Posted on 05/19/2015 7:40:39 PM PDT by Altariel
As it often happens, a competition between companies had benefitted the consumer. Purina was bent on catching Blue Buffalo in an advertising lie – they claimed they never used poultry by-product meal in their foods.
However, Purina did some testing of Blue Buffalo product and found that was not the case and sued them for False Advertising. Just last week, a year after the case was filed, Blue Buffalo admitted to using by product meal in “a ‘substantial’ and ‘material’ portion of their pet food.” (www.petfoodhonesty.com)
Blue Buffalo asked the Court for additional time to file an Amended Complaint in the litigation, naming its ingredient suppliers as Defendants.
“Despite this admission, Blue Buffalo still has not informed consumers of the presence of poultry by-product meal in Blue Buffalo pet food, refuses to accept responsibility for the product it sold, and is instead blaming its suppliers,” said Keith Schopp, a spokesperson for Nestlé Purina Petcare.
On May 6, 2014, Purina filed a lawsuit against Blue Buffalo for false advertising after testing revealed the presence of poultry by-product meal in some of Blue Buffalo’s top selling pet foods. Blue Buffalo’s CEO responded by immediately claiming the testing was “Voodoo Science” and assuring their customers that “Blue Buffalo does not use chicken by-product meal or poultry by-product meal in any of our products.”
According to Schopp, “Only when faced with undeniable evidence from the lawsuit has Blue Buffalo admitted the truth to the court: a ‘substantial’ and ‘material’ portion of Blue Buffalo pet food sold over the past several years contained poultry by-product meal. It is unclear to us if or when this practice stopped, or whether any Blue Buffalo pet food containing by-product meal is still on store shelves.”
No small company, it is estimated that Blue Buffalo sells over a billion dollars of pet food at retail and well over 10 million bags annually.
“Through a $50 million annual advertising campaign that flooded airwaves and pet food aisles alike, Blue Buffalo told consumers over and over, emphatically and without qualification, that its products never contain poultry by-product meal,” said Schopp.
Blue Buffalo also attacked “big name pet food companies,” insinuating that they were somehow misleading consumers. Consumers paid a hefty premium for Blue Buffalo products based on these claims.
“Yet none of these claims were true,” said Schopp.
Schopp added: “Blue Buffalo now claims it had no way of knowing the bags contained by-product meal. A manufacturer is responsible for knowing what’s in its product, and a simple audit of its supply chain would have revealed what we discovered after reviewing the documentation.
“Blue Buffalo owes consumers an apology for all the false statements, false labels, and false advertising. More than this, it is time for Blue Buffalo to be transparent with the public and prove to their ‘pet parents’ that no mislabeled product remains on shelves.”
Why You Should Care
Even if you don’t feed your dog Blue Buffalo, this should bring to light something very serious: how do you know if your dog food is what the label says it is?
Blue Buffalo has been around a long time and has always professed they were “by-product” free, as do many high-priced, “premium” pet foods.
“Regulatory oversight of pet food is very limited – no one tests or checks ingredients,” explains Susan Thixton, Pet Food Consumer Advocate and founder of TruthAboutPetFood.com. “Regulatory people tell me they don’t have the time or the funding to test products or ingredients. As with this instance, the only way consumers found out about the problem is from a pet food competitor testing products.”
And if, no one is checking….
“I would assume this goes on all the time,” she adds. “When any company knows the chances of them ‘getting caught’ are one in a million, the temptation to cut corners might be irresistible. Needless to say, we need improved oversight of this industry.”
So you are paying for high-dollar chicken but what exactly are you getting instead?
According to Thixton:
The legal definition of a poultry by-product meal is: consists of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines, exclusive of feathers. The legal definition of poultry meal is: the dry rendered product from a combination of clean flesh and skin with or without accompanying bone, derived from the parts of whole carcasses of poultry or a combination thereof, exclusive of feathers, heads, feet, and entrails.
And while she adds there is no scientific evidence (to her knowledge) that by-product is bad for your dog, it’s certainly not the organic, all natural, free range, etc., that some of these pet food companies tells you are paying top dollar for. So How Do You Know You are Getting Your Money’s Worth?
Thixton says you need to ASK. Here are the important ones:
What is the country of origin of all ingredients? Are meat and vegetable ingredients sourced from USDA inspected and approved human edible ingredients?
She warns that “many companies will provide only partial answers – such as they will respond that meats and vegetables are sourced from the US but will not disclose the country of origin of supplements (often sourced from China). A consumer wants complete answers – my suggestion is to keep asking questions.”
It’s a good reason to go homemade, of course. But, if you can’t do that, check out Thixtons’s list of safe pet foods that have been tested and ranked by her independent, consumer funded organization.
“...which the box says is made in St Louis, rioting not withstanding.”
LOL! I cook for my dog(s) a lot, too. It’s no harder than fixing food for yourself. Sometimes we even share, LOL!
Glad to hear that, because mine is finishing up a mixed bag of Beneful and Iams that I got for free. Snopes says it’s untrue, but Purina has been battling the rumor since 2007 or so:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/beneful.asp
I make dog food from rice or oatmeal cooked in broth, usually chicken but I have some shrimp in the freezer and if I can sneak the skins past him, I make them into a broth. I’ll cook a turkey once in a while and make broth from that. I add chicken or turkey, occasionally beef but its way too expensive to use all the time. I also add canned pumpkin, frozen or canned peas, some flax seeds, and sweet potatoes. Our vet says add omega 3 supps but he carefully picks them out and won’t eat them. We supplement with Science Diet kibble for old dogs (Biscuit is 11). He thrives.
I too fed mine Taste of the Wild for years. The last bag I bought brought on water diarrhea for my girls. I asked about it at the dog store and they said the company had changed something in the recipe and they were loaded with complaints. I will never buy another bag. Beware!
Well what should I buy? Help me out here! I can’t afford orijin.
Surprise, surprise!
I am ALWAYS skeptical of this high-fallutin’ PC “organic” type things, especially with pet stuff.
People are so spoiling their pets, especially dogs these days, that the pet business is VERY lucrative. Despite “bad times”. So much so that 2 of my personal business ideas involve pets (and yes, I am an animal lover, but I don’t anthropomorphize them).
Don’t put anything past any pet business, most notably food items.
Yes, actually, interesting article by some vet I ran across a bit ago when another of these “discussions” was raging was about how much nonsense was related to the raw diet idea. And its “by-products”, if you will. I had it bookmarked but cannot find it anymore....
Just a small piece regarding this issue...
http://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/dog-health-food-debunk-5-myths
My girl gets homemade food.... she begs for breakfast and supper now... when I fed her bagged food, she would leave the food until she absolutely had to eat something...spoiled brat, I know, but she has maintained her weight and (knock on wood) health is good!
Same here; I have 7 spoiled monsters and make all their food in the kitchen.
Rice
Pinto Beans
Rolled Oats
Peas
Carrots
Corn
Pintos,Peas,Carrots and Corn are precooked then run through the blender (other wise they will try to eat around the Pintos, carrots, peas and corn).
Then 12 pounds of ground meat, they don’t seem to care whether it’s beef,chicken,salmon,pork, or venison.
Cook in two 7 gallon stainless steel pots all day on the stove, salt and pepper to taste.
I figure if it tastes OK to me they will figure it’s pretty good. If it comes out to thin just add rice to thicken it up.
One 7 gallon pot goes out to the refrigerator in the work shed (really cold) and the other pot goes into the fridge here in the house.
Old Jack is pushing 19 years and still follows me out into the fields to work every day (though he does move a little slower now), the rest are just juvenile delinquents that are constantly under foot, tractor or truck.
Gotta watch’em like a hawk.
Haha! Love it!!
Same thing with our cocker Spaniel but the vet put him on Royal Canin SO (and we mix in boiled chicken breast). Unless we want to put him through more $2500 surgeries for bladder stones, he will be on this special prescription only diet for the rest of his life.
We were told certain breeds develop stones and along with diet, they can be prevented but not a guarantee no matter the food they eat
What is your recipe? I’ve been making my favorite cat homemade food, since she has a grain intolerance and then developed struvite crystals. The food for urinary crystals is full of grains, and therefore, not very healthy either.
But I’m always open to a new recipe, since a change of taste might be welcome!
“We were told certain breeds develop stones and along with diet, they can be prevented but not a guarantee no matter the food they eat”
Ditto with 2 of my cats. The problem was, one of my cats has a grain intolerance and the SO (or Hills C/D) is loaded with grains.
So now I make her food, but also add 750 mg of l-methionine a day. (This is for an 8 lb cat, amounts for dogs will be different! She is also theoretically supposed to need 500 mg, but that doesn’t get her urinary pH low enough.) The l-meth acidifies the urine.
With a pH over ~7, struvite crystals can form; with a pH under 6, calcium oxylate crystals can form. I’ve read the optimum range is 6.0-6.5. I test her urine every few months, now that I know how much l-meth she needs with the diet I give her, to make sure she is in the safe zone.
My boy has been on SO and loves it. I tested his urine, because I wanted to start adding canned food to his diet so he gets more liquid, and it was a bit too acidic. Could be because he eats more than he really should!
So I’m a big believer in testing the urinary pH and being sure all is well! Low phosphorus and magnesium in their diet is important too, since that is what the struvite crystals are formed from. But they will only form is the pH is off.
This issue is something I never heard of until it happened to our little guy. It is expensive but it is keeping him alive.
He loves SO so much that he turns his nose at other things (turkey) that he used to love. Every night my Husband makes him a bowl of dry SO, some canned SO, hot water to make a gravy and cubed (boiled) chicken breast. Snickers lops it up. He is gaining weight after 2 yrs of this but we aren’t too concerned because he is healthy and he pees a lake.
All together, canned, dry and a 10 lb chicken breast, cost us about $60 per month to feed him. But when you see your poor animal go through a stone blockage, $60 is nothing. through
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/royal_canin.html?page=2
I did some checking on this dog food. Maybe you guys should read this. (((Sigh))) I guess I’ll have to keep looking. Won’t be buying Royal Canin. You guys should read these complaints.
Yes, the surgeries alone cost a lot of money. And the pain and suffering is horrendous. Ask anyone with a kidney stone! My babies didn’t get pain meds either.
Glad your furkid is doing well and you found a plan that works well. And that he loves it is even better! He’s a lucky cat to have found a great home.
I avoid Purina like the plague, for various reasons, one, for their ruthlessness in the marketplace.
I’ll take anything they say with a grain of poulty byproduct.
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