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Verify: Is Beneful dry food harmful to your dog?

QUESTION:

Is Beneful dry food safe for pet owners to feed their dogs? There are tweets saying a lawsuit claims the food is killing dog.

ANSWER:

We can verify those tweets are false. A judge didn’t find evidence to warrant a trial and the FDA investigated and found no evidence the dog food is tainted.

SOURCES:

FDA

Class action lawsuit in 2015 (CBS News)

Purina

PROCESS:

A little more than two years ago, in February of 2015 , a California man filed a lawsuit against Nestle Purina, the makers of Beneful, after one of his dogs died and two of them got sick.

The lawsuit became a class-action when 26 more pet owners got involved in the suit.

Simply put, their argument was that the dog food had toxins in it. The company strongly denied the allegations and in November of last year, a judge dismissed the lawsuit after ruling that the plaintiffs, the dog owners, didn't provide enough evidence to move forward with a trial.

Now the class action lawsuit pointed to thousands of complaints filed with the FDA about Beneful dog food between 2012 and 2014.

According to a posting by the FDA in April of last year, a surge in complaints came after a media report on the lawsuit.

The FDA also did an extensive investigation into Beneful dog food and analyzed its contents.

Ultimately, it found no sufficient evidence that Beneful dog food had anything screwy in it that would make your dog sick.

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