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Comment on Daily Discussion Thread: 🐈‍⬛️🚪🍓 Thursday, November 14, 2024

So my uncle’s cat, Casper, had to be euthanised a little while back (he was 20yo, and he just got too sick to go on). So they had an excess of wet cat food and litter. Mickey loves it, though I have to supplement with normal wet food, because this food is for cats with urinary tract issues which I think has a lower amount of taurine. This is fine, he gets a variety anyway.

My issue is it’s Purina, which is owned by Nestle. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Why does the cat have to like the food made by one of the most unethical companies that exist today? 😭

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Catfish@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s pretty hard to avoid Nestle entirely if you look even mildly into the connected companies. I dodge what I know about, but give up regarding Milo because nothing else is close enough for Himself’s morning brew

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melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You can buy straight taurine as a powder off iHerb. I used to use it along with other supplements in a home cooked medical diet from a vet nutritionist (but Melbcat decided it wasn’t yummy 😔)

Other options are feeding him heart which is rich in taurine. You can buy beef heart and cut it in strips but 2-3 chicken hearts a day could be very affordable and snack sized. Don’t give too much. I’m not sure whether to serve them whole or cut, cooked or raw, there’s different advice and I always either gave a supplement or fed nutritionally complete food.

Another thing I can’t help with is dosage, because the recipes are individually formulated and idk how much the urinary food has. Though the internet says 500mg a day?

If you have any doubts ask your vet about it or just check if the local shelter might accept the food. There might be a kitty there who needs it and the Smitten brand from Woolies says it meets AAFCO guidelines.

I have no idea if it’s really amazing as it claims to be but it’s solid, very cheap, and the American certification is much better than the slack Aussie regulations.

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Seagoon_@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Who says they are unethical?

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- StudChud@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The fact that they have their own controversies page on Wikipedia 😂
  
  en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestlé
  
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  - Seagoon_@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    And who started those controversies?
    
    eg, I also don’t believe peta.
    
    So many controversies and opinions out there and so many have been debunked yet debunking doesn’t seem to make a difference.
    
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    Nath@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    And who started those controversies?
    
    Frankly, Nestle. If not directly, then by having insufficient controls on the suppliers and distributors they use in assorted parts of the world. I’ve never seen any cases where Nestle products in Australia were not fine, but their track record in the developing world is inconsistent at best.
    
    So many controversies and opinions out there and so many have been debunked yet debunking doesn’t seem to make a difference.
    
    Many of the scandals on that page are confirmed. I don’t know of any that are debunked - you’d think they’d remove anything like that from the list. The whole ‘Our formula is better for your baby than breastfeeding’ campaign has to be one of the worst lies ever told in marketing, and that message is still strong in parts of the world. The Baby formula scandal in China is very real, and affects us in Australia as there is a whole market of buying (trusted) formula here and shipping it along with original Australian chemist receipts to China. Actually, I don’t know if that’s still going on today (it’s been a while since I shopped int he baby aisle), but it really affected local formula supplies/prices when my kids were babies.
    
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    StudChud@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I don’t disagree with you, but none of the sources on that Wikipedia page are from PETA. I also dislike PETA and don’t trust anything that group says.
    
    But the Nestle controversies and unethical, anti-union behaviour is enough for me to boycott them (until now I guess, but I didn’t pay for the Purina stuff). But yeah, we also have to investigate the sources and use critical thinking and research to determine the factuality of the source, and whether they could be biased.
    
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