Blue Buffalo admits to byproduct mealPurina has issued a response to Blue Buffalo’s admission in court on May 6, 2015, that a “substantial” and “material” portion of Blue Buffalo pet food sold to consumers contained poultry byproduct meal, despite advertising claims to the contrary.In October of last year, we informed you that a supplier of ingredients to us and many other well-known brands of pet foods had sent chicken meal to some of their customers that contained poultry by-product meal. We said at the time that, as a result, some of our food could include this mislabeled ingredient, that we had stopped buying ingredients from this facility and that we had reached out to the FDA. Just recently, this former supplier made additional disclosures in legal proceedings that showed that a substantial proportion of its shipments to our contract manufacturing facilities prior to May 2014 were, in fact, mislabeled.In view of this new information, this past Wednesday, May 6, 2015 we informed the Court of our conclusion that a material amount of our dry foods manufactured with mislabeled ingredients shipped prior to May 2014 had been impacted, and requested permission to bring a claim against this former supplier and others involved for intentionally mislabeling ingredients and unjustly enriching themselves. The Court immediately granted our request.source: BLUE's Response—Nestle Purina Recent Press ReleaseSummary: BB advertised there was no by-product meal in their food, ever. Purina tested BB food samples and filed a false advertising lawsuit. BB initially claimed it never happened and claimed Purina's testing lab was not reliable. BB now claims they did not know what their ingredient supplier was sending to their contract food manufacturing plant (BB never tested their product or ingredients to determine if their claims were accurate).

Thanks for posting the updates.NOT in defense of either company but this could happen to any of them regarding their "suppliers" of ingredients. Can you imagine all companies having to test each and every supplier ingredient shipped in before using it? Buying from only reputable suppliers is the answer to that.Blue Buffalo has admitted that SEVERAL DIFFERENT companies have been manufacturing their dog food for them due to demand.http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/article_bfde9e4c-288b-11e4-a86b-001a4bcf887a.html IMHO, THAT is where they lost control of the quality of ingredients.I saw the inconsistencies first hand over the past year.I grind down my BB dog food to a powder for the old timer. Which is one of the first steps when testing in labs. I found a HUGE dependencies in the content of the food from bag to bag. Sometimes there were a high amount of fibrous material and bone chips other times not. And just the size and look of the kibble changed often as it was supplied by the various different manufacturer they were using.They just purchased/built a $35 million dollar manufacturing plant. Let's hope that they will now have better control of the suppliers of their ingredients.

rockhillmanor wrote:Can you imagine all companies having to test each and every supplier ingredient shipped in before using it? Yes I can. Our company does that as part of normal quality control; we call it incoming material inspection.In the first link Purine claims that there was evidence in the suppler documents submitted to the court by BB indicated the ingredients contained by-product meal.“Blue Buffalo now claims it had no way of knowing the bags contained byproduct 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,” Schopp said.Supplier audit is also something our company does as part of our quality system.

Sorry, Blue Buffalo has NO credibility in my book. It is a company built on advertising and profit and claims about nutrition are just without merit. If you check their web site, they list all their top executives, board of directors and nowhere is a veterinary nutritionist. Do they ever do food trials that are based on anything other than palatability as do many reputable food companies including Purina, Mars/P&G (Iams, Eukanuba), Hill's, Royal Canin?Their whole schtick is that they provide a natural, holostic diet with things you'd eat with no "objectionable" ingredients. Their premise that byproducts and meat meal is objectionable is just false. Quality byproducts and meal (and even grains) can provided needed nutrients and can be excellent sources of valuable nutrients. They got caught.Doug, DVM

Good for Purina. I hope Blue Buffalo gets hit by the media.

dturm wrote:Sorry, Blue Buffalo has NO credibility in my book. It is a company built on advertising and profit and claims about nutrition are just without merit. If you check their web site, they list all their top executives, board of directors and nowhere is a veterinary nutritionist. Do they ever do food trials that are based on anything other than palatability as do many reputable food companies including Purina, Mars/P&G (Iams, Eukanuba), Hill's, Royal Canin?Their whole schtick is that they provide a natural, holostic diet with things you'd eat with no "objectionable" ingredients. Their premise that byproducts and meat meal is objectionable is just false. Quality byproducts and meal (and even grains) can provided needed nutrients and can be excellent sources of valuable nutrients. They got caught.Doug, DVMBB has never been a favorite among the truly geeky dog food crowd. There were too many things they wouldn't disclose. Of course all companies are going to keep some things private, but BB wouldn't disclose a lot of the fairly basic stuff that other pet food companies will usually readily tell when customer service is contacted. I think their appeal has been to the average pet owner who just wants to feed their dog something better but doesn't want to bother with any real research. Those people are sucked in by slick advrtising, and of course that covers a LOT of people.

Purina v Blue Buffalo update | Good Sam Community

Deb_and_Ed_M
Explorer II
May 24, 2015
Wanderlost wrote:
Our Bernese Mountain Dog lived 16 years eating Gravy Train with added leftovers. Never had any health problems, just finally slowed down and one morning greeted Dad as he left, and had gone to the Rainbow Bridge when he came home two hours later.

I'm STUNNED - that's amazing! That's almost twice their expected lifespan?? Good job of keeping your dogs healthy!!!!
Wanderlost
Nomad II
May 24, 2015
Our Bernese Mountain Dog lived 16 years eating Gravy Train with added leftovers. Never had any health problems, just finally slowed down and one morning greeted Dad as he left, and had gone to the Rainbow Bridge when he came home two hours later.
Oaklevel
Explorer
May 24, 2015
Over the past 50 plus years our dogs have been on some form of Purina Dog foods. Never fell into the hype & adds or expense of the other brands. Our old dog is 16 and going strong..... The biggest thing we avoid is table scraps/food...
AZPops
Explorer
May 18, 2015
Awh heck, nevur mind. .....

Anonymous
xteacher
Explorer
May 15, 2015
I've never been a fan of BB (previous dogs refused to eat the "bits" in it), and there have been quite a few anecdotal reports of it making dogs ill lately. This, and the latest admission by the company of misleading advertising is enough to keep me away from it.
toedtoes
Explorer III
May 14, 2015
Dogs thrived on Ken-L-Ration for years and years.

I agree with Dturn, it's the misleading advertising and false claims that are the issue.

And as someone above mentioned, the quality of the food varies bag to bag - to me, that's the biggest reason to avoid them. I want to know that my dogs are getting consistent quality with their food, if a brand can't guarantee that on a bag by bag basis, then I'm not going to waste my time with them.
dturm
Moderator
May 14, 2015
slickrock steve wrote:
And to flip that coin....our three dogs now, and 3 before that, were all on Blue.
We do feed the blue "Freedom" grain free, and all are in great shape, lots of nice shiny coat, and quite active.

I never said or implied that dogs can't do well and thrive on BB, just as they can on plain old Dog Chow and just about every brand of dog food out there. It is the task of the owner to find what works best for their dog as NO food is universally the best for every individual.

It's just that their advertising is misleading. Their business model does not put scientifically proven medical/nutritional information as the first consideration.

Then it's now been proven that they made false claims about their ingredients.

That just about blows my trust in this company (what there was to start with).
slickrock_steve
Explorer
May 14, 2015
And to flip that coin....our three dogs now, and 3 before that, were all on Blue.
We do feed the blue "Freedom" grain free, and all are in great shape, lots of nice shiny coat, and quite active.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h84/siseley/dogs%20and%20cats%20and%20goats/GEDC0362.jpg
BCSnob
Explorer
May 14, 2015
I'll take a specified meat meal over fresh meat as the first ingredient any day; that way I know that the most abundant ingredient by weight will remain the most abundant part of the cooked kibble. Why should I spend the money on water that will be cooked away (fresh meat likely being a more expensive ingredient than a specified meat meal).
rockhillmanor
Explorer
May 14, 2015
I still think Beneful takes the prize for their commercial showing all that "fresh wholesome food", fresh chicken breasts and fresh vegetables all falling into the bag of dog food.

Yea right like that fresh food shown is the form it is in when it arrives at the plant to go into your dogs food! Powder, powder, rendered, rendered, meal, meal is more like it.

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