I’ve had a lot of questions about this week’s somewhat (understandably) vague notice from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) about an ongoing outbreak investigation of Salmonella infections linked to dog food and treats. The information available is pretty sparse, but there are still some important messages related to what we do know.
A recent opinion article in the Washington Post about how to protect cats from H5N1 influenza includes some good considerations, but alongside some bad information. It’s prompted me to write a bit about pet food preparation and how it does (and does not) affect the presence of infectious pathogens (but please keep in mind while
The FDA has issued a directive to pet food producers to ensure that their food safety plans address H5N1 influenza contamination issues. It’s in response to multiple cases of H5N1 avian influenza in domestic and wild cats fed contaminated raw diets containing poultry. Infection was fatal in many of these cats, and this also
The US CDC is reporting an outbreak of salmonellosis linked to dry dog food. It’s a small outbreak in terms of the number of diagnosed infections (7) but, as always, the diagnosed infections are presumably just the tip of the iceberg, especially since they have been found in seven different US states (see map below).
Avian flu caused an uptick in discussion about health risks associated with feeding dogs and cats raw meat, based on the possible (and still pretty tenuous) link between raw poultry and a large number of H5N1 infections in cats in Poland.
The link between raw diets and flu infections is new, and something
A recent study looked at human illness associated with raw pet food and has led to headlines such as “It is safe to feed raw pet foods.”
Did the study say that? No, it did not.
If you asked 100 people if they had a foodborne disease in the past year, I assume
Some people like to send me links to internet sites to see if they can get a rise out of me. There are a few usual suspects (both senders of information and places I get sent to) but a new one for me was tlcpetfood.com
For some reason, this site has a series of FAQ’s
It’s not the first, and it’s a safe bet it’s not the last, but a lawsuit has been filed against Diamond Pet Foods in response to a case of salmonellosis in a New Jersey infant. The lawsuit claims (probably correctly) that the infant acquired Salmonella from contaminated dog food that was in the household.
The large recall and salmonellosis outbreak associated with a variety of foods produced by Diamond Pet Foods continues to expand, in terms of species involved, the number of cases, the number of recalled products and geographic scope. The only thing that’s not expanding in information from the company.
Reports (of varying strength) of Salmonella cases in
After starting off like a simple recall of potentially Salmonella-contaminated dry pet food, the Diamond Pet Food problem has now expanded into a multistate outbreak of salmonellosis in humans linked to exposure to the contaminated pet food. At last count, there were 14 affected people from 9 US states, including 5 who required
