Editorial Policy
Last updated October 30, 2026
How our guides are made
Every Eaoae safety guide starts as an AI-assisted draft. The Eaoae Safety Review then checks it against published veterinary guidance before it can carry our “Sources checked” mark. Each checked page shows the date it was checked, how many sources it is based on, and the sources themselves with direct links, so you can verify the verdict yourself.
Our checking standard
A verdict earns the ✓ Sources checked mark only when all of the following are true:
- It is backed by at least two independent sources that support the same verdict for that item and species. “Independent” means different organizations — several pages from one organization count as one source.
- At least one of those sources is a primary authority (defined below).
- Unsafe verdicts are held to a higher bar: at least three independent sources, including at least one primary authority.
Primary authorities are: the animal poison-control services (ASPCA Animal Poison Control and Pet Poison Helpline), professional veterinary references (the Merck Veterinary Manual and LafeberVet, the exotic-animal veterinary publisher), VCA Hospitals, PetMD, university veterinary schools and colleges, and peer-reviewed veterinary and toxicology literature. Peer-reviewed journal articles count under their publisher’s identity — an article indexed in PubMed, for example, counts as a publication of its journal, counted once per journal — and PetMD content counts as PetMD wherever PetMD publishes it, including on its partner and syndication domains.
What counts as covering “that item and species”: a source counts only if it addresses the item for that species, or for a class the source itself names that includes the species (for example “birds”, “reptiles”, “rodents” or “small mammals”). Guidance written for dogs and cats — including poison-control pages addressed to “pets” in general — counts for dogs and cats; it is never counted as covering another species.
When sources disagree, the verdict is graded Caution and the disagreement is noted on the page. When no authority covers an item for a species, the verdict is Unknown — we say so instead of guessing. An Unknown verdict earns the checked mark when at least two independent sources, including at least one primary authority, address the item and none of them gives a verdict for that species: the checked claim is that we looked, and no authority covers it.
Pages that don’t meet the standard
A page that does not (or no longer) meet this standard is not deleted, but it loses the checked mark. It is labelled “not yet verified”, carries a visible warning notice, is excluded from search-engine indexing and from our sitemap, and stays in our review queue until enough qualifying sources are found and checked. We re-audit the whole database against this standard whenever the standard changes — most recently on October 30, 2026, when two independent external audits led us to clarify the species-coverage rule above and re-check every checked page against it; pages that no longer met the standard lost the mark the same day.
Veterinary review
Our guides are researched from veterinary and animal-poison-control sources, but they are not currently reviewed by a licensed veterinarian. We are working to add independent veterinary review to our highest-traffic guides.
What we don't do
We don't diagnose your pet, prescribe medication, or tell you what to do in an emergency. If your pet may have eaten something toxic, call your veterinarian or an animal poison helpline immediately.
Corrections
Found something wrong or outdated? Contact us and we'll review it. When we fix a factual error, we update the page's last-updated date.
