Dog food issues

I know that almost every variety of BB has chicken in some form or another in it (no matter what the label on the bag says - turn it over and read the ingredients carefully),

There are very few dog products in general that have no chicken in them. We use Blue Basics Salmon and Sweet Potato for Jesse. Jake's on it right now-he stopped eating the lamb-based food we were using. Should be interesting to see if we notice any changes.

Why my Kindle doesn't speak "RV.net forum" is beyond me...

What I MEANT to say is that I just switched to Blue Buffalo - but seeing the statistics for it becoming another "mega-food" - I'm going back to Diamond, then. My dogs have always done well on that - and it's half the price of BB.

I know it sounds strange - but I'm a lot more comfortable with a company who says "Oh crud - we got a bad batch of (whatever) and we're recalling our food" - than one who says "Oh no - not us! We're natural and holistic. We source all our stuff from the USA"

Eons ago, there was a local meat plant who bragged about their products coming from local farms. A nice warm, fuzzy thought, right? Until someone ratted out a local farm that had been sending dead, non-bovine animals through the plant - GAAACK!

I've heard of problems with BB on a couple of dog forums I'm a member of. Dogs seem to either do really well on it, or terrible. I know that almost every variety of BB has chicken in some form or another in it (no matter what the label on the bag says - turn it over and read the ingredients carefully), so if your dog is sensitive to chicken in kibble, I'd avoid it. One type of BB that I've heard the fewest complaints about is their Freedom line.

Scale-up in terms of production will often lead to increases in defect rates (decreased quality).

Blue Buffalo has maintained its trend of rapid, yet diminishing, growth rates off of an initial relatively small base. Sales of about $352 million in 2011 grew 83% relative to 2010. This trend continued into the first half of 2012 as sales increased more than 60% compared with the first half of 2011.

We expect continued rapid sales growth in excess of 40% for all of 2012, with
significant declines in the growth rate thereafter, including 20% growth in
2013.

Source: S&P assigns Blue Buffalo 'B' corporate credit rating

Bishop said construction of the Heartland Pet Foods Manufacturing plant, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Blue Buffalo Co., will begin immediately. The plan calls for full production — 30 million pounds of pet food a month — to begin in 2015.

We've been feeding BB for a long time, both dogs have done really well on it.
When we got Bubba he was on Taste of the Wild, I didn't think it agreed with him as he had itchy skin and oily fur.
After a while on BB he started to show a beautiful shinny coat, I'll monitor this closely as I don't want to switch him.
Thanks for the link.

Sher

As far as the statistical increase in reporting goes, it's quite possible complaints increased for a different reason, i.e. owners are finally making the correlation between their pet's illness and the food OR they are making a false correlation. Stats are a funny thing and that can be presented in a way to serve the presenters purpose.

Any entity that prepares food is bound to run into issues-think of all the beef and produce recalls for e. coli. Best thing to take away from all of this is no one is exempt despite their name or reputation. Also keep in mind that article is 5 months old-issues from that long ago may well be resolved.

Oh, no, dang it all! We've had both dogs and the cat on BB for two years. The cat eats Wilderness, the Dogs have Freedom and the smaller bag with salmon potato. All dry food. Recently, Darcy has been refusing the Freedom. Years ago when there was a recall on the canned food with gravy, different brands, Our dogs were refusing it. That was a clue and I quit feeding it, just in time, I think.

Who would think Darcy might be our canary in a coal mine? She is our hunter who eats anything smaller than herself. Keep me posted on this BB issue, please.

p.s. Nobody has symptoms such as described, though. There I go again...

I think with both human and pet foods we're going to find that with the more sensitive tests for adulterants in food plus better collection of data on cases of suspected food borne illnesses the more cases of adulterated food we're going to find.

Better tests, better awareness, and better communication will lead to finding more cases. The public should be careful to not take this to mean there has been an actual increase in incidence.

Mark

Excellent article, the vets they quoted are two of the most respected vets in the country.

These food recalls are very troublesome. BB has had a good reputation, so it looks like even the good ones can have issues.

The thing to keep in mind is that the actual incidence of illnesses to animals is very rare, but everyone should monitor recalls and if issues arise (recalled food or not), contact your vet.