  Exotic - hmmm.  Also false.  Grain-free?  10% were grain inclusive, but again, people haven't been calling on vets to report all those cases of DCM on grained foods. Vets where I live aren't reporting any suspected cases, why, because most of the people can't afford the diagnostic testing to prove it it's DCM.  If they are feeding cheapo food, and can't hardly take them yearly for vaccines and other basic care, what makes you think every single dog owner whose dog has a heart condition is reporting it, or even getting care for it.  The people that were feeding these types of food ARE the people most likely to take their dogs to the vets when something is wrong, the ones who will pay for their animals to be treated, and saved at any cost.    

Tanya -- 

As I wrote above, your statements about financial conflicts of interest are incorrect. I've spelled them all out. Just repeating this over and over again does not make it so.

There is not a single case in the scientific literature of a dog with DCM being switched from a grain-free diet to a grain-containing one and conditions improving, UNLESS TAURINE SUPPLEMENTATION IS PAIRED WITH THE DIET SWITCH. And, because taurine supplementation alone has been often shown to improve DCM outcomes, it makes all the sense in the world to assume that its the taurine (not the diet switch) that yielded the improved outcome. If you think that statement is wrong, please tell me where I missed something and I'll correct it. But I didn't see a single case in the DCM studies that have been published in the past year (or before) in which diet change alone precipitated clinical improvement.

"... clear, irrefutable causality." No, that's incorrect for two reasons. One, it hasn't actually been shown (see the last paragraph). Two, that's not what causality is. You can see this for yourself by trying to find an example where the word "causality" is used in either the FDA investigation or any of the scientific work discussed in my piece. You'll find that not only do the authors NOT use the word "causality," they also don't use the word "correlation." Even THAT hasn't been shown here, let alone causality.

Thank you Tanya - right on!  Read my comment below too

Hi Pierre. Of course there is a difference between correlation and causation. But in this case, there actually isn't even any evidence of correlation. In fact, that's my argument why the JAVMA article ought to be retracted. JAVMA should not be publishing articles in which authors claim that there is an "apparent association" between two variables when there isn't any evidence of correlation, particularly when the article isn't peer-reviewed.

Right now, what the veterinarians are trying to do (with actually very little help and much foot-dragging from the FDA) is to get the word out that there is as yet an unexplained, as far as the exact cause of the nutritional defect, but irrefutable connection between certain diets (with a commonality that most, but not all, are grain-free with a high percentage of pea and potato in the ingredients) and heart failure and death in dogs.  It is not peer-reviewed because the community is still trying to understand what the underlying issue with these diets is.  It's like when AIDS first came out.  Scientists knew there was an infectious disease spread through blood and other bodily fluids that was killing people.   The first step is to alert the public that this is an issue so they can avoid the behavior linked to the disease.  This is where the veterinary community is right now with the diet.  They are saying do not feed these diets as they are killing some dogs.

It's absolutely not true that vet students don't get nutrition classes. That's a myth that needs to die. But even in a world where general practice vets don't know about nutrition, how about the actual boarded vet nutritionists? The ones who specialize in nutrition and have specialized in it their whole lives? What are they saying? THE SAME THING, JUST LOUDER. The veterinary nutrition community is one of the most vocal about the DCM problem, and they are saying to get OFF "boutique" foods that are designed to appeal to humans and not designed to feed dogs. 

Hi Kirsten. When I was conducting the research associated with my book I reviewed the curriculum at every AVMA-accredited veterinary school in the country. In more than 30% of vet schools, students weren't required to take a single nutrition course in order to graduate. And in all but three schools that did require some nutrition coursework, the only requirement was a single, one- or two-credit course. 

While there may not be full courses in nutrition at every veterinary school there is nutrition built into the courses for both large and small animal medicine, so it is actually a firm part of the training of all veterinary students and veterinarians, despite what Mr. Schulof's research showed.   Medical schools do not necessarily teach nutrition as a separate part of the curriculum, for better or worse, but I would argue that you would still trust the nutritional advice given to you by your doctor if they made specific recommendations they deemed important to your health.

And, lastly, I did some research to see if Mr. Schulof's claim that only 3 veterinary schools have nutrition as part of the curriculum.  The first 6 of 7 schools (just googling "veterinary school curriculum) and going down the list in no particular order) I looked at all had clinical nutrition as part of the core curricula and were separate courses, double already what Mr. Schulof claimed, at which point I stopped searching.

This is another reply for Tanya. You're misquoting me -- I didn't say that only three AVMA-accredited vet schools required a nutrition course. I said that of those that do, only three require anything more than a single 1-2 credit course. And I stand by that. Please correct your comment.

Jeremy,  this is *not* industry-driven research.  This is a situation where board-certified veterinary cardiologists with absolutely no financial ties to the pet food industry are seeing animals die from nutritionally induced heart disease.  They are making these findings known to the public at large while the exact cause of the nutritional issue is further studied because they simply want to stop animals from dying.  You can choose to believe experts within the field with years of training and specialization or pseudo-science.  Daniel Schulof has a pet food company, so one person in this conversation with an actual financial interest to skew the conversation away from science and fact is him, not the veterinarians trying to save lives.

Tanya -- I can't respond to your comment directly on this platform, but I hope you can see this response to Jeremy's comment. All of the conflicts of interest possessed by the veterinarians responsible for the work at the heart of the retraction demand are specified in the body of the retraction demand itself (including previously undisclosed ones that only came out as a result of the California Public Records Act investigation I conducted). On what basis are you arguing that those veterinarians don't possess the conflicts I've cataloged? The evidence is there for everyone to see.

By all means doubt my motivations here -- I've made no effort to hide them. In fact, I'm explicitly calling attention to them -- they are a big part of my motivation here. I believe my company is being unfairly scapegoated for something we have nothing to do with. If you think I've said something inaccurate or you think the scientific case I've made is wrong in some way, then tell me which aspect of the retraction demand you're referring to and why: (1) the data scrubbing by Adin et al? (2) the failure to test for cysteine and methionine by Stern et al? (3) the evasion of the peer-review process in the case of the JAVMA evidence review? (4) the various mischaracterizations of the evidentiary record from the JAVMA evidence review? Like what do you think I got wrong?