Dog-Sense: For All Dog Owners

Grapes No Longer Toxic To Dogs

After NetPlaces Network dispelled the myth attributed to dog treat manufacturers, poison grapes seem to have disappeared right off the vine - but they still flourish on the internet!

April 30, 2019

Barbara "BJ" Andrews, Editor-In-Chief, SAAB

Simon Robertson in Australia wrote > Subject: raisin and grape toxicity- I read your article and wonder if that is true. I was intrigued about the ‘lack of studies’ so I looked up raisin and grape toxicity to dogs on scholar.google.com. There is a ton of articles. I’m not hassling, but just for your info… Simon

One of the top research sites is indeed scholar.google.com. Intrigued, I opened several of the studies Simon thoughtfully provided but not one report actually stated death or severe illness was caused by ingesting grapes or raisins. No. Every site stopped short of saying that although they all “implied” that your dog could suffer or die from eating grapes.

Typical veterinary comments were “Episodes of vomiting that occur more than 2 hours of raisin or grape ingestion sometimes contain undigested raisins and grapes.” Several reports included snippets such as “Renal failure associated with ingestion of grapes or raisins in dogs …” www.aspca.org was frequently listed as the reference source.

I asked our staff to do a more in-depth search but even our SEO expert failed to find any conclusive reports attributing death to either raisins or fresh grapes. The research team could find no definitive diagnosis which stated that grapes poisoned a dog.

As is the case in 97% of animal deaths, there was no ii necropsy performed confirming grapes as the cause of death.  Also missing was any mention of the CHEMICAL SPRAYS used on food crops.

What was discovered is that many “cited” reports just referred to each other – what we refer to in search engine optimization (SEO) as "looping".  Looping is a common practice, especially by websites promoting pharmaceutical products. Reference-linked articles boost each site’s search engine rankings and are often referred to as “click bait”. Unfortunately truth has never been known to impact a successful marketing strategy.

TheDogPress.com thanks Simon for caring about this and bringing it to our attention again. Here is another oft-cited report on grape toxicity (offsite link, copy and paste URL into your browser):

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/104063870501700302

The fact is, we put the question to over 24,000 subscribers to TheDogPress.com and less than 2% reported any illness they could directly attribute to eating grapes. One of our subscribers, Liz Hassinger, DVM even submitted a column to share with readers. She said whereas there hasn’t been a definitive study there is “enough evidence to make most vets take notice and share the info with their clients.” You can read that informative article here:  Grapes & Raisins Veterinary Information

If you have had the misfortune to have a dog definitively diagnosed with severe gastric upset (or death) from grape poisoning, please share with our readers. Send your report to BJA@NetPlacesNetwork.com.

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