This is an alert for anyone currently feeding a diet of Weruva to their cats. The short story: Weruva products gave our totally healthy, 8 year old cat kidney failure. He is now in hospital with CREA (toxicity levels) 5 times the healthy amount (his levels are 11.1 most cats dies before their levels get this high) and basically what would have been a long healthy life has just been cut short.
The long story:
My husband and I fed Weruva to our 8 yr old, healthy kitty for about 8 months. He had just had a very good vet check up the vet said he was an example of a 'success story' in diet (we fed a mix of raw and canned food, raw egg yolk supplement, natural vitamin supplements). The canned component of the diet was EVO. But 8 months ago we switched to Weruva from EVO because of concern over the levels of ash in EVO. For the first 6 months we fed half Weruva (a mix of all varieties) and half Stella and Chewy's raw patties (which we've done for a long time). He seemed to be doing well, although seemed a little bit malnourished, like he wasn't getting all the nutrients he needed (we kept finding him licking the cast iron pan on the stove, for e.g. we now know he was becoming anemic, and was probably licking the pan for iron). We realize now that this was because the food was having an adverse effect on his kidneys, so he wasn't absorbing all the nutrients he should be. We took him to the vet, and got him tested. All was okay, except his kidney values were a little high his CREA and BUN especially. We brought him in for a urine sample a month later. His urine tested well, highly concentrated. Here's what went wrong we ran out of the Stella & Chewy patties, & they're not easy to get in our neighborhood so we stopped feeding them to him for a while. We were stressed out in our jobs and (we are kicking ourselves) didn't make time to pick up the patties. So he began an ONLY Weruva diet. At the same time, we were so busy we needed to order from wag.com, so we ordered Weruva in bulk. The only kinds they had in bulk? The seafood kinds. Mack n Jack, Polynesian BBQ, and Asian Fusion. All of these contain the artificial "vitamin K" supplement menadione sodium bisulfate, and have very high phosphorus levels. It is also NOT good to feed your cat only seafood. But we only did this for THREE weeks.
What happened next? Within 2 3 weeks of being on the only Weruva diet major kidney failure symptoms started. He stopped eating all the food on his plate, but he was begging for food. In the last week he was thirsty all the time. His haunches became stooped. In the 3rd week we finally realized something was wrong (we are kicking ourselves, again, that it took us so long to realize this). We took him to the vet as soon as possible, and that's when we found out he had 80% 90% kidney failure. The vet told us we should put him down, or opt for expensive emergency therapy we opted for the therapy, and thankfully his levels are dropping, but he may not live much more than a few months longer.
Meanwhile, we thought we should warn our good friends who were also feeding their cat the Weruva-only diet. As soon as we realized what had happened we got in contact with these friends who we hadn't seen in a long time (they'd just had a baby). Sadly, they reported that their also young (younger than our cat) kitty had liver disease he had just been diagnosed. They too had stopped feeding their cat Weruva.
How could this happen to very healthy, active, young cats who were apparently eating the healthiest diet possible? We're not sure, but we're sure it's related to this food. NOTHING else changed in our cat's life, and just before he went on the all Weruva diet he had had a clean bill of health. We think the answer might be related to Menadione Sodium Bisulfate, which quickly damaged our kitty's organs, in tandem with the very high phosphorus levels.
Menadione Sodium Bisulfate is the only Vitamin K supplement that AAFCO approves, but it's safety for pets is "not known," (although many people are of the opinion that is is highly toxic for pets), it is known to be toxic (and fatal) to humans. Several experts consider that it is dangerous for many of the major organs, including kidneys, liver. Here are some linke for more info:some of the negative effects of menadione are...
* causes cytotoxicity in liver cells
* damages the natural vitamin K cycle
* causes hemolytic anemia and hyperbilirubinemia, not just linked to large doses
* is directly toxic in high doses (vomiting, albuminuria), unlike natural vitamin K
* has never been researched or specifically approved for long term use, such as in pet food
* FDA has banned synthetic vitamin K from over-the-counter supplements because of its high toxicityA report at Oregon State University that mentions mendione toxicityHere Weruva owner David Forman explains why Weruva chooses to use Menadione:Note that at the end of his comment, he states: "if we didn't put it in we would have to label the cans 'for intermittent feeding only'," because AAFCO requires the supplement to be in seafood cans if it's labeled a 'complete food.'
It seems to us that that's the real reason Weruva choose to keep menadione in their products. If we had seen an 'intermittent feeding only label, we would have fed our cat Weruva less often (and he would not be in hospital right now though perhaps in time the same problem would have developed.) That is what Weruva wants to avoid people using their cat food less often. The ethical choice would have been to leave out the menadione and label their food correctly, while taking up with AAFCO its lack of safe Vitamin K supplement approvals.
One more note we've spent over $500 on Weruva food in the past 8 months. And our hospital bill for this weekend, for our cat that may not survive? $2500 and counting. It's going to take months for us to recover from this financially, let alone the pain of losing our beloved pet to the greed of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Meanwhile Weruva hasn't lost any funds and continues to add a harmful ingredient to its cat food.
We're pretty sure there's going to be an epidemic of Weruva-food related illnesses. As the product is on the market for a longer time, more and more cats are going to develop organ damage as a result of the diet.
Why do pet food manufacturers (including these so-called 'organic' food manufacturers) and AAFCO have to play the waiting game with consumers, waiting until enough pets die until they are forced to change their ingredients and regulations?
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