Comments on: NUTRO Dog Food Issue Dates Mars’ PR Approach

By: Zach

Zach — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:56:44 +0000

Nutro customer service is for the birds… Use a competitor’s brand, they might return emails.

By: Don Earl

Don Earl — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:11:36 +0000

Nutro shoots itself in the foot by denying the undeniable. Nutro claims its food is safe and meets AAFCO standards. It has claimed it tests its ingredients and finshed products to ensure this so. The plain facts, as viewed objectively by any reasonable person, puts the lie to Nutro claims.

Fully half its dry cat food line contained unsafe levels of zinc, and/or dangerously low levels of potassium, during a four month production run. Such reckless manufacturing would be flat out impossible with even the most bare bones quality control. A basic, widely available mineral analysis, which costs on the order of $30, would easily have picked up the mineral premix problems, either on the front or back end of production.

The tests we’ve ordered on Nutro products show a consistency of formulation that is slipshod at best, and inherently deadly at its worst. 2100 ppm zinc DOES NOT conform to AAFCO standards. 219,000 IU/kg Vitamin D DOES NOT conform to AAFCO standards.

By all accounts, Nutro’s quality of customer care is nothing short of disgraceful. The approach seems to be along the lines of, so sorry our food killed your pet, here’s a coupon for a free shovel.

Nutro is much like the reality cop shows. When the bad guy is busted cold, the punchline is always, “Ah din’t do nuthin’”. It doesn’t sound any better coming from a CEO than it does coming from some lowlife street thug.

By: Louie

Louie — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:50:26 +0000

Looks like MORE QUALITY PROBLEMS WITH NUTRO. Responding to a Pet Owner’s concern, PFPSA tested Nutro Chicken Meal and Chicken cat food and found high levels of Vit D.

Lab analysis reveal the food contained 219,000 IU/kg of Vit D (DMB).

See May 4, 2010 news at http://www.pfpsa.org/news.html

By: John

John — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:20:16 +0000

I have been feeding my dogs, Chrissy and Al, Staffordshire Terriers, Dick Van Patton for years. The Allergy Lamb and brown rice formula, and their beef roll. Chrissy has started gaining ALOT of weight lately, so I decided to try something new on her, Al is fine. Got a bag of Evo diet, (I used to feed them only Evo Red Meat, but at 90 bucks a bag, it got too expensive, GREAT food however, no affilaition), anyway, just today, with the Evo dry food, I got three can of the Nutro Chicken and rice weight management formula to mix in for Chrissy, and decided to check the web before feeding her. Thank God I did!
The Nutro is going back to Centinella Feed tommorrow!
And as I read along, I recalled reading somewhere a couple of years ago that Nutro was a great Co., w/ an outstanding rep., but then Mars “Acquired” them, and they became another “McDonalds for pets”, like Iams and many other who began with integrity, but were bought out by greedy Co’s banking on the rep. who then changed the ingrediants to include primarily cheap chinese crap, rice meal and the like, shipped here by the Mega-Ton on enormous tankers.
Our pets are our children. And anyone who see’s it differant has no business making and selling us food for them. It’s tough knowing who to trust, and for its many ill’s, I thank god for the internet when it comes to us reaching each other and sounding these compassionate alarms. I say if the business is really, really big and diversified, then chances are its not too good. Seems like these days, in all things, only the little guys can be trusted. JMHO.
John L.
Santa Monica, Ca.

By: Judy West

Judy West — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:40:33 +0000

Tracy: Your story is exactly like mine. My dog, Max, went from a normal check-up to 10 days later having a diagnosis of hemangiosarcoma or posioning. We had to put him to sleep.
He ate mostly Nutro Lamb and Rice wet food along with other high quality foods for variety.I, too, believe that there is no coincidence here.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:33:54 +0000

I have no idea what to believe. I found this chat after coming back from the vet’s office. Emma one of our mix breed dogs who was 9 years old died in August of Hemangiosarcoma. Riley our other mixed breed dog of almost 10 (he is actually the same age as Emma was) was just diagnosed with the same disease this afternoon. These dogs were not blood related. The only common link is Nutro Lamb and Rice that they have both been on their entire lives. Never had cheap treats, rawhides, etc. Hard to think that this is coincidence.

By: corby

corby — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:25:34 +0000

We started buying Nutro large breed puppy formula when our Newfoundland arrived. She is now 6 months old and has started vomiting bile from time to time. Our 10 year old lab and 2 year old pom have to be chased out of the puppies dish and now all 3 have the same problem. With this much discussion it would seem foolish to continue feeding the Nutro product. Mabey the product is safe but the result if it isnt is to terrible to take the risc. I just purchased a bag today. I hope the store will accept a return.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:01:19 +0000

I have read alot of these commits, i can see many pet owners
are worried about their pets which are like family members to most. But getting important information from a chat room is not really reliable, because people can say what ever they what with out prove. Sometime is best for one to look into a problem and find the right answer.

Just because a company had a problem with one of their product, does not mean that a company is not concern about their consumers. One thing we know is that when the company notice a problem with their product, all the effected products were recalled. This shows me a business that is concern about their consumer as well as the pets that use their product. Mistakes happen, and how we react is what counts. What a person says on a chat room can make or break a business. So we must be careful of what we say and how we express ourselves. And remember that some people would say negative thing about a company, so that people stop buying one brand and change to another.

I thank everyone for their time

By: lesliek

lesliek — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:30:57 +0000

Complaints are over 900 now on http://www.consumeraffairs . If anyone has checked twitter,all the Nutro reps do is post smileys. Have a rainbow day ! is their common tweet. Sorry but rainbows don’t help poisoned animals. I’d rather see them spend the $ on quality ingredients & processing & testing. A better cs dept wouldn’t hurt either.

By: Louie

Louie — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:36:07 +0000

Here’s what is wrong:

Wall Street has the SEC, and the pet food industry has the FDA.

Sounds right to me.