Purina cat food from Chewy infested with flies and maggots

by Michael Broad · May 18, 2021

For international readers, Chewy is an American online retailer of pet products. I guess sometimes things go wrong and this is an example when things went badly wrong. A reader of my website and a Chewy customer emailed me the photo and the video with these words: “I was sent this cat food by Chewy from Purina. It was infested with flies and larvae. I have attached pictures and a video.”

“I was sent this cat food by Chewy from Purina”. Photo supplied.

They are self-explanatory really. It seems that Purina quality control screwed up and it appears to me that a fly or flies were trapped in the food and maggots were laid which pupated into flies and mass procreation occurred very rapidly. ‘Breeding like flies’ comes to mind. I hope the customer who I have not named has contacted Chewy and perhaps Purina about this. Chewy as the retailer are contractually responsible to compensate the person. I would hope that they are generous in their compensation.

The product defect which is gross does not necessarily mean that Purina have poor quality control processes in general. Clearly on this occasion something went wrong. It is not entirely clear to me if Chewy might also be responsible. It depends where the maggots were and if Chewy is involved in packaging as the picture and video don’t tell the full story.

My thanks to the reader of PoC for thinking of me and capturing a decent photo and video.

Update: here are two Instagram embeds which tells you the responses: