FDA warning on grain-free food

Well that's upsetting. I'll definitely need to look into this further. Lexi has been on grain-free food for probably 5 years or more! She does really well on it.

 

I recently switched all of mine to grain-free Now! because of Checker's mast cell tumor diet requirements. I love how these announcements always say "certain foods" and don't give you specifics. I fed Now years ago and only gave it up because it's so expensive, but all of mine are doing wonderfully back on it. I'll be looking for a response from the company on this.

 

For everyone's information, I thought I'd share my response from Petcurean, the makers of my Now Fresh food and other diets, to my question about the FDA warning on grain-free food. They were VERY prompt in replying to my email. I'd encourage anyone who feeds grain free and is concerned about the announcement to contact your pet food company for their response.

Here's what Petcurean said:

Thanks very much for your email. We of course are well aware of the ongoing FDA study.

While research on this subject is still underway, the FDA has suggested a possible association between diets containing peas, lentils, pulses, and potatoes negatively impacting taurine levels, which may contribute to the development of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) in dog breeds that are not typically genetically susceptible to this disease.

Taurine is naturally found in animal-based ingredients, but is also available as a supplement that can be added to dog and cat diets. In dogs, taurine is generally not recognized as an essential nutrient because they are able to synthesize adequate amounts from other dietary amino acids. Our recipes for dogs provide taurine through both supplemental and/or naturally occurring ingredient sources. Each recipe’s level can be found in its Nutrient Profile in the Guaranteed Analysis section of its product page on Petcurean.com. The majority of our recipes for dogs already included supplementary taurine; recipes which were recently updated to include it are:
+ GO! SENSITIVITY + SHINE Duck Recipe for dogs
+ GO! SENSITIVITY + SHINE Salmon Recipe for dogs
+ GO! SENSITIVITY + SHINE Limited Ingredient Turkey Recipe for dogs
+ GO! SENSITIVITY + SHINE Limited Ingredient Venison Recipe for dogs
+ GO! SENSITIVITY + SHINE Limited Ingredient Duck Recipe for dogs
+ GO! SENSITIVITY + SHINE Limited Ingredient Salmon Recipe for dogs
+ GO! SENSITIVITY + SHINE Limited Ingredient Pollock Recipe for dogs
+ GATHER Free Acres Recipe for Adult Dogs
+ GATHER Wild Ocean Recipe for Adult Dogs

The addition of taurine to these recipes was initiated in Spring 2018. Updates to the ingredient panels have been made on the Petcurean website and will appear on our packaging as we work through existing product and bag inventory. Our NOW FRESH recipes have always included taurine supplements.

 

Of course this isn't that simple of an issue for a number of reasons (based on my limited research!)

Dogs have the ability to produce taurine themselves using cysteine and methionine (other amino acids). Looking at Acana (specifically Grasslands, as that's what I feed Lexi), those two amino acids are listed at .99%. Unfortunately that's compeltely meaningless to me as I don't know how much is required to produce a certain amount of taurine, nor do I know how much taurine dogs actually need.