Pet Industry News

Click here, if you're looking for Pet food nutrition news, or try this link if you need information on Dog Nutrition. If you're just looking for the latest in pet food trends, take a look at Pet Food Trends, or this web site Premium Pet Food.

Everything you need to know about pet food safety can be found on the Pet Food Safety blog. And if you need great resources on pet food ingredients, try this blog: Pet Food Ingredients.

Additional pet food resources are available at: Pet Industry News, Functional Pet Food, and the informative Dog Treats blog. Before you head to the grocery store, you can review Pet Food Brands, learn more about Organic Pet Food, or just browse this Free pet food industry magazine.

Ms. Dillard and Lulu are a team, and each week they volunteer with Hearts in Harmony, a group of Certified Pet Therapy Teams who provide animal therapy for at-risk, neglected and abused children.

"Everything that we do here is geared in some way or another toward a healthy behavior," said Ruth Compton, a founding member of Hearts in Harmony. "It's all about trusting, sharing, respecting, self-confidence and tolerance -- things that these children have probably not had modeled for them."

If you want more information about this organization, please visit Hearts in Harmony.

For the lastest pet industry news, please check out this free pet magazine - or visit this online pet community.

Eighty seven (87) cats were found in an apartment building in Rockford, IL after a neighbor complained about an odor coming from the building. Winnebago County Animal Services received the odor complaint on August 7. A little over a month later, they finally responded. All but one of the 87 cats has been put under (euthanized):

"All of the cats were sick. Some were deformed. They had a number of feline diseases from urinary tract infections to upper respiratory infections," said Animal Services Director Gary Longanecker. "The one that remains is in quarantine. It's a very sick animal. We're trying to medicate it to give it a chance. The vet says his immune system is just shot.'

More . . . 'Feral, ill and inbred' cats removed from Rockford apartment

Even as the US economic downturn is making it increasingly tough to cover living basics, pet owners are striving to do their best by their four-legged family members, according to a new survey conducted by Impact Research for The Goodlife Recipe Pet Care Company, a division of Mars Inc. As evidenced by media coverage, some pet owners clearly are challenged to feed their pets, and in severe cases such as loss of a home, have even had to put them up for adoption.

However, the 2008 Goodlife brand survey, conducted in June 2008 and based on responses from 1,032 dog and cat owners age 25 or older from a national database of pet owners (margin of error: plus or minus 3%), found that four out of five agreed that skimping on petfood would not be their first cost-cutting move if the budget is tight. Two-thirds said they still don't consider cost to be the deciding factor when it comes to selecting petfood, and nearly 60% said that natural ingredients are most important in their petfood purchases. (One-third agreed that their personal health habits influence what they feed their pets).

This ties in with Packaged Facts' estimate that sales of natural pet products through all channels jumped 41% last year, to reach US$1.3 billion. That growth was driven in part by the Spring 2007 pet food recalls; however, Packaged Facts projects double-digit annual percentage gains for the natural petfood segment though 2012 in its new report, Natural Supermarket Pet Department Close-Up: Multi-category Sales, Brand Share, Retailer and Consumer Trends.

Going beyond food, one in four pet owners in the Goodlife survey claimed that they wouldn't cut anything from their pet's lives, even if money is tight. And two out of four still said they planned to spend between US$25 and US$100 on holiday gifts for their pets. The 75% who would cut pet expenses said that grooming would be the first to go. Half said that they would not reduce spending on vet visits, any more than they would cut back on doctor/dentist health-maintenance visits for their families.

Petfood Forum 2009 will take place April 20-22, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare Hotel near Chicago, Illinois, USA. The premiere event for the petfood industry offers even more learning and networking opportunities than years prior. Registration for this exciting event will be available soon, so check back at PetfoodIndustry.com often. You can also fill out a survey here to let us at Petfood Industry know what you want to see and do at this year's Forum!

Keynote speaker Marty Becker, DVM, popular veterinary author and regular contributor to Good Morning America will be sure to draw a big audience. His specialty is the power of the bond between pets and their people, and he applies the insights he's cultivated-from a career of writing on, speaking about and treating animals-to the unique opportunities facing our industry. This year's line-up will also include:

Informative sessions on market trends, functional ingredients, feeding trials and other key topics-presented by speakers specially selected through a rigorous call for papers program; Roundtable discussions featuring panels of experts on provocative subjects like pet food politics, guerrilla marketing and more; All-new poster presentations on the most important topics for the industry; and All-new networking event exclusive to Petfood Forum guests.

The Petfood Workshop: Essential Training will take place April 22-23, 2008. This seminar will provide a thorough overview of the petfood market, its structure and key players, plus the important growth driver of new products and how they impact the industry. Plus, can't miss break-out sessions delve into four fundamental areas of petfood:

Nutrition and ingredients;

Processing;

Safety and regulatory; and

Packaging.

This essential workshop will also offer plenty of opportunities for you to network with other industry professionals, along with veterinarians and pet retailers who can benefit from learning all about the dynamic petfood industry. Seating for this workshop is limited-sign up as soon as registration is available!

For more information, contact Nancy Grossnickle at ngrossnickle@wattnet.net or call 1.815.966.5574.

Almost 6,000 claims have been filed in a class-action settlement stemming from last year's massive petfood recall. Menu Foods, other pet food makers and retailers in May agreed to set up a US$24 million cash fund to compensate pet owners whose cats and dogs became sick or died after eating food that had a contaminated ingredient from China. The filing period for claims began May 30, 2008 and will run until November 24, 2008.

"I expect that number (of claims) will go up a lot. There's quite a bit of time to go," says attorney Sherrie Savett of plaintiffs' law firm Berger & Montague. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) never identified how many pets were affected, but it received more than 17,000 complaints.

Once a claim is filed, it will be reviewed by an independent claims administrator. Claimants may receive a 100% cash payment for all documented expenses deemed reasonable, including veterinary bills and burial costs. They may receive up to US$900 for undocumented expenses. Under the terms of the settlement, most claims are likely to be paid next year. To be eligible, claimants must have bought or fed their pets one of the recalled petfoods.

A federal judge in New Jersey, USA gave the settlement preliminary approval in May. A hearing for final approval is scheduled for October. If the court approves the settlement as expected, it would resolve more than 100 lawsuits brought in the US and a dozen in Canada. The US$24 million is in addition to US$8 million that petfood makers have already paid to pet owners. Legal fees and attorneys' expenses, which haven't been determined, will come out of the fund. The vast majority of the fund will go to pet owners whose pets were injured or died as a result of kidney failure, which was linked to the contaminant.

The FDA determined that the petfood ingredients, sold to pet food makers as wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, were adulterated in China with the industrial chemical melamine to make them appear richer in protein than they actually were. Along with Menu Foods, other defendants include Hill's Pet Nutrition, Iams and retailers such as Wal-Mart. Menu Foods, which supplied most of the recalled foods, has pegged its recall costs at US$55 million, some of which went to the settlement fund. If there is money remaining after claims have been processed, it will go to charities that promote the well-being of pets, the settlement says.

A website has been set up at petfoodsettlement.com or the claims administrator can be reached at 1-800-392-7785.