Has anyone else heard of this?

addiebee

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That's terrible! I had heard that NUTRO had changed its formula and not for the better - but I didn't know it was making animals sick.

Thanks for the heads up... I passed it along to my rescue's yahoo group.
 
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proudmamiof4

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Originally Posted by AddieBee

That's terrible! I had heard that NUTRO had changed its formula and not for the better - but I didn't know it was making animals sick.

Thanks for the heads up... I passed it along to my rescue's yahoo group.
Your very welcome, I feed it to my rescue cats as well as the feral cats. I am going to be looking for something else now though! It is so sad so little care is put into the making and selling of pet food
People don't realize how much peoples pets mean to them!
 

novemberflowers

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I was just coming here to see what people's reactions to this have been. I think that it is good that the FDA is taking the complaints seriously and am trying not to over react, because it could be something else making the animals sick.

However, I feed my cats Nutro Natural Choice Complete Care and I think I will have to switch foods to be safe. I have loved the food - the cats really like it, they have nice coats, have maintained a good weight, do not have stinky poop, etc... I am not willing to take risks on their health, though, and would like to find something for them where there have not been health concerns. (They also each eat 1/2 can a day of select flavors of Fancy Feast for wet...I know, it's not the best food, but when I gave them other canned foods as kittens, they either stared at me and wouldn't eat it or puked it up)

So does anyone know of a comparable dry food that has not had safety issues? I want something that they will like and will keep them healthy.... the cats are 2 years old and I have access to PetsMart and PetCo.. ...
 

sharky

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the writer of that article works NOT for the FDA but for a website that likes to files lawsuits. If you go to the FDA website you will find NO such article or warning ... Yes if you sign up the FDA will send you warnings and recalls ... Yes awhile back Nutro had an issue with getting some of the RECALLED food back from the EU into the US, that turned out to be paperwork
 

mbjerkness

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Originally Posted by sharky

the writer of that article works NOT for the FDA but for a website that likes to files lawsuits. If you go to the FDA website you will find NO such article or warning ... Yes if you sign up the FDA will send you warnings and recalls ... Yes awhile back Nutro had an issue with getting some of the RECALLED food back from the EU into the US, that turned out to be paperwork
There was a simuliar warning in Canada about Royal Canin cat foods. About 18 months ago saying lawsuit were being filed. The warning disappeared. I have not been able to find anything about a lawsuit ever being filed. It was obviously false.
 

darlili

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consumeraffairs.com is a truly dreadful website - note that they're a .com, not .org, .edu, .gov, or anything else, but they parade themselves as though they're a public consumers group. Bunch of attorneys looking for deep pockets to sue and playing on people's fears. Nutro has a FAQ on this, if you look at their web site. (http://www.nutroproducts.com/nutro-f....shtml#affairs)

You could call your vet and ask if they have any concerns over Nutro. Certainly, especially after the big recall, any problems with a major manufacturer would be listed everywhere, including your vet's office, not just at that one web site.

I feed Nutro and certainly won't change based on nonverifiable information. I'm sorry, that site really bothers me, and I'm sorry so many people get taken in by them. Just because a company is in business, and might actually make a profit, does not automatically make them evil - but site like consumeraffairs.com likes to play off fears and prejudices.
 

arlyn

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Also after a check of the FDA's site, there is no mention at all of Nutro aside from the Menu foods fiasco back in 07
 
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proudmamiof4

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Thanks everyone for clearing this up!I was really worried, and was worried about finding another food that all the ferals and rescue kitties would like....Thanks again!
 

tutti_bella

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I am trying to keep an open mind to when it comes to reports such as these. I find that Franny Syufy addressed this issue well and I have to agree with her on this:-

ConsumerAffairs.com & Nutro Pet Foods: Show us the Goods


http://cats.about.com/b/
 

sharky

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Originally Posted by tutti_bella

I am trying to keep an open mind to when it comes to reports such as these. I find that Franny Syufy addressed this issue well and I have to agree with her on this:-

ConsumerAffairs.com & Nutro Pet Foods: Show us the Goods

http://cats.about.com/b/
I say find me a food that an animal has LIVED FOREVER on... truth is animals die ... Mine only occasionally get Nutro canned since the dry has soybean oil and I have one sensitive to it ... I can List about 10 different foods with similar Unexplained deaths ... I use a bit of sense : Nutro is used by MILLIONS worldwide and there are but a few hundred to thousand complaints which NO One can really trace back to the food ... The odds say well sorry to be blunt but likely the food is perfectly fine...

I also would state this about some of the other scape goated brands....
 

followedbydolls

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I hadn't read this & obviously their are some questions as to it being a decent source but i will say my cats all stopped eating it.. i switched foods and normal eating portions returned.

Now i am NOT saying their is anything wrong with the food but i still found it odd, i am still finding it odd.. that is why i had questioned awhile back about formula changes but was told their hadn't been any.

Foods are very tricky & since the recalls people are on edge more than ever, can't say i blame them either.
 

darlili

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Here's the deal - if consumeraffairs.com had real, substantive and verifiable information - why hasn't any other real hard news forum picked it up? Assuming even 1% of their anecdotal evidence was real, and extrapolating to the millions of animals fed Nutro every single day around the world, hundreds of thousands of animals would be sick or dead - with direct linkage to the food, verified by vets. This wouldn't show up on CNN? Really?


If nothing else, do you really think Mars would have bought Nutro if due diligence had revealed an ongoing problem with the manufacturer's foods?

Or, what does your own vet say about Nutro? Anybody ask?

Obviously, there's no one perfect food for any pet - and cats are notoriously fickle - but to take the word of a web site, without checking with your own health care provider, doesn't seem reasonable to me.
 

sharky

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I asked my few vets two still recommend daily and one thinks it is a good food but recommends grain free
 

darlili

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My two stopped eating Nutro's small cans about three months ago - just wouldn't touch. I called Nutro - they asked me to send a can back for examination. Their initial thought was perhaps a batch had either been stored improperly, or maybe 'cooked' too long and the smell/taste wasn't perfect. I did get a letter saying the food tested out fine, healthwise, anyway.

So, few months later I decided to try a small can - and my two acted like I had been depriving them of their very favorite food in all the world and scarfed it right down. Kitties are weird.
 

novemberflowers

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In fairness, this topic was posted very soon after the article came out and it wasn't known yet whether other news channels and publications would be picking up on it. Yep, there is absolutely no good evidence presented in that article that there is anything wrong with the food, and the publication has an agenda.

Still, even the slight possibility that a pet food brand could be more prone to producing bad batches can be disconcerting. Peace of mind is important and sometimes even more important to some people than having proof. For me, there will come a point where I feel like it would be less harmful to try another food that has a better reputation for safety/consistency (and that wasn't so blasted in the 2007 recall) than to be loyal to a company and risk being sorry later if evidence did come up that there was a reason for concern. Sure, I could switch to Wellness or whatever and easily get a bad batch from them....but it would just 'feel' less preventable to me than if there were bad batches from a company I had been reading negative articles about.

So that perspective is being driven by feelings rather than logic, but I don't see that as a horrible thing if there are no bad consequences for my cats for this feeling-driven decision. I am not frantically switching at the moment...my cats are still eating Nutro as I continue to monitor the news and I request samples of some other good foods and do my research.... I might not switch, I might switch; I haven't decided. But I don't think it's unreasonable.
 

misty8723

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I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned either. I think we're all on edge after that massive recall a few years ago. I know I am. For rexample, I recently stopped feeding my cats Orijen after hearing about the problems in Australia. I'm not in Australia, but I just couldn't bring myself to give them any more after reading about it. Now I have to wonder about Nutro, when I just finally relaxed and started feeding it to them. The dilemma is what do you do? Do you switch them from a food that they've been doing fine on, and maybe by doing that get a food that is bad? Makes me wish I had my own lab in the basement for testing before I feed them anything (or us humans either for that matter).
 
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