Currently browsing posts about: Pet food

Attorneys in California Minnesota, Georgia, and North Carolina have filed a class action lawsuit in California against the leading manufacturers and sellers of pet food: Mars, Nestlé (no relation) Purina, Hills, Petsmart, and several veterinary hospital chains owned by one or another of these companies.

Why?  Prescription pet foods cost more but are no different than any other kind of pet food.

As the complain puts it:

• Defendents’ prescription pet food contains no drug or other ingredient not also common in non-prescription pet food.
• Defendents’ marketing, labeling, and/or sale of prescription pet food is deceptive, collusive, and in violation of federal antitrust law and California consumer-protection law.
• Defendents are engaged in an anticompetitive conspiracy to market and sell pet food as prescription pet food to consumers at above-market prices that would not otherwise prevail in the absence of their collusive prescription-authorization requirement.

As Malden Nesheim and I explained in our book Feed Your Pet Right (which is really an analysis of the pet food industry), all compete-and-balanced pet foods must meet identical nutritional standards.

The only difference between the most expensive and cheapest commercial pet foods is in where the ingredients come from.  When writing our book, we could not find any research demonstrating that pets eating the most expensive commercial brands were any healthier than those eating the cheapest.

No pet food company would want to do research like that.   Much more and better research is needed.

The lawsuit charges that the companies are using prescriptions to raise the price of the products.

The complaint is interesting to read.

• Item 46 points out that prescription pet food does not follow FDA requirements for manufacture, does not appear in the FDA’s “green book” listing approved animal drugs, and is made from the same ingredients found in common pet foods.
• Item 53 points out that nobody would purchase prescription pet food at higher prices, “if not for the misleading marketing described herein.”

I will be watching this one with riveted interest.  Stay tuned.

When I wrote my books on pet foods some years ago, Feed Your Pet Right and Pet Food Politics, I was reading a lot about veterinary practice and how it has shifted from large animals to small.  The shift is so great that hardly anyone trains to be a farm-animal veterinarian anymore.  Almost all students focus on pet dogs and cats.

Among practicing veterinarians,

• 75 % treat pets
• 6% work treat horses
• 8% treat farm animals

The USDA wants to change that, at least a little.

It announced an award program of $4.5 million to pay off the school loans of up to 49 veterinarians who promise to work for three years in rural America where veterinarians are scarce.  The maximum award is $75,000, which is expected to cover half the average school-loan debt.  Recipients may be required to devote at least 80% of their time to work on food animals.

Sounds like a great opportunity to get terrific experience.  I hope lots of recent grads apply.

A twitter follower, @davelove1 asks:

@marionnestle what do you think about big food companies buying pet food brands?

His question referred to an article in the Washington Post titled the McDonaldization of pet foods.

The New York Times also covered the buying of pet food brands by Big Food companies, in this case, the purchase by Smucker’s of Big Heart Pet Brands, “the company once known as Del Monte.”

That rang a bell.

In my book with Malden Nesheim about the pet food industry, Feed Your Pet Right, we used Del Monte as an example of the buying and selling of pet food brands.

That was 2009.  Now we need to add new boxes for Big Heart and for Smuckers.

Del Monte isn’t the only Big Food company to own pet food brands:

• Nestlé (no relation) owns Purina PetCare, with a long list of brands.
• Mars (yes, the chocolate company) has a Petcare division
• Procter & Gamble used to own Iams but sold it to Mars in 2014 for nearly $3 billion

The one other big brand is Hills.  It is owned by Colgate Palmolive.

Of course Big Food companies want to own pet food brands; they are hugely profitable.

• The ingredients are cheap byproducts of human food production that would otherwise go to waste.
• They can be sold at shockingly high prices, especially when marketed with health claims.

Our book gives generic recipes for making your own complete and balanced pet foods.  Enjoy!

Dave Love @davelove1 sent me a tweet: @marionnestle what do you think about big food companies buying pet food brands?

His question referred to an article in the Washington Post titled the McDonaldization of pet foods.

The New York Times also covered the issue that triggered this question: the purchase by Smucker of Big Heart Pet Brands, “the company once known as Del Monte.”

That rang a bell.

In my book with Malden Nesheim about the pet food industry, Feed Your Pet Right, we were so intrigued by how big food companies buy and sell pet food brands that we did a figure using Del Monte as an example.

I can’t figure out how to make this diagram bigger but you get the idea: current Del Monte (now Smucker Big Heart) holdings are the result of the merger and acquisition of five original companies and many in between.

Companies trade pet food brands like baseball cards.

There’s gold in them thar hills.

The annual meeting of the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics, formerly the American Dietetic Association, always provides an incredible exhibit of products from food companies—the latest in dietetic junk food and food company nutritional spin.

Knowing how much I enjoy these things, and that I am working on a book about food advocates and the soft drink industry (Oxford University Press, September 2015), several of my colleagues brought back souvenirs.

Functional foods (with “healthy” ingredients above and beyond what occurs naturally)

• For Keurig brewing machines, a container of Fibersol Cran-Raspberry flavored instant tea mix, with soluble fiber added (is tea really a significant source of soluble fiber?).
• MealEnders.com’s chocolate mint signaling lozenges, “an antidote to overeating.”  If you feel that you are overeating, suck on one: “take control, curb appetite, get results” (if only).
• A 6-ounce can of Kao Nutrition’s black coffee with 270 mg polyphenol (coffee chlorogenic acid), naturally present because the coffee was not brewed at high temperature (well, coffee is a plant extract, after all).

Swag

• A pen with a pull-out section that gives the potassium content of commonly consumed foods (these come in other versions too, apparently).

Soda company propaganda

• A brochure from PepsiCo’s Nutrition Team, HydrateNow.  Gatorade, it points out, is 93% water (and the other 7%, pray tell?.
• A pamphlet from PepsiCo on Calorie Balance: “many things influence your everyday nutrition.  For maintaining a healthy weight, the most important factors are how many calories you eat and the total calories you use up”  (but if those calories happen to be empty?).
• A PepsiCo brochure on Diet Beverages for People with Diabetes (but it still is advertising Pepsi).
• A list of PepsiCo drinks that meet the USDA’s nutrition standards for schools (a long list, alas).
• A scientific paper, “What is causing the worldwide rise in body weight,” sponsored by Coca-Cola (Coke’s answer: lack of physical activity, of course.)
• A poster from the American College of Cardiology, “Striking an energy balance,” sponsored in part by Coca-Cola.   It says: “Drink water or no- or low-calorie beverages” (it does not say you should “Drink less soda”).
• A pamphlet on National School Beverage Guidelines sponsored by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Dr Pepper Snapple, and the American Beverage Association:  “The beverage industry committed to bold change and then made it happen.  Working with our school partners, we transformed the beverages available to students” (yes, but it doesn’t explain that public pressure forced them to do this).
• A Coca-Cola pamphlet, Balancing Act.  This gives five easy ways to burn 100 calories: playing soccer 13 minutes, briskly walking 15 minutes, climbing stairs 10 minutes, jumping rope 9 minutes, gardening 19 minutes (based on a 150 lb person).  Funny, it doesn’t mention that one 12-ounce Coke is 140 calories.
• A FamilyDoctor.org pamphlet, Healthy Eating for Kids, from the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Dietetic Association, distributed with a grant from Coca-Cola.  It lists healthy eating habits—family meals, be active, limit screen time, stay positive, etc (but—surprise—does not suggest that your kid might be healthier not drinking sugar-sweetened beverages).

Treasures, all.  I really love this stuff.  Thanks.

I haven’t said anything about pet food in a while, but plenty is happening with it since my pet food books came out—Pet Food Politics (2008) and Feed Your Pet Right (2010).

A few items I’ve collected over the past month or so.

• FDA regulations: The FDA finally issued its proposed rule for processing standards for all facilities engaged in manufacturing, processing, packing or holding animal feed and pet food.  These include  Good Manufacturing Processes (GMPs) and risk-based preventive controls (formerly known as HACCP), among other provisions.
• Safety tips: Food Safety News lists ten ways to make pet food safer—pay attention and follow food safety procedures diligently, for one thing.
• Double standard: Bill Marler complains that the FDA is constantly announcing recalls of Salmonella-contaminated pet foods, even though few of them result in cases of Salmonella in pets or humans, whereas foods for humans take forever to get recalled even when they cause illness.
• Pet food recalls: The FDA certainly lists plenty of pet food recalls, and even has a web page for them.
• FDA oversight: The FDA is on the job and testing.  Bravo issued recalls because of potential Listeria contamination.  It did so because the FDA says an independent lab detected the bacteria in a sample.
• Marketing wars: Pet Food Industry, the excellent publication for manufacturers, has a juicy story about the marketing claims war between Nestlé (no relation) Purina PetCare and Blue Buffalo.  Each has sued the other.  Blue Buffalo has already been called on its advertising claims, perhaps in response to a complaint from  Hill’s Pet Nutrition.
• The ongoing mystery: Pet jerky treats, mostly imported from China, linked to at least 3 human illnesses and more than 1,000 dog deaths and 4,800 dog illnesses, mostly from gastrointestinal problems, liver and kidney disease, and neurological and skin conditions.  The FDA says it still can’t figure out the cause, despite 7 years of trying. symptoms in their pets,” said FDA.

If we can’t get pet food right, there’s not much hope for human food either.

When Mal Nesheim and I were writing our book about the pet food industry, Feed Your Pet Right, we were constantly challenged to defend our contention that dogs can eat pretty much anything, including commercial food products made with grains.

Our reasoning: dogs are not wolves.  They evolved to take full advantage of the leftovers from human food consumption.

Now a study published in Nature Magazine, “The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet,” explains how this happened. 

The investigators sequenced the entire genomes of dogs and wolves.  They identified 3.8 million genetic variants, and used them to identify 36 genomic regions that appeared related to dog domestication.  Many of these gene regions appear to be associated with the behavioral changes needed to domesticate wolves.  

Ten of the genes turned out to have roles in starch digestion; three of these genes promote digestion.

The investigators identified mutations in key wolf genes that allowed this to happen.  The study provides evidence that dogs “thrive on a diet rich in starch, relative to the carnivorous diet of wolves.”  

This, they say, constitutes a crucial step in the early domestication of dogs.

In conclusion, we have presented evidence that dog domestication was accompanied by selection at three genes with key roles in starch digestion: AMY2B, MGAM and SGLT1. Our results show that adaptations that allowed the early ancestors of modern dogs to thrive on a diet rich in starch, relative to the carnivorous diet of wolves, constituted a crucial step in early dog domestication…In light of previous results describing the timing and location of dog domestication, our findings may suggest that the development of agriculture catalysed the domestication of dogs.

 If your dog is domesticated, it will love those carbs just as you do.  But keep it away from the pizza and cookies.  We seem to have co-evolved to put on the pounds together too.

My not quite son-in-law is stage managing a play in China, and writes:

I looked at the pictures of Mayor Koch and you in your kitchen last week and it worked fine.  Now I’m here in Shenzhen & Internet Explorer isn’t able to open your Blog.   See!  That’s what you get for all those nasty things you said about the Chinese baby formulas and pet foods!

I guess he’s referring to my posts on the deliberate adulteration of pet food and infant formula with melamine.  Is this site really blocked?  If so, is it really a threat to the Chinese state?

Seems far-fetched, no?  Anyone know anything about this?