My Twitter buddy, “Cassandra Wants Claws” retweeted some shocking images of Purina cat and dog food which I think needs to be mentioned on this website.
The pictures are grisly, some might say horrific. This is dry dog food contaminated with live insects, larvae and other bugs. One picture shows what appears to be very old dry dog food, well beyond the sell by date. And another tweet shows cobwebs, mould and other rubbish also in dry dog food.
Below this article there are some more on pet food manufacturers 👍😃. Pet food articles tend to put people to sleep but food is important as it keeps our beloved companions alive 😎.
I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not going to make any outlandish criticisms of Purina (Nestlé Purina Petcare), an American subsidiary of the Swiss Corporation Nestlé based in St Louis, Missouri.
Some of these images are of their Purina Pro Plan Foods. The word “pro” indicates high quality because it is short for “professional”.
I am one of those people who is rather cynical about the motivations and attitudes of pet food manufacturers. Although we shouldn’t let our emotions get the better of us and criticise unjustifiably.
These pictures look as if they are of dog and cat foods which have been stored for too long and perhaps under incorrect conditions. This certainly appears to be a quality control problem. However, I don’t know how common these problems are and what percentage of products coming out of Purina have these problems.
I don’t want to suggest that this is an endemic problem with Purina because it might not be. But the people who bought these products were shocked. It is hard to read the texts in the Infographic but here is a flavour:
Myles Nelson said: “Hey @Purina there’s live bugs in your @ProPlan dog food. I’m not a dog food scientist but I don’t think I should be feeding them your food anymore.”
Big Guy BBQ tweeted: “Hey @Purina, just opened a new bag of @ProPlan large breed dog food that I got from @TractorSupply and it is full of pantry moth and larvae. You can see where they’ve been chewing on the food. $65 down the drain and in this economy. Thanks.”
Regarding the wet cat food with something awful in it, Vici Vail, tweeted: “@Purina what the actual fuck!!!! I just found this in my cat food. This is not okay at fucking all I am fuming.”
Erik Daniel Minjares tweeted: “@Purina @Nestlé @Nestlé USA this is nasty! Doesn’t your company have some kind of food control, because this shift is unacceptable! Bought this bag five days ago and the inside looks like two years, what the fuck! Hard to read but the expectation date says February 2023.”
The last one refers to the picture top left in the Infographic.
These are just examples of the tweets. You get the message.
Arguably, these examples of poor quality control add to the existing criticism of commercially manufactured pet food which sometimes, arguably, is not as good as it might be in promoting cat and dog health.
Dry dog cat food is, I would argue, primarily made for the convenience of the animals’ owners. There are far less problems in terms of wastage because it doesn’t go off when in the bowl. This means that it is cheaper for owners.
In the cost-of-living crisis which is said to be happening in the UK saving money is very important. I don’t know if there is a cost-of-living crisis in America, but budgeting is always important in the family. And so is convenience.
Sometimes I think that dry pet foods are just too convenient. It can make owners lazy. Some of the cheapest dry pet foods are very poor quality in my view. So, when you throw into the mix this kind of storage problem and bugs and other crap in the food it is disappointing.
I just bought Purina One Sensitive stomach cat food with an expiration date of September 4, 2024 on it and it had flying bugs and what looked like cob webs in it. I immediately took back and was going to switch it out. I opened bag after bag at the store and they ALL were the same. The people at check out were absolutely grossed out seeing the bugs come out or fly out of bags. Will NEVER buy Purina again. I would never feel comfortable feeding any of my pets Purina. It is really very upsetting to see that, as it makes me question if I’ve been poisoning my cats with Purina food and question if the stomach problems are completely due to Purina.
My God. That sounds horrendous. It is not just the odd bag, it’s bag after bag with the same gross problem. Thanks for your input Stephen. In my view Purina is the least reliable dry cat food provider with more poor quality products. And at my last research session on this company they supported animal testing.
I actually feed Kibbles N Bits mostly to my dogs for over 35 years and I’ve had dogs live to 22 and 23 years. They may go blind and deaf but they kept on ticking. So sometimes the cheaper food may be better than that expensive stuff. As for the cats I mix it up by whats on sale and I’ll tell you the expensive stuff makes them puke and have the shits. But I do try to buy brands not in plastic bags but paper bags. The plastic bags have forever chemicals.
Just got 5 bags of cats 3 and dogs 2 bags of purina All Pro plan. I dump mine into bins so I can see it. Now I’m afraid to open the bags. But they came from Chewy which I believe has a faster turn over of pet food. All bags are April-May 2024. Expensive food at most big box stores like Tractor Supply tend to lay around too long.
Smart to decant it into bins where it can be inspected easily.