I lost my 10 month old Basset to Diamond. Our pet food supplier was unable to get information from Diamond. Our breeder, a long term user of Diamond and large consumer, was not able to get shipments in December and was NOT told why. They were not told of any problems, but mysteriously D stopped shipping. If ANYONE should have been immediately been told there was a problem, it is this breeder who bought directly from a distributor. Only when I told them that my dog died days after being taken off Diamond, did they become alarmed and test thier dogs -- 11 with compromised liver numbers.
Diamond can say all they want on thier website or press releases, but I believe they diddled around trying to figure out how widespread the problem was and to not make a broad recall for fear of publicity. I'm no vet but cannot believe there are not web mailing lists that vets participate in. When I took my dog in and explained the problem to first the emergency vet, and then the specialty vet in town, no one had heard of the problem until they went on line and researched it. That was on January 2. You can rationalize how forthright Diamond was all you care to, but there appeared to me to be a long lag time before the recall came out and little done to promote it. What promotion came from general press reporting on it; and people like me who agreed to be interviewed solely because I wanted anyone to know of this before what happened to Annabelle happened to any others.
Regardless of what to me seemed to be a too late admission of a problem with the food, the fact is that aflatoxin is something not uncommon in corn. I have quit researching it, but learned a fair amount about this. It is clear that Diamond did not do proper QA/QC to detect this. They admit they rejected some corn, but this got through. They screwed up and it killed my and many other dogs. Thier behavior in the recall I did not feel was quick enough, but obviously others do. I really don't care because no pet of mine will ever eat Diamond food again. And frankly, thier lawyer crafted letter (replete with errors and cover your a__ statements) that I had to sign to get my vet bills was an insult. And they were quick to point out that a pet is property and they are only liable for the cost of the pet and expense incurred. They may be a good company, but they made some decisions that will likely cost them thier future.