Well you all got to see Georgia destroying my wonderful Miss Litterbox certificate. Well here I am exploring the box that everything came in, just to make sure I had gotten everything!
I have to say that I am surprised at the responses to the open letter to Hills. We definitely feel strongly about our cat food don’t we? Not that I am surprised, as I am very interested in satisfying my belly at all times.
At any rate, here’s a question that perhaps you all can help me answer. Many of the diets that had products made a menu foods, said they had really good quality control. Their quality control was excellent. If they sub contract who actually MAKES the food for their companies, how much oversight do they have? Given that there are some sites saying Wysong contracts with Menu foods and other places that say Wysong contracts with a place called Evanger , how can we find out exactly who our food companies are contracting with to produce the food. Can we find track records for these companies as well?
Merrick foods does list on their site that they produce all their food in house. Good for them. Whatever level of quality control they have is probably actuallyoccuring.
Fellow cats: I am in a search and from this comes my Scavenger Food Hunt!!!
When a pet food company says they have excellent quality control, what exactly are they doing to insure this? What does this mean? What should we be looking for.
How do we find out who is actually producing the products and how to do we find out about these companies?
If you can only find out for one company, I’d love it if you sent me the link. If you have a link to a site that answers these questions, please place it in the comments!
Any type of contest needs a prize. My prize for this contest:
A static webpage with the links you find me and a summary of what’s on each of those links so that if we find ourselves in need of cat food information we’ll all have a place to go to start looking at it.  I’ll do my best to print factual information only about the cat food companies. No opinions as to the quality of the food or what’s a better food.
Hi Chey, we don’t know if this helps but we found a list that doesn’t test on animals their products. We have only been to a few of the sites listed in the article we posted but maybe something will show up. We will keep our eyes peeled.
Here’s the link. We boycott Iams – Sending purrs and will see what we can find out!
http://www.silentmessenger.org/blogs/elijahsrescue.php?title=boycott_iams_pet_foods&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
from http://www.silentmessenger.org/blogs/elijahsrescue.php
Thank you Bad Kitty. It’s not exactly what I’m looking for but I think it’s a useful link. Who knows where this search will take me? It would work on the list of links I’m looking for though.
You Said “No opinions as to the quality of the food or what’s a better food.”
Oops we are sorry, we were not giving an opinion on Iams as in if it’s better or not, this is dealing with how they TEST their food and that to me is part of quality control. If that quality control means testing on animals that are in horrible conditions and such, we don’t agree with their quality control.
Oh what a mess I have made! Sorry!! But it’s a list of places that at least are not cruel to animals.
Chey, I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, but Royal Canin publishes a bit about their quality control on their web site:
http://www.royalcanin.us/documents/RDQuality.pdf
I’m fed Almo Nature. The UK (English) site simply mentions that the food is subject to quality control before packaging:
http://www.directrecordings.co.uk/almo/catfood.html
They also list their ingredients (no wheat gluten): http://www.directrecordings.co.uk/almo/documents/catfoodwetproduct.pdf
Hi,
My pet human has posted info about Wysong on my blog today. I am still in NY with Elton John so i allowed her to use my blog.
That Solid Gold is very tasty!
yummO
zevo
Unless there is a massive class action suit brought against all the companies involved (and we think there should be), the public will never know the names/locations of all the sub-contractors involved in the production of any given batch of food. Our question is not only why is there wheat in cat food, but why are they bringing it in from China!!! We grow tons of wheat in this country that is subject to FDA rules.
It is very disturbing you can’t find this info. We’ve been searching Natura Pets (Makers of Innova Evo) and they say nothing about where and how their food is manufactured. I have found out that their wet food is made by Menu! But there are no grains involved. Luckily, we only eat the dry and Menu states on the recall site that they only make wet food.
Good luck with this important endeavor!
I’m sorry to say it, but I doubt that any of the pet food manufacturers are going to make this information public, and especially so in the current environment. And they basically can do whatever they want, with little or no oversight.
After researching cat foods some time ago, I came to the conclusion that the only safe way to go was to make our own – although I’ve been lax and have sadly given ours some of the recalled Nutro.
One of the books I read that convinced me homemade was the way to go was “The Veterninarian’s Guide to Natural Remedies for Cats.” The chapter “The Problem with Pet Food” Iis a MUST read for every cat owner. f you’d like, send me your email address and I’ll type the chapter and send it to you.
Here are just a couple paragraphs that explain why I think we’ll never get reliable information about any pet food company:
“The industry behind these products is big, big business — topping sales of $10 billion a year [in 1999] in the United States alone. Competition is fierce among the major manufacturers. They try to win your allegiance with hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, meaningless and misleading nutrition claims, and cute names for products. In this competitive scramble, however, quality and good nutrition are often sacrificed to economics and profit. Unfortunately there are NO government standards regulating quality, which changes evern within single product lines of a company as cheaper ingredients are constatly sought to replace more expensive ones.” [This probably explains why wheat gluten from China.]
Additionally ….
“The pet food industry is constantly changing. One company with a high-quality product now may start cheapending its food to save on cost …
“Pet food manufacturers are not all-knowing, and something will probably be lacking in any commercial diet you give your pet.
“Many studies have cited health problems resulting from animals being fed a single product over a long period of time.”
Sorry to be a spoilsport, but I don’t think I’ll ever trust a commercial pet food company again, no matter how safe and nutritionally balanced their product is supposed to be, no matter what they tell you, and no matter what is discovered from other sources!
I know a bit about quality control having worked in the field for many years. Most of my background was electrical/ mechanical, but I have experience in food processing as well.
Generally, products in the US have more stringent controls and also benefit from more oversight from the end producer. Products that are canned outside of the US are required only to state country of packing(ie Canada, UK) not where the contents came from. It is up to the individual manufacturers to monitor the production. This varies from, very good to non existent.
It may be interesting to note that a product may be fully compliant with all regulations and still have failures within the system. I think this is what happened.
I would also like to point out, that sadly since animals are unable to speak, we learned of this too late for some of our beloved companions. If I ate something that didn’t agree with me, I would avoid it and if necessary report it to the authorities. Animals don’t have that reasoning ability.
I mourn for the loss of any pets due to this crisis.
Hi, Chey – Here’s that url to that article you wanted me to put here:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0106-04.htm
(I’m not sure how to make it a link in these comments.)
By the way, Mom searched Nature’s Variety’s website today, and can’t find a) an address for them, or b) a phone number. The only contact information is a form on their website, and she wrote them twice Friday but hasn’t received a response as of yet.
No, wait … she just got the bag of Raw Instinct kibble that she won’t feed us since Ninna got sick, and there’s an address on it in Lincoln, NE.
Lux & everybody, here’s another url about this same subject:
http://www.homevet.com/petcare/foodbook.html
Not sure this is what you’re after, but http://petsitusa.com/blog/?p=210 is a page from Pet Sitters USA (http://www.petsitusa.com) with a list of foods NOT in the recall, mostly with links to the companies.
New Cat City (http://newcats.blogspot.com) has some additional information about a couple companies, including Old Mother Hubbard ans Wellness (mostly negative) and Natural Balance (positive).
Thank you Luxor–it was a good article.
Thanks Artsy Catsy. We’ve tried to avoid feeding one brand exclusively simply because we hope that that way any missing nutrients will be picked up in the other food. We’ve never had a problem. The woman said sadly although homemade diets are usually better, even humans don’t always eat homemade. Imagine how much harder it is to get them to create a meal for their pets! Also, because Georgia is quite old, the vets recommended against it. Homemade diets are so high in protein it would be a shock to her kidneys to change now.
Kate we have learned that European pet food quality is higher than that of the United States and many premium US manufacturer actually use the label that allows them to sell their foods in Europe as a badge of honor.
Radcliff, Allie, Luna and Ozzie–we’ll be over there to check that out.
Thank you everyone for the links. This is wonderful!
Radcliff et al–this is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for!!! It’s not as complete as I would have liked but this is PERFECT!!!!
Thanks, Artsy Catsy & Radcliff et al.:
Does anyone know of a book of natural cat food recipes that is specifically for cats who’ve had struvite bladder stones? Mom’s still giving Silk and me the raw frozen organic chicken medallions from Nature’s Variety, but she wants some other options since they deal (in some unspecified way) with Menu Foods.
Thanks for responding on my blog, Chey … Mom just found this intriguing site:
https://www.petdiets.com/consult/default.asp?ConsultType=Nutritional%20Consultation
(However, she can’t afford a $200 consultation.)
Chey, thanks for the information on the Katz-N-Flocken. With a name like that (very German) my humans suspected it might originate in Germany. But they discovered It is an American product, but that it is also available here in Germany. So they will be able to buy some before we move back to Canada, so I can try it out. They still wish they could buy my Almo Nature wet food in Canada (sadly they can’t) since it is totally unprocessed and consists only of 75% meat (100% organic chicken or 100% sea water fish), 24% cooking water and 1% organic rice).
It seems the pet food industry in most parts of Europe (including Germany) is a lot more highly regulated than in the U.S. or Canada, and that quality assurance standards are a lot higher.
Better late than nefur? We haf two sites to mention.
We eat Wellness, which is at http://www.oldmotherhubbard.com/ and they at least say they don’t use any wheat gluten.
In Madison, WI there’s a 3-location pet store called Mad Cat http://www.felineunderground.com/ and they’ve been trying to help their customers wif the recalls. http://www.felineunderground.com/recall.htm They avoid pet foods wif gluten and are droppin one manufacturerererer who refused to tell them whether their food is made by Menu Foods. This is my favoritest pet store – each shop has at least 1 shop cat testin out all the toys, foods, an pet beds. Lucy purrfurs hamock-type beds while Morty likes to be way up high. The tabby that looks like me is furry shy.
More Blue Buffalo, as well as others just added today (4/27):
http://nationalpetfoundation.com/dog-food-recall.html/american-nutrition.html
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