This is really hard. Older cats and dogs get kidney failure.

I talked to my son this weekend. Here is his timeline for his Aimee:

This is a young cat, found on the street with an abdominal hernia. That was fixed, and he adopted her thru a rescue operation. They did NOT tell him of
her kidney issues.

A couple of months after he took her home she had two urinary tract infections.
Prompting Xrays, blood work, and finally a special ultrasound of her kidneys.

As it turns out she has congenitally malformed kidneys, so then he started feeding her a kidney formula. He gives Eukanuba pouches too, mostly to the other cat, but Aimee eats it sometimes.

So just before Xmas Aimee starts vomiting, and getting very lethargic. He takes her to an ER vet who did kidney tests along with other stuff, and said her kidneys were FINE. Then they say she has bacterial hepatitis. She recovers with IVs for 3 days.

So last week he took both cats to the vet for rabies update shot, and Aimee gets blood work for kidneys and she is back to high levels measured BUN and creatinine. But no higher than the first testings.

So he is puzzled why she showed normal at the ER place. Bad testing? poor diagnosis?

It has to be hard to prove anything. Who keeps the empty cans/pouches for evidence if the damage occurred before the announcement? Cats get renal failure easily/commonly..esp with age. So do small dogs. How to distinguish renal failure that would have come anyway from this incident?

And we don't even know if this issue has been in the works before. Do we have PROOF that this is the first and only shipment from China? NOPE.

You make some very valid points... maybe others here have more to offer?

I really feel for you and other pet owners who are going thru this decision making process. Keep all receipts-- maybe you have the food receipts at least? (we keep all receipts in this house for income tax purposes).