Blue Buffalo admitted the truth in court yesterday: A “substantial” and “material” portion of Blue Buffalo pet food sold over the past several years contained poultry by-product meal, despite pervasive advertising claims to the contrary. petitive foods that contain by-products.
What is chicken (or poultry) by-product meal? Generally speaking, it’s ground-up chicken necks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines and it’s not supposed to include feathers (although Purina’s testing found feathers). Animal by-products generally are thought to include organs — lung, spleen, kidney, brain, liver — blood, bone, fatty tissue, stomach and intestines. Which, under certain circumstances, could be perfectly fine ingredients, as long as they were not rendered. Unfortunately, meat meals are typically the result of rendering, a process involving one of the meat industry’s most revolting aspects of dealing with slaughterhouse waste.
But, the central issue is not whether by-products are bad for pets to eat, it’s about Blue Buffalo’s insistent claim that their pet food did not contain ground-up chicken intestines and feet, when in fact it probably did or still does (no one is certain).
SELLING THE SIZZLE NOT THE STEAK
Contrary to its carefully cultivated reputation for authenticity, Blue Buffalo’s advertising campaign, as it turns out, was built on a claim that should have been verified. And the image of the little family run business up against Big Pet Food isn’t exactly accurate either: Blue Buffalo is, in fact, owned by a big Wall Street firm and they outsource all their manufacturing, as do most pet food manufacturers.
Started in 2002, Blue Buffalo was propelled by advertising techniques Bill Bishop honed as an ad man on Madison Avenue where he ran ad campaigns for for brands such as Kool-Aid, Tang, Tareyton cigarettes (“I’d rather fight than switch”), and later SoBe, a beverage company he co-founded in the 1990s. Blue Buffalo last year racked up an impressive $1 billion in sales, making it America’s fastest-growing major purveyor of pet food and the largest specializing in the all-natural kibble niche.
Bishop realized that getting into the pet food market by starting small with contract manufacturers making the product was a no-brainer and that all one had to do was, “Slap on a good label, come up with a slogan, and off you go.” He already knew it would be a cinch to pull the wool over consumer’s eyes, because, as he said, “There were already a lot of smoke and mirrors in how pet food was advertised, and that was the sort...
Being the consummate ad man, one who might still believe that any publicity is good publicity, one can’t help but speculate that the wily Bishop has lured Purina into a fight where attention is the real objective.
AN APOLOGY, A RECALL, AND A REFUND
All consumers have received thus far in this debacle in the way of an apology (if you can even call it that) is thewishy-washy half-admission that Blue Buffalo products “may” contain undeclared by-products. If Blue Buffalo sold products to consumers with by-products, has products in the marketplace that are mislabeled, I would expect Blue Buffalo to withdraw those products from the market.
However, despite this admission, Blue Buffalo still has failed to acknowledge complete responsibility for betraying consumer trust in their brand:
- They still have not informed consumers of the presence of poultry by-product meal is or may have been in certain formulas;
- They still have not revealed if the mislabeled product(s) were removed from the market or which brands may still be on the market or in consumer’s homes;
- They still have not issued a recall;
- They still have not offered refunds for purchases of said product;
- Instead, they have chosen to place the entire blame at the feet of its suppliers.
Perhaps Blue Buffalo isn’t necessarily worse than other brands, but there’s no real evidence it’s any better and therein lays the crux of the matter – that consumers were ripped off.
Quite simply, the very least consumers deserve in an unreserved apology for the deception, the lies that seduced pet parents to buy a pet food brand that they were told was better than other brands and superior in quality for the health and well being of their beloved pets.
While consumers are angry and hurt by the deception, Bishop shrugs and says, “What can you do? Litigation is part of modern business.”
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