Those of you heavily invested in dogs (as we are) have probably heard about the FDA and DCM as it relates to grain-free dog foods and boutique (BEG) diets causing heart disease. You may also have heard a lot about Dr. Judy Morgan and want to know if she is a legitimate, trustworthy source of information.
This topic is a HOT one and we’re coming in with all the tea. What prompted this post?
Oh, just Dr. Judy Morgan (an influencer) posting something that was blatantly anti-science and having thousands of followers blindly follow her without any critical thinking.
It’s been months since I wrote this post, and now Dr. Morgan has launched a profitable smear campaign against all dog kibble.
Dr. Morgan is a controversial figure in the world of veterinary medicine, and if you follow her, or want to know if she’s a reliable source of information, this post is for you.
Is Dr. Judy Morgan a Legitimate Veterinarian?
Dr. Judy Morgan is a licensed veterinarian in at least one state. From what we understand she no longer practices medicine the traditional way.
U.S. law prohibits her from diagnosing and treating disease via telehealth or online consultations in most cases, so she generally sticks to ‘nutritional consultations’.
On her website, Dr. Morgan highlights her certifications of unknown origin in chiropractic care, acupuncture, and food therapy, which are all offered with a “holistic” mindset.
Dr. Morgan makes her money through affiliate links and speaking engagements, as well as by selling “holistic” supplements, food, recipes, books, and online nutrition courses.
Despite claiming to be a nutrition expert, Dr. Morgan is NOT actually boarded in nutrition. That title is reserved for a select few veterinarians who complete a nutrition residency, pass rigorous exams and present legitimate nutrition research. She has done none of these things.
www.acvn.org
This wouldn’t normally be an issue, except that she promotes herself as a nutrition expert and goes on to actively denounce the opinions, studies, research, and mentoring provided by veterinary professionals with much more advanced credentials in nutrition than she has.
Dr. Morgan, Dr. Becker, and Holistic Pet Care
You may have heard a few big names in the “holistic pet care” community. Dr. Morgan, Dr. Karen Becker, and Dr. Marty come to mind.
What does the word “holistic” mean?
“It is characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of an illness.”
Holistic pet care, an approach that evaluates the animal’s whole body health, absolutely has a place. Most people use many “holistic” and whole-food approaches in their own home!
For example, we address exhaustion by eating a healthier diet and nailing down the reasons for the anxiety that keeps us up at night. Or we might choose ibuprofen to tackle a severe headache, and chase it with lemon water to aid in digestive upset.
We give our dogs Olewo carrots to help with loose stools and fish oil to help with coat and skin health.
The idea of holistic pet care is a good one, actually a great one.
The word “holistic”, however, has been bastardized.
Through marketing, people have come to believe that something labeled as “holistic” is higher quality, better, healthier, and more natural.
Where “holistic” fails is that it’s become associated with a lot of pseudoscience and misinformation.
Being more “natural” isn’t necessarily a good thing. Arsenic is perfectly natural, for example.
The “appeal to nature fallacy” is a great discussion on this very thing. (Read more about this topic HERE).
Unfortunately, “holistic” is an unregulated term. There is no legal definition and therefore, any food brand, veterinarian, practice, or supplement can claim to be “holistic”, no matter what. This term is being abused.
Pseudoscience & Cherry Picking in Holistic Pet Care
Here is where my concerns with celebrity Veterinarians such as Dr. Judy Morgan (and her “holistic” colleagues) come into play:
They often denounce evidence-based medicine and nutrition information, discredit their peers, and re-frame official statements from the FDA.
Doing so is VERY profitable for celebrity veterinarians! Click-bait style headlines drive engagement, traffic, and sales.
Keep in mind that Dr. Judy Morgan’s end goal is profits: she wants followers to purchase her supplements, books, and recipes.
That’s completely fair. We all want to make money by sharing our talents with the world. It is not to say that Dr. Morgan has never contributed valuable information and content. She has! I’m sure many people have learned valuable things that helped them with their pets.
I believe it’s essential for us to scrutinize prominent influencers, however. When their views are perceived as controversial or deviate from the mainstream, it’s crucial to dig deeper and ask additional questions. Especially if their platform relies heavily on discrediting peers who hold a more popular, or science-backed opinion on something.
How are Pseudoscience and the FDA Reports on DCM Connected?
To put this simply, Judy Morgan is a master at interpreting and presenting research, science, and official statements to suit her needs and the desires of her followers. This is a great talent to have, but also, a really good thing to keep in mind when assessing how media and content can be used to engage, mislead, inspire, or even manipulate us.
Let’s explore this further. Grain-free diets and their potential link to Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) have become a contentious issue, sparking a debate between scientists and researchers on one side and the ‘holistic’ pet community on the other.
In December 2022 the FDA released an updated statement on its page about dietary DCM in dogs.
Dietary DCM is a complex issue, with multiple research studies having been developed to address concerns related to dogs developing heart disease on certain diets.
Because researchers have yet to pin down the reasons why it happens, many people in the holistic pet community have promoted that it’s a hoax made up by big pet food companies.
You can see the FDA DCM announcement page HERE.
The statement reads:
December 23, 2022:
“FDA does not intend to release further public updates until there is meaningful new scientific information to share. A count of reports of DCM in dogs submitted to FDA as of November 1, 2022, has been added to Questions & Answers: FDA’s Work on Potential Causes of Non-Hereditary DCM in Dogs. FDA has followed up on a subset of these reports, but is unable to investigate every report to verify or confirm the reported information. While adverse event numbers can be a potential signal of an issue with an FDA regulated product, by themselves, they do not supply sufficient data to establish a causal relationship with reported product(s). FDA continues to encourage research and collaboration by academia, veterinarians, and industry.“
Let’s dig in, shall we?
The scientific and critically curated summary of the FDA statement on DCM is as follows:
- The FDA was unable to thoroughly investigate every report (of which there were many) submitted to them
- Adverse event numbers such as the reports submitted above could signal a problem, however, that factor alone isn’t enough to definitively create a correlation between grain-free foods and DCM
- The research related to this topic has been passed off to researchers to continue investigating (they are more qualified than the FDA)
- Finally, the FDA will withhold further public updates until additional scientific information is available (further updates may be incoming in the future)
On the flip side, Dr. Judy Morgan has interpreted the statement to say (paraphrased) that “the FDA called bullshit on the DCM/Grain-Free link, it doesn’t exist, it’s made up by “big dog food” to generate profits, and the discussion is over”.
These deliberate wording choices are made to trigger emotions that breed suspicion, anxiety, conspiracy theories, and distrust. The resulting emotions and beliefs can be used to manipulate and leverage entire groups of people into believing something that has absolutely no scientific backing.
She even goes on to say that “millions of pets were switched to poor quality pet food brands because big pet food companies used their influence on the FDA to make more money!“, a statement that has absolutely no proof behind it.
(Have you heard about the wellness to QAnon pipeline? It fits into this discussion. If you want some more tea, dig in HERE)
DCM & Grain-Free Dog Food
Now, if you aren’t up-and-up on the whole grain-free heart disease thing, this entire conversation may be a little confusing to you. So here is a summary:
Around 2014, board-certified veterinary cardiologists (heart doctors) noticed an alarming trend. Dogs with no genetic link to DCM were turning up with heart disease. Since then, 100’s more reports have been filed, with new ones coming weekly.
When they looked into this, most of the dogs with this disease (confirmed) had been eating boutique grain-free foods (which at the time were trending alongside boutique and “holistic” food options that were marketed as higher quality).
In 2019 the FDA released a statement citing that a handful of brands were highly associated with this correlation. Those brands included foods by Fromm, Acana, Zignature, and 4Health.
None of the implicated brands have a qualified person on staff to formulate the food they are selling.
Following the release of that statement, pulse & legume growers (whose profits largely came from dog food brands like the ones listed in the report) went to bat. Financial motivations from these farmers (note, not big dog food!) began to complicate things.
Despite this, multiple studies continued to show a correlation between nutrition and heart disease. However, the correlation, as it turns out, had little to do with a lack of grains or low taurine.
It appeared to be related to pulse ingredients (peas, potatoes, legumes, chickpeas) and their use in formulation as a whole.
In other words, it’s NOT grain-free that is the issue. Just as the FDA has said.
If a dog food brand uses a lot of peas, potatoes, beans, and chickpeas in their food, whether the food has grain or not, they often effectively replace a lot of actual meat (and certain amino acids, which are necessary for heart health) with plants.
Anybody who doesn’t think that’s a problem is fooling themselves.
Holistic Veterinarians and Ignoring the Science
To date, multiple studies have shown that there is a link between poorly formulated foods and dogs developing heart disease. Veterinary Cardiologists also report positive outcomes for dogs with nutritional DCM, when they are switched to a properly formulated (and often grain-inclusive) diet.
The most recent study (December, 2022), indicated that every single one of 23 dogs who were fed non-traditional diets (foods with a lot of peas, potatoes, or legumes) had changes to their heart muscle.
Why is the holistic community, and influencers like Dr. Morgan ignoring the published research on this topic?
We have questions about how the “holistic” community reconciles their deep concern about a potential conspiracy within “big dog food” while overlooking the fact that many of their favored “holistic” foods lack formulation oversight from individuals with veterinary or nutrition credentials.
Those “better foods” are often co-packed in factories handling multiple brands. They aren’t better.
What leads her to dismiss the existence or significance of the nutrition-DCM link, despite numerous confirmed diagnoses, while concurrently promoting the view that veterinary flea and tick preventatives are harmful and always toxic because a handful of dogs had a negative reaction?
It’s confusing and alarming.
One Simple Answer – Marketing Rules
Dr. Judy Morgan operates by keeping people suspicious and full of anxiety about anything mainstream or evidence-based. Vaccines, flea and tick prevention, and pet food are all targets.
It’s one thing to promote sea kelp (brown algae) for dental health (heck, my veterinarian promotes this and we use it in our home). This is a legitimate “holistic” whole food remedy that has science behind it.
It’s another to cherry pick science and studies to intentionally drive mistrust for veterinary medicine and pet foods that are backed by dedicated teams of highly educated and experienced researchers and boarded nutritionists.
If only Dr. Morgan could stick to selling science-backed supplements (including sea kelp) and balanced home dog food recipes.
More Information on DCM, Nutrition & Science-Backed Research
Are you with us? Would you like to get away from pseudoscience?
I will add to this list as more information becomes available:
All Trades DVM Famous DCM Timeline
Report Nutritional DCM to the FDA (yes, they are still accepting reports!)
Comparison of Echocardiograms Between Dogs Fed Traditional vs. Non-Traditional Diets
Veterinary Science and the FDA
https://skeptvet.com/Blog/
https://nutritionrvn.com/
Balance It (Balanced Home Cooked Diets Calculator)
Holistic Veterinarians and Therapeutic Diets
Should I Feed My Dog Grain Free?
Only you can decide.
It makes no sense to feed dogs a diet that is comprised mostly of peas, potatoes, and legumes in place of meat.
Unfortunately, most grain-free foods are loaded with those ingredients. If they aren’t loaded, they are also often from companies that don’t employ qualified staff to formulate the diet.
We recommend feeding a large or giant breed dry diet from an established brand with a large market share such as Purina, Royal Canin, Hill’s, Iams, or Eukanuba and thoughtfully supplementing the diet with balanced fresh or canned foods to reduce the risk of bloat.
Some extremely dedicated, educated owners who are working with veterinary nutritionists may also be interested in looking into fully home-cooked diets.
Dr. Judy Morgan and the Purina Panic
This paragraph is a new update to this post, as of January 2024.
A now-debunked viral post on Facebook (December 2023) speculating that “toxic levels of metal” in Purina Pro Plan killed a dog became the kindling for what I call the “Purina Panic”.
People who read that viral post shared it with commentary such as “See, I keep telling you Purina is bad, when will you listen?”
The fire grew. As people read it, they began to be concerned that their pet’s health problems were caused by Purina, so they shared their story.
Vomiting? Purina.
Diarrhea? Purina.
Bad dreams? Purina
Weakness? Purina
You get the idea. A Facebook group, with Dr. Judy Morgan as an administrator and “veterinary expert” became a hub for this activity. The group exploded almost overnight, with thousands of people joining to blame their pet’s random health problems on Purina.
Some dogs had died of Parvo. Their deaths were blamed on Purina, and Dr. Morgan and her loyal advocates were there to swoop in and provide the solution. Seizures are a common genetic disorder, but Purina is taking the blame.
Conveniently, all members need to do is visit Dr. Morgans’s website for courses and supplements to detox their pets.
The group is convinced that a “recall is coming” and claims that thousands of dogs have definitively been harmed or killed by Purina pet foods. Meanwhile, the group leadership is discouraging people from sharing their pet’s medical records with the FDA or with Purina and has told them not to get the food tested, either.
I’m going to make a controversial statement here. This anti-Purina rhetoric is nothing more than profit-driven fear-mongering, and the activity of the group promoting the panic is scarily suspicious of cult behavior.
I have many thoughts on the topics of social panic and cult-like behavior, which I cover more in-depth in our new blog post “Is Purina Making Sogs Sick”. You can read that HERE.
I suppose I haven’t truly summarized why Dr. Morgan is so concerning to the pet community, but if you’ve made it this far into my post, please leave a comment! We’d love to hear from you, no matter which side of the fence you stand on. Unlike the Purina Panic group, we don’t shut down our critics. All we ask is that you bring critical thinking and an open mind to the table.
Cheers!