When Tasmanian woman Jenni McCabe's pet dog Scooby fell ill last month, his decline was sudden and devastating.

"Scooby was 11, so he was getting older, but he was still full of beans and very fit and healthy," Ms McCabe said. 

Weeks after Scooby's death, Ms McCabe is just one of many pet owners calling for better standards and regulations in the Australian pet food industry.

Ms McCabe first noticed something was wrong with Scooby when she was watching the Labrador cross Mastiff in her garden through the kitchen window one afternoon. He seemed to be struggling to urinate.

Ms McCabe took Scooby to a veterinarian, who ran blood tests and xrays.

Scooby appeared to have an enlarged bladder, the veterinarian said.

Medication was prescribed but Scooby's condition continued to go downhill.

"He just stopped eating," she said. 

"We tried everything to get him to eat, from roast chickens to pizzas and he just put his nose up to everything," Ms McCabe said.

After a week, Ms McCabe took Scooby back to the veterinarian again, who inserted a catheter to drain litres of urine from his bladder.

Ms McCabe was told Scooby would need to have a catheter inserted twice a day.

But Scooby's condition worsened and a couple of days later, on February 20, he died at home.

Scooby's veterinary report, seen by 9news.com.au, shows his veterinarian was puzzled by what could be behind his sudden illness. 

But Ms McCabe believes an adverse reaction caused his death. 

It was during Scooby's last days that Ms McCabe went online and noticed an alarming number of one star reviews about a pet food she had started feeding her dog two days before he got sick.

Scooby's usual brand of dog food was out of stock, so Ms McCabe purchased another brand of dog food.

"When I saw the reviews, I was gobsmacked and horrified," Ms McCabe said.

"How could I have been so stupid to not to have checked out the product on the reviews before purchasing?" 

Published on the website 'Pet Food Reviews' were "200 reports of sickness and death" it claimed to have received from pet owners related to this brand.

Then there were the posts on Facebook's Australian Pet Owners' Group.

Tasmanian Cush Allison started the 8000-member group after his pet dog, Tank, died in 2017, less than 24 hours after eating the food.

Mr Allison told 9news.com.au his five-year-old Bull Arab had been otherwise healthy but, he claimed within hours he was having convulsions and was crashing into furniture. 

Tank was blind by the time he passed away, Mr Allison said.

In a post Ms McCabe put up on a local Facebook group, several other owners commented claiming that their dogs had also had an adverse reaction.

"It was mind-blowing. I loved Scooby to bits. He was our world, he was everything to us," Ms McCabe said.

"In a way, I feel like I have murdered him."

The company that stocks the pet food told 9news.com.au it was "incredibly popular with customers looking for a quality product at an affordable price".

"Testing has been conducted on the range to ensure it complies with voluntary Australian standards and our manufacturers hold independent quality certification for the safe production of pet food.

"We take the safety of our customers and their pets seriously. We haven't seen any veterinary reports or evidence attributing an illness or adverse reaction to the product, but if someone has this we would encourage them to bring it to us so we can look into it."

Social media storm

There are other brands that have attracted a host of reviews highlighting adverse reactions online.

Craig Buttigieg, from Melbourne, told 9news.com.au his Kelpie puppy fell ill a few days after she was fed another brand for the first time in December last year.

Bailey suddenly developed diarrhoea and began vomiting. She spent days in a veterinary hospital.

"The vets said it was not looking good, they were not expecting her to survive," Mr Buttigieg said.

But, to the family's relief, Bailey did recover after being fed a strict diet of chicken and rice.

Rebecca Vella, also from Melbourne, said her dog Lola, a seven-year-old Labrador cross Staffie fell seriously ill in August 2020.

"My dog got really sick and had to go to the vet several times. She lost giant patches of fur and there was vomiting and gastro," she said.

At first, Ms Vella said she did not associate Lola's illness with the brand, as she had eaten the product for years.

However, Ms Vella said she became suspicious when Lola recovered while on a different diet, only to fall ill again when that brand was re-introduced. Her mother's dog had also been sick on the same pet food, she added.

The company behind that brand is a member of the Pet Food Industry Association of Australia. The association says it uses a "third party" to verify its members are complying with Australia's voluntary pet food standards.

"All pet food brands are developed by pet nutritionists and a qualified research and development team who formulate recipes specific to the needs of pets," a company spokesperson said.

"Throughout every stage of the manufacturing process quality teams check and inspect batches to ensure they meet the quality and food safety parameters found in the Australian Standard. Only once it has passed these assessments, is the batch released for sale."

While all of the pet owner's 9news.com.au spoke to acknowledge they have no direct evidence to suggest the pet foods were to blame for their dogs falling ill, they say they are convinced the pet food played a part.

The owners are calling for better standards for manufactured pet food in Australia.

'Nothing has changed'

The pet food industry in Australia is unregulated, with only voluntary standards in place that rely on the goodwill of manufacturers to test food after complaints, and order recalls if necessary.

In 2018, a Senate inquiry investigated the need for regulation to ensure pet food is safe in Australia.

It followed reports of more than 70 dogs in 2017 contracting an incurable condition, megaesophagus, where the suspected link was the popular dry dog food Advance Dermocare.

Pet food scandals in Australia have not only involved manufactured products. 

In July last year, 24 dogs in Victoria died and 44 became ill with indospicine poisoning linked to contaminated horse meat sold through a knackery in Gippsland.

Pet owners, as well as industry groups and experts, say mandatory pet food standards are needed urgently.

The Australian Veterinary Association (AVA),  RSPCA Australia and the Pet Food Industry Association of Australia have all recently called for industry regulations.

It's a situation veterinarian Dr Sue Foster likens to "the mining industry being in agreement with the environmental lobby".

"It's unlikely to happen, but we have the industry wanting it, we have welfare workers wanting it and we have the Australia's peak veterinary association all wanting the same thing.

"We have absolute consensus about the need for mandatory enforced standards with regulations.

"The chain is being dragged by government, they are the block here," Dr Foster said, adding that nothing had changed since the 2018 Senate inquiry.

Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said the regulation of pet food in Australia was solely a state and territory responsibility.

"The Federal Government has assisted the States and Territories assess options on the issue of pet food regulation in Australia and is continuing to do so," the minister said.

"It is now up to the state and territories to make decisions."

'It's purely goodwill'

Australia has a voluntary reporting system for veterinarians to record possible or suspected cases of adverse reactions in pets to food – called PetFAST.

Dr Foster is one of the AVA's PetFAST representatives.

Underreporting continued to be a major issue for PetFAST, Dr Foster said, with many busy vets not having time to make reports.

Some vets were also not aware that PetFAST existed or were reluctant to make reports, falsely believing they needed strong evidence a particular food was to blame for a dog's illness, she said.

All PetFAST reports were followed up with the manufacturer involved, however PetFAST had no capacity for independent testing, Dr Foster said.

"There is no independent testing because there is no funding," she said.

"My position is entirely voluntary,  everyone's position on PetFast is voluntary. There's no government funding.

"It's purely goodwill. Because there is no regulation there is no requirement for industries to do any checking or testing."

Dr Foster said the lack of independent testing was a "major problem".

"Good players will do the right thing, but the majority of reports we see relate to manufacturers who aren't even members of the Pet Food Industry Association of Australia so we have no way of sometimes even engaging with them."

Dr Foster urged owners to ask their veterinarians to make a report if they suspected an adverse reaction to a particular product.

Social media had been helpful in the past in detecting possible issues with pet food, however it could also lead pet owners astray, Dr Foster said.

"There is huge power in social media. The problem with social media is every animal eats, so every single problem can be attributed to pet food, whether it is related to pet food or not."

However, Dr Foster said she could understand the lack of confidence pet owners had in the pet food they were buying.

"It's a very big problem for conscientious Australian pet owners to work out what's safe and what's not and whether there are checks and balances.

"I think it's a very real concern."

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au

I am the Local Focus video reporter for the Wairarapa.My job is to go out into the community every day and immerse myself around people, recording their stories and publishing them to weekly deadlines. Working from home makes…

A genuine track-ready V8 supercar is set to smash records when it goes under the gavel this Sunday.

Location might be everything in the property game, but timing must run a close second.

Just-released data tracking property prices in Australia over the past 30 years reveals how some homebuyers hit multi-million-dollar jackpots by virtue of when they bought.

Only three of Sydney's five most expensive real estate suburbs in 1991 held their place, 30 years later, in 2021.

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The Rocks, an historic neighbourhood in the shadow of Sydney Harbour Bridge, spiralled 173 places from second in 1991 to 175th, three decades later.

Although median values in The Rocks trebled in that time, other Sydney neighbourhoods – such as Bronte – increased nine-fold, the report found.

Clontarf, a well-heeled, harbourside suburb which looks south towards Sydney's CBD, was also nudged from the top-five, dropping from fourth in 1991 to 7th in 2021.

The biggest climbers in Sydney over that 30-year period, according to The Aussie Progress Report, were Bronte and Dover Heights, both in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

Bronte shot up from 81st to 5th, while Dover Heights rose into second from 12th.

The affluent harbour suburb of Vaucluse, where large family homes command prized views towards the city, stayed number one across the three decades.

Property in Vaucluse on average rose by more than 500 per cent between 1991 and 2021, with the median price of a dwelling today costing an eye-watering $8.6 million.

Across Australia, house values have increased by 414.6 per cent in the past 30 years, according to the report from mortgage company Aussie and data firm CoreLogic.

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The report found nationally, between 1991 and 2021, there were seven periods of sustained value increases and seven periods of decline, but the good times have far outweighed the bad.

Growth cycles typically lasted 41 months, with properties values rising on average 34 per cent when the going was good.

The report found one of the longest periods of sustained value increases in the housing market was between September 1995 and January 2004.

Homebuyers who purchased early in that lucrative nine-year window saw the value of their property increase dramatically.

Conversely, downturns in the Aussie property market ran on average 12 months, with falls of 4.3 per cent.

"What is clear from the analysis is that property is a long game," Brad Cramb, chief executive of distribution at property company Lendi Group, said.

"Trying to pick what the market will do in the short-term can be distracting for homebuyers."

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Homebuyers should not get caught up in short-term thinking, he said.

Data released last week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirmed Australia's property market had recorded the biggest 12-month jump in its history, lifting the average price of residential dwellings to just shy of $1 million.

In the 12 months to December, residential property prices rose 23.7 per cent – the strongest annual growth ever recorded.

The mean price of residential dwellings in Australia is now $920,100, up from $876,100 in the September quarter.

There are now more than 5000 confirmed planets beyond our solar system, according to NASA.

The latest addition of 65 exoplanets to the NASA Exoplanet Archive contributed to the scientific milestone marked on Monday.

This archive is the home to exoplanet discoveries from peer-reviewed scientific papers that have been confirmed using multiple methods of detecting the planets.

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"It's not just a number," said Jessie Christiansen, science lead for the archive and a research scientist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in a statement.

"Each one of them is a new world, a brand-new planet. I get excited about every one because we don't know anything about them."

We're currently living in a golden age of exoplanet discovery.

Although the existence of planets outside of our solar system had been previously proposed and certainly depicted in science fiction, these worlds were only first discovered in the 1990s.

Exoplanets have varied features

The diversity of exoplanets represent populations of planets unlike anything found in our solar system.

They include rocky worlds larger than Earth called super-Earths, mini-Neptunes bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, and scorching hot Jupiters that dwarf our solar system's largest planet and closely orbit their host stars.

Scientists have also found planets that orbit more than one star and even some around the remnants of dead stars called white dwarfs.

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So far, of the confirmed exoplanets, 30 percent are gas giants, 31 percent are super-Earths, and 35 percent are Neptune-like. Just 4 percent are terrestrial, or rocky planets like Earth or Mars.

Previous exoplanet discoveries have been made thanks to planet-hunting telescopes and satellites like the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

When Christiansen was a graduate student in the early 2000s, there were only about 100 known exoplanets.

"That's partly why I wanted to go into the field — because it was brand new and so exciting that people were finding planets around other stars," Christiansen said in a question and answer session shared by Caltech.

"Now, exoplanets are almost ordinary. My colleague David Ciardi (chief scientist for the NASA Exoplanet Archive) pointed out the other day that half of the people alive have never lived in a world where we didn't know about exoplanets."

Kepler helped scientists discover about two-thirds of the 5,000 confirmed planets, Christiansen said.

In the new batch of 65 planets, many are super-Earth and sub-Neptune planets, along with some hot Jupiter-size planets.

There are also two Earth-size planets, but they're about 327 degrees Celsius, so more like "hot rocks" than habitable planets, Christiansen said.

She also noted that one is a system with five planets orbiting a small, cool red dwarf star – not unlike the TRAPPIST-1 system, where a similar star hosts seven rocky planets.

Space observatories joining the hunt

New telescopes will only increase the potential for exoplanet discovery. The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December, will be able to peer through the atmospheres of exoplanets.

The Webb telescope is poised to study the TRAPPIST system in detail.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will launch in 2027 and aid in the search for exoplanets with a variety of techniques.

The European Space Agency's ARIEL mission, launching in 2029, will study exoplanet atmospheres.

Although scientists have confirmed more than 5000 exoplanets, there are likely hundreds of billions of them across the Milky Way galaxy.

"Of the 5,000 exoplanets known, 4,900 are located within a few thousand light-years of us," Christiansen said.

"And think about the fact that we're 30,000 light-years from the centre of the galaxy; if you extrapolate from the little bubble around us, that means there are many more planets in our galaxy we haven't found yet, as many as 100 to 200 billion. It's mind-blowing."

Residents in flood-ravaged communities across New South Wales are being warned to stay vigilant as the state faces days of rain.

A cold front is bringing "persistent showers and storms" to parts of eastern Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said.

NSW will bear the brunt of the wet weather, but rain and storms are also forecast for Victoria, Tasmania and as far north as Queensland.

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"Over the next four days parts of the NSW coast could see up to 100mm of rain," BoM said.

"Check forecasts, monitor warnings."

Senior Meteorologist Jonathan How said the wet weather will last for next seven days.

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"It is the news that no-one in NSW wants to hear right now…across eastern NSW, there's plenty of wet weather to come," he told Today.

"We're set for another seven days of showers, rain and storms kicking off from today really anywhere north of Wollongong up towards Sydney and Northern Rivers as well."

Rain activity is expected to increase from Thursday, with heavy rain occurring over recovering flood-zones in north-eastern NSW by Friday.

"We're expecting over the next seven days 50 to 100mm but isolated places could see 200mm fall from tomorrow and into the weekend," Mr How said.

"Sydney is currently experiencing its fourth wettest March on record. This upcoming rainfall could push it into the top three."

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Weatherzone said flooding is possible.

"At this stage, parts of Queensland and NSW will be affected and some areas are likely to see heavy rain, possibly enough to cause flooding," it said.

This is what the weather is doing around the nation's capitals today.

Brisbane

Brisbane will experience a sunny 31C day today.

Sun protection is recommended from 8:20 am to 3:20 pm as the UV Index is predicted to reach nine.

Sydney

Sydney is instore for a cloudy, rainy day. Five to 10 mm of rain is expected to fall.

There's also a chance of a thunderstorm, mostly in the morning and early afternoon.

The temperature will reach a high of 24C.

Canberra

A shower or two will also be felt in Canberra. A rainfall total of two mm is predicted.

There's a chance of a thunderstorm early this morning.

A low of 15C will be felt before a maximum of 27C.

Melbourne

The mercury will climb to 19C in Melbourne, which has a chance of an early shower.

The BoM said there's a medium chance of showers in the northern and eastern suburbs in the morning and a slight chance elsewhere.

The rain will ease by early afternoon.

Hobart

There's a slight chance of showers forecast for Hobart today.

The city will experience a low of 11C before temperatures climb to 17C.

Adelaide

It will be a partly cloudy day in Adelaide with temperatures expected to climb to 22C.

Darwin

Darwin residents can expect a shower or two as well as a possible storm today, most likely in the morning.

Temperatures will climb to 33C.

Perth

And it will be a sunny 29C day in Perth.

Sun protection is recommended from 9:10 am to 3:40 pm, as the UV Index is predicted to reach eight.

Winds will tend east to south-easterly at 20 to 30 km/h. Gusts to 60 km/h are possible about the hills and foothills in the morning.

Mud-stained wallets. Bank cards. Official identity cards. Poignant reminders of 132 lives presumed lost were lined up by rescue workers scouring a remote Chinese mountainside Tuesday for the wreckage of a China Eastern flight that crashed.

The plane one day earlier inexplicably fell from the sky and burst into a huge fireball.

No survivors have been found among the 123 passengers and nine crew members.

WARNING: Images below may disturb some readers

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Video clips posted by China's state media show small pieces of the Boeing 737-800 plane scattered over a wide forested area, some in green fields, others in burnt-out patches with raw earth exposed after fires burned in the trees.

Each piece of debris has a number next to it, the larger ones marked off by police tape.

Search teams planned to work through the night using their hands, picks, sniffer dogs and other equipment to look for survivors, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The steep, rough terrain and the huge size of the debris field were complicating the search for the black box, which holds the flight data and cockpit voice recorder, CCTV and the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Drones were being used to search the fragments of wreckage that were scattered across both sides of the mountain into which the plane crashed, state media reported.

As family members gathered at the destination and departure airports, what caused the plane to drop out of the sky shortly before it would have begun its descent to the southern China metropolis of Guangzhou remained a mystery.

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At an evening news conference, a grim-faced Zhu Tao, director of the Office of Aviation Safety at the Civil Aviation Authority of China, said efforts were focused on finding the black box and that it was too early to speculate on a possible cause of the crash.

“As of now, the rescue has yet to find survivors," Mr Zhu said.

“The public security department has taken control of the site.”

Mr Zhu said an air-traffic controller tried to contact the pilots several times after seeing the plane's altitude drop sharply, but got no reply.

The inability to reach the pilots at such a crucial moment wasn't itself necessarily a problem, said William Waldock, a professor of safety science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

“If they were dealing with an emergency, pilots are taught to ‘aviate, navigate, then communicate.’ Meaning, fly the airplane first,” Professor Waldock said.

“If it was some sort of major mechanical problem, they may have had their hands full trying to control the aircraft."

READ MORE: Flight had 'unusual' flight patterns before crash

The crash left a deep pit in the mountainside about the size of a football field, Xinhua said, citing rescuers. Chen Weihao, who saw the falling plane while working on a farm, told the news agency it hit a gap in the mountain where nobody lived.

“The plane looked to be in one piece when it nosedived. Within seconds, it crashed,” Mr Chen said.

China Eastern flight 5735 crashed outside the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region while flying from Kunming, the capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, to Guangzhou, an industrial centre not far from Hong Kong on China’s south-eastern coast.

It ignited a fire big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images before firefighters could extinguished it.

No foreigners were on board the lost flight, the Foreign Ministry said, citing a preliminary review.

Dinglong Culture, a Guangzhou company in both mining and TV and movie production, said in a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange that its CFO, Fang Fang, was a passenger.

Zhongxinghua, an accounting firm used by Dinglong, said that two of its employees were also on the flight.

The crash site is surrounded on three sides by mountains and accessible only by foot and motorcycle on a steep dirt road in the semitropical Guangxi region, famed for some of China’s most spectacular scenery.

Rain fell Tuesday afternoon as excavators dug out a path to make access easier, CCTV said. The steepness of the slope made the positioning of heavy equipment difficult.

A base of operations was set up near the crash site with rescue vehicles, ambulances and an emergency power supply truck parked in the narrow space. Soldiers and rescue workers combed the charred crash site and surrounding heavily dense vegetation.

Police restricted access, checking each vehicle entering Molang, a village near the crash site. Five people with swollen eyes walked out of the village, got into a car and left. Onlookers said they were relatives of the passengers.

Family members gathered at Kunming and Guangzhou airports. People draped in pink blankets and slumped in massage chairs could be seen in a traveller rest area in the basement of the one in Kunming.

Workers wheeled in mattresses and brought bagged meals.

A security guard blocked an Associated Press journalist from entering, saying that “interviews aren’t being accepted”.

In Guangzhou, relatives were escorted to a reception centre staffed by employees wearing full protective gear to guard against the coronavirus.

At least five hotels with more than 700 rooms had been requisitioned in Wuzhou's Teng county for family members, Chinese media reported.

Workers in hazmat suits set up a registration desk and administered COVID-19 tests at the entrance to one hotel, outside of Molang. A sign read: "The hotel is requisitioned for March 21 plane accident emergency use.”

At another hotel, a group of women, some wearing vests with Red Cross markings, registered at a hotel desk set up outside.

The nation's first fatal plane crash in more than a decade dominated China's news and social media. World leaders including Great Britain's Boris Johnson, India's Narendra Modi and Canada's Justin Trudeau posted condolences on Twitter.

Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said that the company was deeply saddened by the news and had offered the full support of its technical experts to assist in the investigation.

“The thoughts of all of us at Boeing are with the passengers and crew members … as well as their families and loved ones,” he wrote in a message to Boeing employees.

The plane was about an hour into its flight, at an altitude of 29,000 feet (8,840 meters), when it entered a steep, fast dive around 2.20pm, according to data from FlightRadar24.com.

The plane plunged to 7,400 feet before briefly regaining about 1,200 feet in altitude, then dove again. The plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after starting to dive.

The aircraft was delivered to the airline in June 2015 and had been flying for more than six years.

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, where the flight was headed, is one of China’s main aviation hubs. It is the home base for China Southern Airlines.

As the pandemic upended air travel, it rocketed past Beijing and Atlanta to claim the title of world’s busiest airport in 2020 — the most recent year for which annual data is available — handling more than 43 million passengers.

Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong province, home to export-driven factories making smartphones, toys, furniture and other goods. Its Auto City district has joint ventures operated by Toyota, Nissan and others. Kunming, the departure city which is 1,100 kilometers west, is the capital of Yunnan province, an agricultural, mining and tourism centre that borders Southeast Asia.

China Eastern, which is headquartered in Shanghai, has grounded all of its 737-800s, China’s Transport Ministry said. Aviation experts said it is unusual to ground an entire fleet of planes unless there is evidence of a problem with the model.

The airline is one of China's three largest carriers with more than 600 planes, including 109 Boeing 737-800s. The grounding could further disrupt domestic air travel already curtailed because of the largest COVID-19 outbreak in China since the initial peak in early 2020.

The Boeing 737-800 has been flying since 1998 and has an excellent safety record, said Hassan Shahidi, president of the Flight Safety Foundation.

It is an earlier model than the 737 Max, which was grounded worldwide for nearly two years after deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Before Monday, the last fatal crash of a Chinese airliner occurred in August 2010, when an Embraer ERJ 190-100 operated by Henan Airlines hit the ground short of the runway in the northeastern city of Yichun and caught fire.

It carried 96 people and 44 of them died. Investigators blamed pilot error.