Should pet foods include warning labels?

Question: Should vets and big box pet stores inform their customers of potential health hazards from the food they sell?

Recently, we lost our male cat, who was more like a dog than a cat. He was only 9 years old. He was not his usual self when we came home one day, so we took him to the vet. He said he had a urinary blockage, and found out he had 13 little stones in his bladder and needed an operation to remove them. He died three days later. The vet informed us that the

Hill’s Science Diet hard food caused these stones to form in his bladder and that it was common in male cats. He said that Hill’s has a hard food for this problem, called Urinary Care. This information came a little late for us.

Shouldn’t this information be offered by vets and stores? The vet didn’t even say he was sorry. This is a long and painful story cut short. — J.S., Lake Worth

Dear J.S.: Your letter hits an ironic fact, which the pet food industry has continued to ignore for decades — along with some veterinarians, because it is so profitable. The industry makes some animals ill on manufactured cat and dog foods, and then sells special prescription diets to correct the “nutrigenic” diseases caused by these basic diets in the first place.

For detailed documentation and sound science, see the book “Not Fit for a

Dog: The Truth About Manufactured Cat &

Dog Food,” which I co-authored with two other veterinarians.

This has been a repeated issue in my column over the past several years. I offer home-prepared diets for dogs and cats on my site, and steer people to Susan Thixton’s website (www. truthaboutpetfood.com) to support her efforts at monitoring the industry. She provides a list of pet food manufacturers that we consider acceptable, for which there is a charge to support her independent and painstaking work.