Comments on: Why Switch Foods? (Part 1 & II)

By: J Hofve, DVM

J Hofve, DVM — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:24:32 +0000

There’s an old saying, “You get what you pay for.” This applies to Kirkland and similar foods, who have some very clever marketing and advertising staff, as well as the buying power of a large company.

It’s been bothering me that many ingredient lists on dog food are looking so similar to the truly superior brands, and I finally figured out why. Take an ingredient like “chicken meal.” This comes in several grades, as well as being available from overseas markets in China, Africa, etc. The ingredients going in to Kirkland pet food are the cheapest they can possibly get and still retain the technical label of “chicken meal.” A switch to much lower quality ingredients is what happened when Procter & Gamble bought Iams, and what suspect will eventually happen with P&G’s recent purchase of Natura.

BTW, Diamond is certainly not known as a *good* quality manufacturer. In fact, its reputation is for cheap knock-offs of more expensive, better quality food. Because they make food for Walmart, Costco, etc. they have tremendous buying power. Nevertheless, there just aren’t enough *good* quality ingredients to support that size of market. If they’re selling a dog food for $1.50 per pound, after you pay for packaging, advertising, shipping, distribution, and retail shelf space, the cost of the ingredients comes down to about 29 cents a pound. What kind of quality do you think you can get for that?

I looked at your website, and couldn’t find any info on the actual ingredients, other than a few blurbs promoting particular items. What’s up with that?

Cheers,
Dr. Jean

By: Molly

Molly — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:18:05 +0000

YAY! Finally an article where my little doggie is understood. As a puppy (he still is) he faithfully ate his “one” food recommended by the vet. At about 6 months of age (after tasting little “tidbits” of human food) he just stopped eating it. He looked at this bowl of flavorless stuff and looked at me, and I could tell we were in for a fight. Now he’s 8 months of age and we’re still experimenting. I bought a book on “natural – human” food diets for dogs, have added vita-powder to human meat that I cooled myself (beef, chicken!), and honestly, I feed him more nutritious human food than I eat myself! He loves the variety, different presentations of foods, and even eating at different times of day. I have 6 bags (6!!!) of the best dry dog food money can buy (this is top quality stuff), and he won’t touch any of it! I also have sampled a variety of canned dog foods and he’ll only eat very small quantities. I won’t say his “eating issues” are completely over, but the frustration of watching him sit by a full bowl of food, not eating, is over for me.

By: Lets'TalkPetFoods

Lets'TalkPetFoods — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:53:22 +0000

This is a Great article~

I am going to put a link it with a small blurb, on my forum and hope everyone
reads it

It would be great if you has an RSS feed so I could just list that on my own
blog and in my forum