Quote:
Originally Posted by onesnowyowl
I couldn't turn up any peer-reviewed research on tuna being directly connected to blindness in cats. I saw plenty of anecdotal mention of tuna leading to a form of macular degeneration called central retinal degeneration. So I looked that up (using my handy-dandy university library research website), and the main cause of the condition seems to be a lack of taurine in a cat's diet, and there's the crux of the matter--if you only feed your cat tuna fish, it won't get enough taurine, and it will go blind. Clearly, most intelligent pet owners don't feed their cats just tuna fish. And people don't eat just tuna fish either.
|
And there's the answer. Taurine is typically added to prepared cat foods in order to give the cat a nutrient he requires and might otherwise not receive. Feeding a cat the odd bit of tuna won't hurt it, nor will it hurt people.
Living exclusively off tuna, however, is a bad idea all around.