RE: Reply from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet [SEC=OFFICIAL]
Dear Prime Minister,
Thank you for your reply subsequent to recent correspondence with yourself and parliamentarians and media reports concerning your gift of $17.2 million to the Mars family business.
You advised:
Looking at the issues you have raised, I would recommend the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry would be best placed to respond to you. To assist with that, we have referred your correspondence to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry for their consideration.
Please keep in mind that your correspondence might need input from multiple government departments or agencies and this could take time to compile for you.
We disagree that the Department of Agriculture should be further consulted. In our view it’s the Department’s regulatory capture and resultant negligence over many years that enabled the junk pet food trans-national companies—Mars, Nestlé and Colgate-Palmolive—to create a junk pet food culture and ensure Australian dependency on the junk pet food economy. These days the Department works to preserve the status quo and to defend its own egregious conduct.
Parallels have been drawn with the agricultural chemical industry in league with Departments of Agriculture that polluted the land, air and waters, killed the bees, birds and fish back in the 1950s and 1960s—and how Silent Spring sounded the alarm and ushered in the environmental revolution.
Our records show that on the dates listed below we notified you by email about the mass poisoning of pets and the complicity of various government departments—including Agriculture, Education, ACCC and Health Departments.
- 19 July 2003: ‘Allegations of scientific and consumer fraud perpetrated upon an unsuspecting Australian public by an alliance of pet food companies and veterinarians’ .
- 1 August 2003 ‘Dangerous dogs—one small part of the pet food scam—are a perennial concern.’
- 27 June 2018: Commented on Senate Pet Food Enquiry and provided you with copy of Raw Meaty Bones that is likened to Silent Spring in its scope and import.
- 9 July 2020: ‘Pet Food Review Working Group—Regulatory Capture.’
- 30 July 2020: ‘Australian pets and their owners need your help.’
- 30 May 2021: ‘Dog diarrhoea and vomit.’
- 29 August 2021: ‘Pet-food/vet/RSPCA $multi-billion fraud.’
Additionally, local MP Susan Templeman has been extensively briefed on the regulatory capture, animal cruelty and consumer fraud. She was provided with several copies of Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud –also likened to Silent Spring—with the undertaking that she would provide the books to relevant ministers.
Despite you and your government being abundantly well informed about the multi-billion-dollar costs of the junk pet food economy, we are concerned that you appear to have a close working relationship with the Mars corporation. Accompanying your photo-op promotions you issued a media release promoting two of Mars most dangerous brand names, Pedigree and Whiskas.
For our part we have not only alerted you to the cruelty and the costs but also demonstrate how backing away from the junk pet food economy will likely generate $billions for the Australian economy. Veterinary costs will plumet and development of a natural pet food industry—utilising feral goats, camels, rabbits, deer, carp—will lead to environmental improvement and revitalised rural economy rolled into one. But rather than seek our counsel, you fob us off and direct us into the maw of a variously incompetent and negligent Department of Agriculture.
We agree with you when you say that our ‘correspondence might need input from multiple government departments or agencies’. We believe that by convening a full judicial review the full extent of the costs and losses to the Australian people will be better understood.
Lest you doubt the significance of our allegations, we once again provide links to copies of Raw Meaty Bones and Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud.
Please advise if you will continue in close association with Mars or whether you will institute first steps towards righting a mighty set of wrongs.
Thank you for your early attention to these matters.
Yours sincerely,
Tom Lonsdale (BVetMed London 1972) and Breck Muir (Sydney BVSc 1964)
CC: Interested parties
From: noreply@pws.gov.au <noreply@pws.gov.au>
Sent: Wednesday, 19 November 2025 10:03 AM
To: Tom Lonsdale <tom@rawmeatybones.com>
Subject: Reply from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet [SEC=OFFICIAL]
SEC=OFFICIAL
With the Compliments
of the
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
SEC=OFFICIAL
