go blue

Sigh. Just when you thought the pet food recall was over and done with...

Almost two years ago, I switched my cat and dog food to Blue Buffalo, which is a brand I can only find at Petsmart and is rather pricey. However, they use human-grade meat, and they don't use fillers or ingredients that animals are often allergic to, like corn gluten, which several studies show can cause diabetes in animals, and I'm convinced my cat's cancer progression slowed considerably because of the better-quality food.

The people at the company are also extremely nice. I once e-mailed them to ask some question or other, and they not only answered my question very quickly, but they also sent me coupons for free 20-pound bags of dog food, and I didn't even ask for the coupons.

They came out with a line of dog treats, and Petsmart had finally stocked them, and I bought a bag last week, and now I find out that one of their vendors was AMI, and this vendor was adding rice protein concentrate to the Blue Buffalo canned dog food, canned cat food, and dog treats without Blue Buffalo's knowledge or consent. This is the same rice protein that was possibly contaminated with melamine.

While this irritates and alarms me (thank heaven I hadn't opened the package yet and given one of the treats to my dog), you've got to give Blue Buffalo credit. They immediately put out a press release two days ago and voluntarily recalled all their canned dog and canned cat food and dog treats even though so far, none have shown to be contaminated. They're more concerned that an ingredient was added that they didn't know about, and while this particular batch shows no signs of contamination, they're not taking any chances, and they've also decided to switch to a new vendor.

Their dry pet food hasn't tested positive for the rice protein concentrate, so that's still safe at least, and I'm obviously returning the bag of dog treats that I bought. Now if they'd only come out with cat treats...