One day you receive a message from one of your Facebook contacts informing you that a brand of kibble is toxic, and inviting you to join a private group that already publicly claims that 99% of kibble is toxic: what should be done ?
Don’t give in to panic
If the health of our animals is indeed important, you should not throw away your croquettes if you use this brand. Except of course in the event of a toxic kibble alert validated by the authorities.
Of course, you will find information on these same groups claiming that a global petfood conspiracy locks down all information, that health authorities are complicit, that veterinarians are happy to have sick animals because it keeps their “business” running. : Don’t let yourself be manipulated!
How to check these toxic kibble alerts?
In some cases, it happens that kibbles are really toxic, in this case you will find messages from manufacturers, distributors, health authorities, and you can follow these official recommendations.
So should we react when a person, certainly in good faith, reports that his animal is sick, while he is consuming a specific brand? If you observe, as we have done for many years, the public or private groups that talk about animal nutrition, you will see that no brand is spared.
There are so many sick animals in the world, and so many brands of kibbles, that it is impossible, at this stage, to make a causal link and to affirm that your kibbles are indeed toxic. On Sos Petfood ®, we don’t want to “hide” toxic kibble alerts. On the contrary, we are able to highlight them when they have been validated by the authorities.
Check the quality of your sources
First, when someone tries to persuade you that your brand of kibble is toxic, check the origin of the information. If it comes from a group whose administrator has already been condemned several times for defamation, if he regularly shares conspiracy theses on his personal Facebook page, if many members of his group complain about his behavior, you have already interesting information. And of course, if you believe everything that is advanced, nothing prevents you from joining this group, at least out of curiosity.
Then, you will find many testimonials from customers of the brand, which will give details of the problem encountered. This problem is certainly real, the point here is not to deny it, but to try to understand what the links are with the brand of croquettes supposed to be toxic.
But what is important is to have proof of the link between the “incriminated” brand of croquettes and the illness or death mentioned in these public spaces. In this case, an analysis carried out in the laboratory, an examination by a veterinarian, can make it possible to find out more and to affirm whether or not it is a contamination.
Defamation: private Facebook groups are subject to the law
Don’t be fooled by the inducements of some Facebook group administrators who tell you that you can say whatever you want in a private Facebook group, on the grounds that the words of a private group will never be sued for defamation. Some administrators of private Facebook groups have already been sentenced by the courts.
If you share illegal comments, containing for example defamation or denigration, you may be held criminally liable.
It is important to understand that a person targeted by an attack will be able to make a bailiff’s report on a private group, which loses its “private” status when it has several hundred members. So you easily understand that a private group of more than 1,000 members or more than 100,000 members will never be considered by a judge as private.
Content is accessible to members outside the group
In addition, some private groups have violent behavior with members, who are removed from these groups when they expose an opinion contrary to the theories of the group. These members are sometimes several thousands, and some will be led to expose in a public way what happens there by exposing to all, on sites, blogs, videos, what really happens in this group. So that’s several thousand potential leaks.
Finally, we offer members of public or private groups the opportunity to present their opinions on our partner sites, and sometimes this content is accessible to everyone, because our sites are public, and the editors publish under their own responsibility.
Images and videos of private groups indexed by search engines
We’ve explained it many times, videos in a private group, like certain images or files, are accessible to anyone who has the link to them. We have already had examples of “confidential” files of “contamination” complaints, shared with Google Drive links in public sharing, which are still accessible to this day, demonstrating that some group administrators do not respect the law (GDPR by example), nor the confidentiality of their information.
Be careful before sharing personal information, such as your identity documents, on these groups: irresponsibly, some groups may once again share an unprotected download link on the Internet, and you risk becoming a victim of identity theft.
We also offer IT services for hosting videos, for members who wish to do so, and we are not in a position to know if the senders are the owners of the intellectual property rights, because they undertake to respect our general conditions. of use.
In summary, do not share toxic kibble alerts on Facebook or Youtube before having checked that they are reliable, on the one hand not to cause a change in diet which can have consequences on the health of your animals, but above all to avoid incurring your criminal liability.
Sos Petfood does not recommend any brand. It is a monitoring and information system for consumers. For this, we use data from our partner networks, such as Vigiscore ®, Petfood Alert ® and Petfood Advisor ®.