Recently one of the biggest players in the natural pet food market, Natura, was bought out by Proctor and Gamble, one of the biggest players in, well, pretty much every market. My initial response was to treat this as catastrophic news, fearing an inevitable cheapening of ingredients and the loss of several of the most popular brands in natural pet food including Innova, EVO and California Natural as well as Mother Nature dog cookies. So why did this happen and what are the possible ramifications of this deal?
To start, Natura pet products has been a leader in product quality and innovation, they started the grain free "revolution" with their EVO line of dog and cat foods. In the midst of the major recalls in 2007 they were one of few companies who could say they were unaffected by the tainted products. For several years they have had phenomenal market growth but recently that has slowed. The official reason for this deal is to bring natural pet products to a wider audience, thereby increasing the overall health of all pets, everywhere. P & G as a company can facilitate this because they have the market share and the resources to fund and pursue it.
The problem is that P&G is not well known for placing quality first. One of the reasons they are a huge player is that the bottom line has priority. How do they plan on bringing Natura products to a wider audience at a better price and maintain its current level of quality? I don't know, maybe they hired out Santa's elves? Seriously though, economies of scale are great but they don't run infinitesimally. At some point, something is going to give and considering Iams and Eukaneuba are P&G brands my bet is on ingredient quality. I know I will be watching for any news on changes to the formulas or changes in ingredient sources, you know, like stuff from China.
It’s a doozy of a situation and future is unknown, all we lowly pet food consumers can do is hope the overall good of reaching a greater market outweighs the possible future of decreased product quality. Remember, you can always express your opinion of this deal with your dollars and choose to continue buying Natura (P&G) products or switch to similar products made by smaller companies whose reputation you trust.
I was unaware of the P&G buyout. Good to know that I need to keep a closer eye on this than usual. Unfortunately something P&G has been known for is changing the ingredients or formula and not telling people. Legally they can do this as long as the formula is changed back within a certain amount of time, I think 90 days but I'd have to double check on that. Personally I'll just keep my fingers crossed that Champion Pet Foods doesn't get bought out.
ReplyDeleteJust an FYI - I did hear a rumor that Champion is talking to "people" in the US. I believe the term used was major marketing firm. Definitely a rumor at this stage but I know I am keeping an eye out to see if it becomes more solid.
ReplyDeleteRe: formula changes - they can change the food in the bag without updating the ingredient label for 6 months as I recall it. Supposedly this is to allow the company to get rid of its stock of bags. Its brutal for people with sensitive animals though.