Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast
James Joiner at the Daily Beast reports that a class action lawsuit alleges that a mold byproduct used in dog food by popular pet kibble makers Purina has led thousands of pets to agonizing deaths.
Snip:
Googling Nestle Purina Petcare's Beneful brand will get you the pet food manufacturer's 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 real—and too frequent to be a coincidence.
But it all relies upon finding a chemical that may be in the food—and has been a staple in dog food recalls in the past—with 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 shepherd's, 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.
Purina Sued for Allegedly Killing 4,000 Dogs With 'Toxic' Food [thedailybeast.com]
