Everybody's Talkin'

I, like most dog and cat owners (in my case, with a complete lack of surprise), have been reading the news about the recalls of many of the top -- and supermarket -- brands of pet food, in the wake of dying cats and dogs. The deaths have been going on for some time now, but only when the word started to leak out, did Big Animal Food put out announcements. They didn't even have the decency to warn the vets, but that didn't surprise me, either.

What I can't understand is this: Why does it takes episode after episode of this sort of thing for vets to even notice, let alone question their beliefs about the feeding of animals? I feed raw, although my vet does not know this and probably wouldn't approve, if she did. However, it was a passing comment of hers, when Io Jima was dying of cancer, that sent me looking for something outside the commercial dog food world. To her credit, my vet does believe in cooked diets, so she know there is something better out there than the products that the majority of people are feeding their pets.

I expect resistance from my friends and acquaintances.

"Why are you feeding Fluffy that awful Hills?"
"Well, he likes it." (Hey, I like Big Macs, but I don't live on them.)

"It's too complicated to feed a dog on my own." (But your children are easy; they don't have any particular nutritional requirements, right?)

(There might be something in this last one, judging from the way I see people feeding their children. But, I digress. . .)

"But the pet food companies have all that experience and do all that research." (Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He's got good advertising elves, too, and we always believe what we see on television.)

There must be thousands upon thousands of us feeding cooked and raw diets to our animals, slowly convincing our vets, by our animals improved health and appearance, that we know something. ("Well, yes, I can see that Muffy's hair has grown back, her allergies have cleared up and her weight stabilised, but I really think you should be feeding Science Diet. . ..") The biggest names leading the raw food movement are vets, but the veterinary profession don't want to listen to anything except the publicity and "research" from Big Dog & Cat Food.

Why is this?