They should have just slapped a 'now with more minerals/nutrients' sticker on the bag and raised the price 5 bucks.

So is the company that close to death, or do they just have ass-like damage control?

@henwy:

More seriously, something is screwy with Don Earl's statements in the article. First and foremost, you can't do a lethal dose cumulatively like that. The whole point of a LD50 is to list a 50% lethality in a lump sum dose. Used the way he's doing it, over time, completely distorts the number. Which is clearly proven just by the empirical facts. There would be thousands of dead cats across the country because they'd all be dropping dead within a few days of eating this.

@henwy: Thanks for calling out the LD50 fallacy he used. By his logic, a cat getting the recommended amount of zinc would die in three months.

Taken right out of the US Government playbook. Deny it and ignore the evidence.

By "no complaints" they mean "no credible complaints."

By "no credible complaints" they mean "no complaints where the pet was clearly made ill by a Nutro product."

By "no complaints where the pet was clearly made ill by a Nutro product" they mean "no customer has shipped us their pet and allowed us to determine whether or not the pet died from our product."

(by "no customer has shipped us their pet and allowed us to determine whether or not the pet died from our product" they mean "no customer has shipped us their pet and allowed us to determine whether or not the pet died from our product using tests that are proprietary and we can also not share whether or not the pet died from our product but they didn't")

Whether or not there is a problem with the pet food, this is really bad customer service.

this company has been annoying me for a while - they always have a rep in the local petco who tries to stop us and tell us how great nutro is. i think they usually try to push coupons on us too. i guess i should be glad the rep does this, otherwise i might have actually bought some of their food.

I've been a loyal Nutro buyer for years now (didn't realize their recent sale to Mars which had A LOT of pet food recalled last year) and couldn't buy it a few weeks ago when I ran out of food (found out about the recall later that day). I guess I won't be going back to it now. My cat hasn't been sick, luckily, but I don't keep the bags, so I have no clue if it was one of the recalled ones or not. It's just sad that a company that used to be so good has gone down the tubes.

After the big pet food recall scare a year or so ago, I switched to Primal Foods frozen cat food. It's just raw meat and the supplements they need. Not only do my cats love it, but they're healthier than they ever have been before. And I don't have to worry about this sort of crap anymore.

If you can find it (it's carried in Whole Foods in northern California), I can't recommend it strongly enough. Definitely worth every penny.

(No, I don't work for them. I'm just insanely happy with the product, and hope more people start feeding their cats raw meat, which is what they're supposed to eat!)

The title states that the owners are made sick by recalled food, not the cats. It should read: "Is Nutro Ignoring Owners whose Cats Were Made Sick by Recalled Food?"

IMO, it's hard for them to be responsible for cats being sick. Pay for the pain and suffering of the cats? I never fed my cat Nutro just because of all the corn/wheat they'd put in the food. I know the premium brands are a lot more expensive but since they have no allergic fillers like the cheaper brands, I never needed to feed the cats as much so in the end it cost about the same.

Guess what is REALLY in KFC's new grilled chicken recipe...

@sifr: i have actually tried to convince my cat to eat raw meat. she looks at me like i'm crazy. she doesn't want any kind of meat, cooked or raw. she wants specific kinds of dry cat food, she licks the gravy-goo off of canned cat food and leaves the bulk mush behind, and only certain types and flavors of treats.

wow. I have been thinking of switching from Nutro for my dogs and this article has been the deciding factor. I pay $50 a bag and get 2 different types for my dogs. They used to eat Pedigree but I switched to Nutro because I have read so many positive things on the nutrition. Plus, I can afford it now. But, with customer service like that, I refuse to go back to them.
Now... must shop for a better brand...
Any suggestions?

Just a thought -- this may be a little wacky -- but did you try, asking them?

I am currently dealing with Nutro regarding my dog and all I've gotten is denial. The rep just kept saying there is nothing wrong with the dog food, there is no recall on the dog food. . . well, just because there is no recall, doesn't mean there doesn't need to be one.

She said I could send a sample back and they would test the food, but when I asked if I would received a copy of the report, she said "No". They would just tell me if it was contaminated or not, but not what was in it. She did say that I could have a sample tested at my expense, "which shows we are not hiding anything".

We tore the house and yard apart trying to figure out what had cause pancreatic and liver failure (diagnosed by our vet), we found absolutely nothing. We went so far as to dig up the vitamin sticks we put in the ground for the trees to make sure they were intact. It then occurred to me that maybe there was a food recall. No recall, but I found hundreds of comments on news stories, blogs, and discussion threads dating back to 2007, but many as recent as this month reading dogs and cats that exhibited similar symptoms. Many have died. The rep. said "these are all just blogs and we have recived no complaints". Yes, "NO COMPLAINTS".

Anyway, this just recently occurred and my husband is at the vet with Stella as I type to see if the medication is working. Over all she seems much better, so I think we're going to come out of this ok - unlike many others who have lost there pets. While we may never have scientific proof that Nutro was the cause, I will never feed Nutro products again due to their lack of regard for the concerns of their customers and their dishonesty in dealing with the issue.

There are a lot of complaints regarding Nutro products making cats and dogs sick. If you're using the food, do a little research and then decide if you want to continue using it.

@sifr:

If you switch to feeding all of your cats, cats, then you know they're eating well and after a while there will be less cats. Double win.

@NORMLgirl: If you can tell by my username (and we've had lots of Newfoundlands over the years - who have nasty, expensive health problems if they don't get the right nutrition at the right time... ) the best reference I know of is Whole Dog Journal; they don't take advertising. [www.whole-dog-journal.com] They also publish a pamphlet on dog feeding.
Once a year they review dry and wet food. WDJ gives you their criteria, and lots of information on the company, where the food is made, where the manufacturer buys their ingredients.
basically, you can't go wrong choosing any of their recommended foods. We started subscribing years ago when there were only 4 or 5 brands that made the cut; now the list is several pages!
There is also [www.dogfoodanalysis.com]
Look for - no grains, especially corn and soy and named meat or meat meal as at the very least two, but better three, of the first five ingredients. We've moved on to the grain-free types, switch brands a couple times a year. Hope this helps.

@twonewfs: oh - and you really need to shop prices: the smaller pet shops can vary in price by as much as 100% for the same bag of food! I found a shop that sells super-premium grain-free for about $5 more per 30 lb bag than the big box store junk food like Nutro (I've had a Nutro sales rep tell me their food has no corn, while we're standing in front of bags listing 'corn gluten' as an ingredient!) Yes, that is expensive - but ACL surgery is thousands and thousands of dollars - so we do the best we can to avoid it.

We adopted both my dog and cat from a shelter that visited Petsmart. All the reps recommended Nutro and it was my first dog so I didn't know any better. Poor dog had the foulest gas and the runs for weeks on the food and I couldn't figure out why until I switched to an organic, by-product free food and he got 100% better. I tried different types of Nutro and they all made him very sick. The lamb and rice actually made him start to lose hair. He now eats venison meal and loves it.

We switched from Nutro about 9 months ago after one of our cats become VERY ill all of a sudden. We had already taken our dogs off of it after they had begun vomiting up stuff after every meal, but for some reason kept the cats on it. We had no idea what was causing it and couldn't afford to take her to the vet. Inside cat, no chemicals in the house, nothing random that we could see she might have gotten a hold of, but she wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink, blah blah blah. My sister actually took a day off of work to stay at home and keep an eye on her. We managed to spoon feed her beef gravy and water, switched to Natural Life for everybody and we have had no problems since then. Not specifically sure it was the food, but her lethargy and random itchiness also cleared up to with the new food, so who the hell knows.

@twophrasebark: Just awesome post. :)

@robdew2: RTFA.

Thanks so much! I have a lot of research and price comparing to do. My dogs have different needs. One is a year old and the other is 9 and is showing signs of arthritis.
I really appreciate the advice and links, I will put them to use!

@NORMLgirl: I would recommend Royal Canin as a brand. They make a wide range of formulations (breed, size, or age specific).
As to the other comments, I had some bad luck with grain-free; Though changing food can cause short-term issues, the constipation never subsided. I can imagine if I only ate meat that I would have some problems myself.

NORMLgirl - I recommend By Nature Organics canned and dry food. I switched to this during the big food recall in 2007, and my cats have had no problems. It has no by-products and no soy or corn. Frozen raw food may be the best, as someone suggested above, but in terms of regular canned/dry food, By Nature Organics is better than most. Some PetSmart stores sell this brand.

The issue is that there is 2100ppm zinc in the cat food which is dangerous even deadly according to the ASPCA vet toxicologist. Guess Coles_Law thinks thats OK. I dont. The lab reports speak for themselves as well as all the verbatim reports of sick cats from owners. The issue is the food should have never even made it out to stores let alone be sold for 6 mos. No finished nutrient testing was done even though at Nutro's site, they tout it like crazy, what a fallacy. It was a paper audit that found it 6 mos later. If ppl like Coles-Law think this is acceptable, all I can say is god help our pets. Where is accountability for Nutro?

You mean ask Nutro and expect any sort of honest answer? Thats a laugh and whats in your coffee? They still say no rpts of sick cats at their website even though their own manager said they were dealing with people that have called them to rpt sick pets in response to LA Times. People call and they say theyve had no complaints.

I gave up Nutro after that China-pet food nightmare. I just didnt feel comfortable after two cats I knew died from kidney failure related deaths (from the nutro). They did take responsibility that time though. (even if this time it isn't technically their fault, I dont care; I dont have the conscience to buy it anymore).

I dont find their food worth the price. I'm happy with Blue Spa. Or, I should say, kitty is happy with it. I don't actually eat it. You know, just to be clear.

The weird thing was, I went into a PetSmart where they have a lot of the Nutro products that both my mom and I purchase. (She buys the normal, outdoor brand, I get Indoor) And there was a notice about the recall, with the expiration dates posted, but no other information. When we asked the lady at the counter, she said it was only because the wrong dates were printed on the bags. No one mentioned anything about metals or minerals in the food.

The PetCo across the street had the same signs, but still nothing about zinc.

This is a little disheartening that the stores are either not posting the right, or even enough information, but that it's possible the clerks aren't being told the truth either.

For the past few months I've been fighting a skin allergy in my cats that had them chewing holes in themselves. After everything else had been ruled out, and I close to $2000 in the hole, the vet decided to run a skin biopsy and put my 2 cats on a food trial. Long story short, I feed my cats MaxCat, which is part of the recall. The bag they were eating when they got sick is now gone, so I have no way of proving if it is part of teh recall. I have talked to Nutro twice, and both times I was told by the CSR "I have worked with veterinarians for of years and never seen a case where this issue could cause this problem." My vet feels otherwise, but there is no way to prove BOTH of my cats got sick because of the food, although there are few things that could cause both of them to develop the same problem at the same time. Well, we could prove it... but I'd prefer to keep my cats alive and not perform a necropsy on them. Because of the discrepancy between what my vet says and what Nutro is telling me, I am now switching brands and will likely never go back to Nutro or MaxCat because of this.

Innova pet food all the way! It costs less in the long run, we noticed, because the dogs eat a ton less (barely any filler, afterall).

Nutro food is not bad, certain levels of minerals got mixed up where there was too much or too little added in the batch of food. This can happen with any type of food. There have been recalls on several different brands of pet and human foods for various reasons. There is no recall on dog food, only a few different varieties of cat food where there are mineral imbalances

Your dog could very well have been allergic to lamb and this is what may have caused hair loss. Changing to either venison or herring is a good idea if this happens. They normally recommend feeding a chicken based food to start with and then if your dog has an allergic reaction to switch to lamb and if this does not help then try a different protein source such as venison or herring