A Decades-long struggle
Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud: Hiding in Plain Sight provides pet owners with valuable information based on extensive research that could save the lives of their pets. Why was this an important book for you to write?
In the early 1990s, I drew attention to the environmental footprint of the pet food industry/vet alliance; blew the whistle on the alliance’s animal cruelty and consumer fraud, and, noting the importance of a raw meaty bones diet, suggested a new scientific hypothesis of health and disease. New concepts with greater explanatory and predictive powers merit debate and dissemination. However, the simple, self-evident truths with immense implications were not enough to ‘shift the dial.’
So began a decades-long struggle with the pet food industry, the veterinary profession, media, politicians, and regulatory bodies. Book writers, internet pundits, and opportunists created further layers of propaganda and misinformation. Rather than extol the essential benefits of a raw meaty bones diet and campaign against the industrial pet food makers, they created niche markets for their vegetable and minced meat concoctions. Contrasted with industrial junk, their pronouncements and products appeared deceptively superior. Unfortunately, pets and their owners were further hoodwinked and held to ransom.
Concerned at the cacophony of competing voices and the need for change, in 2001, I published Raw Meaty Bones: Promote Health. But it was not enough, and in 2005 I published Work Wonders: Feed Your Dog Raw Meaty Bones in the hope that good sense, at least in respect to feeding dogs, would prevail.
As one last effort, I felt compelled to write Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud and thereby complete the Raw Meaty Bones Trilogy with two interlocking objectives:
i.) Provide comprehensive educational resources for pet owners, vets, and the community.
ii.) Provide context and structure for the struggle against animal cruelty and consumer fraud.
STOP PRESS
The future arrived early. Lessons of the book are due to play out in a Kansas courtroom.
In February 2024, Keto Natural Pet Foods filed a $2.6 billion class action lawsuit against Hill’s Science Diet and their vet conspirators. In 124 pages the suit describes a ‘civil conspiracy’ that reflects overlapping themes in the book. Hill’s are depicted as villains who cherry-pick the evidence. However, Keto (un) Natural and small manufacturers make bogus claims too. Can the court decide whose lies are the more credible? Time will tell.
How much research did you undertake for this book, and how much time did it take to put it all together?
The book was written in 2021. It was edited, proofread, illustrated, designed, and typeset in 2022. The book launch, promotion, and marketing took place in 2023. The writing was the easy part. Having campaigned, lived, and breathed the wonders of feeding raw meaty bones for the previous 30 years, I did not need to do much more research. Here and there, I needed references which, in the current day, are easily obtained through internet searches.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
A wise medical educator told his students that 50% of what the medical profession believed was true, and the other 50% was untrue. But, he said, they did not know which 50% was which! That’s the style of healthy scepticism I hoped to engender with the series of parables in the book enabling the reader to develop a better understanding of pet care and veterinary services. I wanted the lessons of the book to be transported into other aspects of readers’ lives; to arm and protect them against propagandists everywhere.
I wanted to reveal the pet food industry business model that commenced in the 1860s. Dogs, modified wolves, are promoted as little more than furry toys with daily needs met by products conveniently arranged on the supermarket shelf. Unfortunately, both pets and their owners become habituated to products and practices with adverse health effects for the pets and financial burdens for their owners.
However, rather than rescue the pets and their owners from a cruel fate, the business model of the veterinary profession is to welcome a vast population of ‘fur babies’ suffering a range of diet-induced diseases. As a quid pro quo, vets extol the alleged benefits of industrial junk whilst simultaneously denigrating the nutritional and medicinal benefits of a natural diet. Assisted by the fake animal welfare groups, vets provide a protective cordon around the pet food industry. Besides the obvious revenue benefits for vets, the pet food industry buys allegiance with grants and sponsorships to vet schools, associations, and conferences. Welfare and rescue groups take hush money, and all is quiet on every front—just the way the industrial pet food makers like it.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud: Hiding in Plain Sight?
I hope readers will be glad that they read the book, return to it in their thoughts, and refer to it often.
Literary Titan interview with Dr Tom Lonsdale author of Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud: Hiding in Plain Sight. Literary Titan review.
