Has Purina been killing dogs

What We Know About Social Media Reports that Purina Dog Food Caused Pets' Deaths

Since December 2023, online posts (archived) have claimed that dozens of dogs became sick after consuming Purina dog foods, with at least 10 (archived post) dying as a result. Iterations of the claim appear to have originated in the Facebook group Saving Pets One Pet @ a Time (archived).

Below is a sample of some of the comments seen in the group as of Jan. 30, 2024. Snopes removed the names and photos of the original posters:

(Snopes compilation)

One website claimed that "in at least one instance, Purina has offered to cover the pet owners veterinary bills." Snopes is awaiting clarification from Purina as to whether the claim was true.

In response to our general inquiry, Purina spokesperson Lorie Westhoff told Snopes that, as of this publication, Purina does not have any current or pending recalls.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which oversees pet food regulation, recalls may be conducted "on a firm's own initiative, by FDA request, or by FDA order under statutory authority.

When Snopes searched the FDA database (archived) for Purinarecalls, three turned up two from 2023 and one from 2022, which we have listed below:

• March 10, 2023: Pro Plan Veterinary Diets EL Elemental (PPVD EL) prescription dry dog food for potential elevated ingredient level.
• Feb. 8, 2023: Veterinary Diets EL Elemental dry dog food for potentially elevated Vitamin D. [Note: This was a voluntary recall following two complaints of dog illness, according to Purina.]
• Dec. 2, 2022: Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets EN Gastroenteric Low Fat (PPVD EN Low Fat) prescription wet dog food for mislabeling.

Purina confirmed that those recalls were completed and terminated by the FDA.

Westhoff referred Snopes to a Purina news release (archived) that addressed concerns related to the safety of Purina dog food, which was last updated on Jan. 15, 2024. In it, the company said it was investigating the claims made online despite believing that they weren't credible:

In light of this rumor, our Quality Assurance team has reviewed all incoming consumer contacts, manufacturing, and quality assurance data (this includes ingredient testing, analytical data throughout the production process, and quality assurance post-production testing) for the past year.

Additionally, our Office of Consumer Affairs, which takes calls and messages from pet parents and works closely with our quality assurance experts, veterinarians, nutritionists, a veterinary toxicologist and many others, to investigate product complaints, has reviewed its data from the past year. Thorough investigations by both teams have found no data or trend that would indicate a product issue that has not been previously addressed.

Just to reiterate, the group behind the rumor has not provided any evidence or facts to support this narrative. It currently is based on anecdotal stories from pet owners, Westhoff said. Nearly all calls we have received about this have been from scared pet owners who read about this false rumor online and are trying to understand if there is a problem with our food, which there is not. These rumors cause unnecessary stress and create a sense of understandable panic that they may be doing something wrong.

According to Purina's news release, several of the peopleperpetuating the claim are believed to market or sell products that compete with Purina, and some have served as paid social media influencers to promote products and brands that are not being actively targeted by this rumor.

Snopes posted in the Facebook group to solicit comments from members willing to provide a verified, confirmed report (i.e., necropsy from a veterinarian) that linked Purina dog food directly to their dog's illness or death. As of this publication, we have not received a response.

The FDA did not respond to specific questions about whether it was investigating claims related to the supposed illnesses and deaths associated with Purina dog food. Instead, the agency wrote in an email:

The FDA takes seriously its responsibility to help ensure that pet food ingredients are safe and nutritious. While the agency cannot comment on specifics of these particular illness reports at this time, generally speaking when the FDA becomes aware of pet illnesses, we will evaluate them and determine what if any FDA action may be warranted. The agency encourages pet owners or their veterinarians to submit reports of illness or other adverse events associated with pet food directly to the FDA by following the instructions on this page: How to Report a Pet Food Complaint.

The agency also referred Snopes to an X post that it shared on Jan. 12, 2024, encouraging pet owners to report food-related medical issues to the FDA:

Snopes will continue to monitor the situation and update this article should new information arise.

Purina Sued for Allegedly Killing Thousands of Dogs With Toxic Food

Despite years of online allegations that one of the most popular dog food brands has been poisoning pets, it wasnt until just weeks ago that the cat was let out of the bag in a court filing. A class action lawsuit was filed that blames the deaths of thousands of dogs on one of Purinas most popular brands of chow.

Googling Nestle Purina Petcares Beneful brand will get you the pet food manufacturers website, a Facebook page with over a million likes, and, in stark contrast, a Consumer Affairs page with 708 one-star ratings supported with page after grim page detailing dogs suffering slow, agonizing deaths from mysterious causes.

Internal bleeding. Diarrhea. Seizures. Liver malfunction. It reads like something from a horror movie or a plague documentary, but a suit brought in California federal court by plaintiff Frank Lucido alleges that this is all too realand too frequent to be a coincidence.

But it all relies upon finding a chemical that may be in the foodand has been a staple in dog food recalls in the pastwith an experiment that neither Lucido, his lawyers, or even independent scientists have even begun to conduct.

Lucido said it began last month when his beloved German shepherd began losing an alarming amount of hair, smelled strange, and wound up at the vet with symptoms consistent with poisoning. A week later, his wife found one of their other dogs, an English Bulldog, dead. An autopsy showed signs of internal bleeding in the stomach and lesions on the liver, symptoms eerily similar to the shepherds, according to the complaint. Then their third dog also became ill.

All these dogs are eating Beneful, explained Jeff Cereghino, one of the attorneys representing Lucido in the action. And the dogs are all, for a variety of reasons, not in the same house. So you take away the automatic assumption that the neighbor didnt like the dogs or whatever. He was feeding them Beneful at the start of this, and one got sick and died, the other two were very ill. And then he started doing a little research, and he realized the causal link, at least in his mind, was the food.

It doesnt take much digging to uncover what appears to be a pattern of allegations, Cereghino said. Lots and lots of allegations. After hearing Lucidos story, Cereghino checked it out for himself.

We found a significant number of folks who were trying to draw exactly the same causal link. Thousands, he said.

The sheer volume is what made the seasoned lawyerone who said a good part of our business is class action workrealize something may be fishy.

If its a hundred or so, its like, Okay, a lot of dogs eat Beneful; things happen. But when you start getting into the thousands The long and short of it is the complaint pyramid is such that even with the Interneteasy access to complain about things theres still a very large percentage of folks who simply dont complain, or whose vet tells em, We dont know what happened, and theyre not drawing conclusions or leaping to assumptions, he said.

But when I look at 4,000? Holy hell, theres a lot of people out here.

So Cereghino and his partners started talking to those people, comparing more and more of the stories of heartbreak.

There seems to be somewhat of a singular event. [The dogs] are vomiting. Theyre having liver problems, failures, he said. Im not a vet, but you look at some of this stuff and say, OK, were starting to have similar symptoms across the board, and were starting to have causation.

When these dire accusations first started appearing online years ago, the initial accusation was that one of the additives in the food, propylene glycol, was the culprit.

Purina maintains the type of propylene it uses is perfectly safe for consumption, saying on its website: Propylene glycol is an FDA-approved food additive thats also in human foods like salad dressing and cake mix.

Its also the same substance that caused the spiced whiskey Fireball to be recalled in Europe, which found excessive amounts of the chemical, also used in antifreeze, in the cinnamon swill last fall. The tainted liquor was from the North American batch because, in the U.S., much higher volumes of antifreeze additives are OK for humanor canineconsumption.

Its horrible. That is something that you dont want in dog food, noted veterinarian and author Karen "Doc" Halligan when reached by phone. Its controversial. Why do you want to take a risk if theres any kind of chance that that could be bad for them?

But whether its good for dogs or not, food grade propylene glycol has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It also hasnt been linked to toxicity, especially the type being alleged against Beneful.

Cereghino thinks theres another culprit in the mix, and hes named it in the lawsuit. Theyre called mycotoxins.

Translated directly from the Greek words for fungus poison, mycotoxins are, essentially, a toxic byproduct of mold. When it comes to ducking discovery, theyre an especially crafty brand mold byproduct, and one found in all types of grains. In fact, a new study, released this month, indicates theyre even pretty common in breakfast cereal.

Related: The Toxin Hiding in Your Cereal

If you read the ingredients label of Beneful, it sounds an awful lot like breakfast cereal: ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, whole wheat flour, rice flour, soy flour. Sure, theres some chicken byproduct meal and animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols, but the food is certainly more grain than meat.

In the channels of trade, grain is quite a lot like hamburger these days. As in Theres multiple cows in a hamburger, if you will, explained Dr. Gregory Mller, professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology at the University of Idaho and Washington State University joint School of Food Science. Its a mixed and blended commodity. So one farmer, one granary, or one mill, may have not stored their product well, which allowed for mold growth in storage.

Even if a scientist were to stumble upon a load of grain rife with mycotoxins, Mller added, he or she could test it and still miss them.

You can go into a sample that is known contaminated, Mller noted. But the particular sub sample you pull may not have enough on it to actually see. There is that challenge.

This can be exacerbated when the host grain is earmarked for non-human use.

Commodities that are targeted towards pet foods are managed a little bit differently, in terms of the regulatory criteria they have to pass, he continued. It is a very large industry. There is attention and concern about quality, but there is a difference in how the concern is managed.

In laymans terms?

I think whats put forth here is a plausible scenario, Mller said.

When asked about the alleged symptoms described in the class action suit and online, especially the repeated liver failure, Halligan was clear in her potential diagnosis, especially as it pertained to animals of a variety of ages.

Toxins would be real high on my list. If an animal ingests some type of toxin, that can lead to liver disease because the liver has to process it, said Halligan.

But there have not yet been any tests to determine if mycotoxins are in Beneful at allor any other dog food, for that matter.

Cereghino said hes determined to find that out.

As soon as we are able to, and the federal courts move at a fairly rapid rate, we will get discovery, said Cereghino.

Thats when Cereghino will get to find out where Benefuls products come from, how theyre stored, whether theres a connecting piece in the storage or the grain, the sourcing of it all, that sort of make sense. He plans on running tests on the food both he and other members of the class action suit have saved to send over to a lab in the next few weeks.

Thats when theyll know if those potentially dangerous chemicals are in the formula. And, if they are, theyll still have to fight to prove that the mycotoxins are dangerous enough to make thousands of dogs sick.

As for Purina, when approached for comment, Keith Schopp, vice president of corporate public relations, read this statement to The Daily Beast:

We believe the lawsuit is without merit and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves. Beneful is a high-quality nutritious food enjoyed by millions of dogs each year and there are no product quality issues with Beneful.