Diamond Makes A Settlement On 2012 Salmonella Disaster

Thanks to Truth About Pet Food for this contribution
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Years ago I worked for a major feed company and my sales manager, Lester Blackwelder,  was a great guy who loved to tell stories and joke around.  He told me he ran into a customer who raised rabbits and the man confronted him and yelled, "Damn you and your company, that feed you sold me killed all my rabbits."
Lester answered him saying, Don't worry, we'll get you some more rabbit feed."

I think maybe Diamond Pet Food Company heard the story.

Coupons as Diamond Pet Food Settlement?

April 4, 2014 3 Comments

No kidding.  Diamond Pet Food agrees to a class action settlement from their 2012 Salmonella recall providing $2 coupons.  (Some)  Class members shall receive one or more coupons.

Even though Diamond Pet Food “deny any wrongdoing” in the 2012 Salmonella recall which resulted in Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul, Country Value, Diamond, Diamond Naturals, Premium Edge, Professional, 4Health, Taste of the Wild, Apex, Kirkland Signature and Canidae being pulled from store shelves for possible contamination – the pet food manufacturer has agreed to a settlement with pet owners.

From LegalNewsLine.com…

“There are three subclasses of class members. Subclass I includes consumers who purchased certain pet food products in 2011 and 2012.”

“The defendants will create a settlement fund limited to a maximum of $750,000 to pay claims from those who purchased the pet food. Members of this subclass who submit a valid claim form will receive either payment up to a maximum value of two bags of pet food per pet; or a pro rata share of the net proceeds of the settlement fund for this subclass not to exceed the actual or estimated purchase price of up to two bags of the pet food per pet if the settlement fund is exhausted, if the total amount claimed by the eligible Subclass I members exceeds the funds available.”

“If applicable, Subclass I members can request reimbursement of the cost of veterinary care and/or the fair market value of the pet as set forth in Subclass II, according to the settlement order.”

“The defendants will create a settlement fund limited to a total maximum of $1.25 million to pay claims from Subclass II. Members of this subclass who submit a valid claim form will receive a full reimbursement of the actual cost of veterinarian testing, care and/or treatment.”

And then there is Subclass III pet owners… 

“Class members who submit valid claim forms shall receive one or more coupons with a face value of $2. A maximum of 50,000 coupons will be distributed.”

There is no information provided for pet food consumers who wish to get their $2 coupon from Diamond as reimbursement for a sick pet.

Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
Association for Truth in Pet Food

Build A Better Dog and Triad Performance Supplement would like to thank Susan Thixton at Truth About Pet Food for her tireless work on this issue and many other concerning the quality of our pet food.

DogsTakes A Bullet For Family

Thanks to Dog-spired for this item that comes by way of Build A Better Dog  Take a look.

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Hip Dysplasia In Dogs, Where Do We Go From Here?

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We have steadfastly preached and at times, argued that hip dysplasia is a malady of improper nutrition and not genetic failures.  The website Natural Canines writes an extensive piece dissecting the origin and continuing cause of  hip dysplasia.
Dr. Ron Hines, DVM, who is not afraid to stick his head into a bee's nest with controversial opinions has written this about the cause of the problem:

"We think that too rapid a growth rate and excessively fast weight gain make a tendency toward hip dysplasia worse. This seems to be particularly true in very large breeds. When pups grow too quickly, the structure of their bones and joints can not keep up with the rapid growth in their muscle mass, weight and strength. Sometimes, this causes the joints to begin to fail. So do not "push" your dogs by over-feeding them or feeding them a diet that is too rich in protein. When you select a puppy, do not select "larger than life" parents that are on the top or exceed normal weight for the breed. When you select a puppy, choose one that is intermediate size in the litter.

As your dog matures, keep it lean. Many dogs become overweight shortly after they have been neutered. The only way to avoid this in non-working dogs is to feed them less or feed them a less caloric diet."

Even more to the point is the combination of excessively high protein levels and the introduction of large volumes of carbohydrates that, in combination, grows dogs extremely too fast.  Years ago when commercial dog foods came into their own, this was considered a great by product of the new technology but, we now are coming to realize that this is key to the problem of hip dysplasia and arthritis.

You can see from the pictures the "bare bones" of the problem and you may have healthy criticism about whether or not this can be fixed.Well it may not be totally repairable but make no mistake about it, chelated mineral therapy(the use of raw mineral molecules bonded with amino acids for increased absorption and utilization) can greatly improve your dogs life by growing stronger sturdier bones, even in senior dogs, and also contribute to incrased enzyme production which brings more elasticity and durability to connective tissue.

How chelated minerals work can better be understood from this. There is really so little to lose by looking further and particularly when you investigate the sometimes unsuccessful and cost prohibitive alternative of surgery.

Antioxidants For Dogs And Their Value

The lifeblood of the gasoline engine is of course the fuel that makes it go. The engine would just be a mass of metal without gasoline exploding in the cylinders but the irony of the fuel is that it is essential to function and it is also a contributor to the wear and tear that occurs while the engine is engaged.

Oxygen works much the same way as it is essential to all lifeforms but in the body of animals, it is the metabolism of this vital element that can also cause cell damage as it is ignited and used to keep our engine going. In that action free radicals are released and this is what causes cell damage and shortens their life span.

Free radicals do a lot of their damage when tissue is injured or damaged in some way and it is antioxidants that neutralize that damage and extend the healthy function of those cells and thereby the life of same.

There are many forms of antioxidants, some very effective and some only marginally so but one of the types of antioxidants that is very effective is that way because of two characteristics, one they work very well and two, they are tremendously sturdy. They are heatand time resistant, as a matter of fact, they can take about any kind of severe environment and still work just as good as in their original state.

These antioxidants are called super oxide dismutase or SOD. They come in two main combinations, copper and zinc in one form and iron and manganese in the other. These are minerals and you can do anything you want to abuse and destroy but, you probably can't. But, they are not perfect.

In their usual form, they are mineral compounds fed in combinations and their only drawback is they are barely digestible because these compounds have to be broken down and basically separated in order to work. That is why effective SOD's are generally fed in the chelate form which incorporates raw elemental minerals bonded to certain amino acids.

These effective SOD's have raw minerals like copper and zinc, not mineral compounds like copper oxide or zinc sulfate that must be broken down before they can be digested. They are in their simplest form and, when combined with amino acids(the most basic form of protein) they are readily digested and metabolized at five to ten times the normal digestive rate.

This form of antioxidant will most likely never be found in a bag of dog food and in all truthfulness, rarely found in a supplement product but there are a few and there is one in particular that uses not only chelated minerals as an antioxidant source but also uses 100% stabilized rice bran as its base ingredient. That stabilized rice bran has approximately 100 sources of other antioxidants to compliment the SOD's. This product is called Triad Performance Supplement and it comes from BuildA Better Dog.

They have a tremendous history of curing health problems in dogs including hip and elbow dysplasia, improved condition, great coat quality, and much improved digestion.

Hip Dysplasia in Dogs Can Be Corrected By Chelated Minerals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHQHLX9E3bM

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Canine Nutrition: Some Thoughts About The History Of Hip Dysplasia I...

Canine Nutrition: Some Thoughts About The History Of Hip Dysplasia I...: If you go back as far as the 1930's and earlier, you will not to be able to find any mention of hip or joint dysplasia or any simpler...

Some Thoughts About The History Of Hip Dysplasia In Dogs

If you go back as far as the 1930's and earlier, you will not to be able to find any mention of hip or joint dysplasia or any simpler terms describing the type of problems dogs face today. There were plenty of vets evaluating canine health, universities doing research, and breed associations in the US and Europe,

all studying, evaluating, and compiling information and empirical data on dogs. No dysplasia, none.

By the mid 1950's there was a tremendous amount of concern and all those organizations named above were not only familiar with the problem but were already working on ways to cure the problem. There were some larger breeds in particular where the problem was present in 70 to 75 per cent of the dogs.

Now if you believe in some or all of things like science, breeding, genetics, and natural selection, you have got to wonder how did this happen. In less than two full decades, there had developed in almost every large breed of dogs, a skeletal problem, a genetic malady, that manifested in one principle symptom, joint deterioation and weakness. This trait mutated from numerous breeds of dogs from family trees so unrelated and so unparalleled but all ended up with the same symptom. How could genetics have converged to such an intersection from such a divergence of factors.

In addition, there are professional breeders who pore over blood lines, study traits, compare show per-

formance, and all the activities that are supposed to improve the lines. They have cross-bred, out-bred, and in-bred and to contrast even more, there are dog owners who breed without giving a flip about what they come up with. They might as well throw all the males and females into a tank and see what comes out. Eureka, the level of hip and elbow dysplasia stays about the same. Explain that to me if- you can.

There was in Germany a veterinarian named Marc Torrel and a scientific journalist studied in medicine, Klaus Dieter Kammner, who combined their research and study to produce a book that rocked the canine world. They believed they found the intersection, the crossroads if you will.

Back to the 1930's and before, there were no commercially produced dog foods. Pet owners fed their dogs table scraps and often went to the local butcher shop for bones and sometimes inexpensive meat products; tripe would be a good example. These satisfied most of the needs of their pets and kept their puppies growing slowly but solidly due to their moderate levels of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and fibers.

In the late thirties and fhrough the forties(even during WWII), commercially manufactured dog food came into its' own and more and more people began buying their dog food at the grocery store. These dog foods were grain based and had little if any meat in them and when they did, it was low quality meat by-products and the extrusion process that developed made it so the dogs could be sustained on grains and processing left overs.

The growth of grain based doog food was a superhighway to convenience and profits but it should have been recognized as four way stop for progress in the canine world.

These dog foods were very high carbohydrate and high protein causing the young dogs to grow much faster and larger. This was something that made the dog owners and breeders happy but there was a problem that was below the radar. The dogs were growing faster and larger but their bones and in particular their joints did not develop as they had in the past. The strength and the bone density suffered and then came the problems.

The most critical loss was the softening and weakening of the top of the femur and also of the acetabulum which is the three bones that form a cup for the upper leg ball to fit into. This is more often than not the site of the beginning of dysplasia because this is the joints that receive the most stress and are leveraged the most from daily activity.

In summation, genetics is always important but because of history, feed manufacturing habits and some other issues, hip dysplasia is a tremendous “man-made” problem but genetics alone cannot cure the problem because genetics alone was not the base cause of the condition.

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