The Truth Behind My Dog"s Dinner:

[I did this Sunday night on the bus home, saved it in my drafts, and forgot to publish it until now! Sorry!]

My mom received an email last week from our veterinarian’s office with some bad news. Turns out, my dog Cooper hasn’t been eating “human grade” dog food this entire time, but rather just plain dog food. That’s right. My dog has been eating just dog food.

So what’s the problem here?

In July 2011, Natura Pet Products had reached a class action lawsuit settlement because they have been making misleading statements about their products, including the EVO food my dog eats. Other brands affected by the lawsuit include Innova, California Natural, Mother Nature and Karma dog and cat food products.

The lawsuit states that Natura made false and misleading statements about the “human-grade” quality of its food in its advertisements. The company also denied that they did anything wrong.

I know from my experience of purchasing dog food that the EVO food brand has always been marketed as a grain free, no carb kind of food. It is a particularly more expensive food brand, but it provides your dog with an ancestral, healthy diet for a long life. We buy the food mainly because it was recommended by our vet’s office (until now) as a good food choice for our pets, and it also helps animals with allergy problems like my dog.

When Natura stated that they had human grade food ingredients, obviously as a human I wouldn’t want to eat dog food. But in reality, the company was more marketing towards the idea of “human food is probably better than dog food, so I want to give my dog the best.” By marketing their food as human grade, this would make their brand of food seem better than every other food out there.

While Natura might have a better grade of dog food than other dog food brands, I still think there is an ethical question at hand as to saying the food is made with human grade ingredients. It could have good quality meat and vegetables just like human food, but marketing a dog food like human food seems a little wrong.

I think the marketing of pet food can be very manipulative to a pet owner, especially because who doesn’t want the best for their pet?

But in all reality, I don’t think my dog can tell the difference between the “good’ and “bad” dog food. My dog will eat anything (except olives, he can’t figure those out.)

About these ads