# What can you tell me about Merrick?



## lovemydogsalways (Mar 4, 2012)

No I am not going to feed it but I am researching for my floor sup. Our store just got the classic and a few of the grain free formulas in. He wants to know how the company is. There treats have bad qc right?


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## kevin bradley (Aug 9, 2009)

Their food always checks out well from an ingredient perspective... however, they've been involved in quite a bit of controversy in recent years... Quality issues, Recalls, etc...

I'd do a search online for more details.


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## Unosmom (May 3, 2009)

I agree, their food looks decent on paper, but there's always something up. They had a lot of salmonella recalls, people finding metal in canned food, they recently began irradiating their treats. Then theres a whole putting bible verses on bags of food that seems to rub people the wrong way.


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## kevin bradley (Aug 9, 2009)

Agreed.

I am nearly to the point where I'd put Merrick in with Diamond. Just lots of questions about whats going on down there. At least with Diamonds line, you are saving big money(no one comes close to their prices that I've found).

Merrick kind of perplexes me. A good friend of mine loves Merrick. Hard for me personally to figure out because there are lots of companies with cleaner track records in the same price range that he could go with.


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## lovemydogsalways (Mar 4, 2012)

It bugs me that the store chose to stock this instead of some other brand of dog food with a better track record, but this isn't a food specialty store, so they are unkowing. Oh and I had no say in it.  Thanks for the input. I did do a search online, but only really found anything about treats.


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## Jacksons Mom (Jun 13, 2010)

I'm not a fan.


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## Kibblelady (Jul 13, 2012)

You can add the whole GoNatural fiasco/disaster from yesteryear to that list. I do not touch Merrick products. In a nutshell they were producing GoNatural in the states for Petcurean and hundreds of dogs got sick and died. one woman lost her entire kennel of Golden Retrievers. The FDA investigated and when they tested the food they found odd things including HUGE levels of BHA or BHT that did not belong in there, it was stated to be free of these preservatives. The levels were very very high. They are not sure to this day what caused the deaths but Merrick tried to excuse themselves of any wrong doing and Petcurean was sued..... it was a nasty mess that many do not know about  I do not trust the quality control of Merrick.


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## Kat (Jul 12, 2011)

I was feeding the kibble to my cats, until I bought a new bag and there was a chunk of grey plastic inside the bag. So Im switching to Acana. 

Oh, and a few years ago I bought some canned food, and in 2 cans I found giant disgusting black flies inside. 

So like others have said, good on paper, bad with quality control.


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## Jacksons Mom (Jun 13, 2010)

Kibblelady said:


> You can add the whole GoNatural fiasco/disaster from yesteryear to that list. I do not touch Merrick products. In a nutshell they were producing GoNatural in the states for Petcurean and hundreds of dogs got sick and died. one woman lost her entire kennel of Golden Retrievers. The FDA investigated and when they tested the food they found odd things including HUGE levels of BHA or BHT that did not belong in there, it was stated to be free of these preservatives. The levels were very very high. They are not sure to this day what caused the deaths but Merrick tried to excuse themselves of any wrong doing and Petcurean was sued..... it was a nasty mess that many do not know about  I do not trust the quality control of Merrick.


I did read about this! Scary. Petcurean immediately got away from them.


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## lovemydogsalways (Mar 4, 2012)

Kibblelady said:


> You can add the whole GoNatural fiasco/disaster from yesteryear to that list. I do not touch Merrick products. In a nutshell they were producing GoNatural in the states for Petcurean and hundreds of dogs got sick and died. one woman lost her entire kennel of Golden Retrievers. The FDA investigated and when they tested the food they found odd things including HUGE levels of BHA or BHT that did not belong in there, it was stated to be free of these preservatives. The levels were very very high. They are not sure to this day what caused the deaths but Merrick tried to excuse themselves of any wrong doing and Petcurean was sued..... it was a nasty mess that many do not know about  I do not trust the quality control of Merrick.


Do you have a link for this so I can read more on it? Thanks!


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## Kibblelady (Jul 13, 2012)

lovemydogsalways said:


> Do you have a link for this so I can read more on it? Thanks!



I'll try to find all the info for you Meagan however, much of it has been scrubbed... and since there was a few settlements and a class action suit many personal stories have also been scrubbed from the web (this is of course something you did not see with the Diamond recalls, they do not threaten people and demand confidentiality clauses to their settlements that I know of....transparency IMO should be respected.)

Here are some links:

Alert to Pet Owners - Recall of Petcurean Go! Natural Pet Food

Petcurean Go! Natural pet food recalled - December 15, 2003

Realize, the above link really umm make this situation sound like nota big deal. I know when it was going on I personally was emailing and IMing the woman effected the most by this problem. She was a Golden retriever breeder and had many dogs fall ill, she lost a number of them and a number were very ill and permentally damaged, she had a litter effected as well. She retained a bunch of bags of the food and may have had them tested herself. One of the largest problems is the description of a "voluntary recall." I remember that it was many pet owners of ill animals and veterinarians that had to pressure Merrick, Pet Express and Petcurean to recall the food. It took way too long to accomplish this resulting in many additional deaths and huge vet bills  In Petcurean's defense they had no idea what was going on...they are in Canada and had contracted Merrick to produce their food in the states to enable them to distribute here more easily and cheaper. Merrick was silent through all of this and continually denied anything was wrong. It was *NOT* 13 animals that were harmed, it was either close to 100 or more (I don't remember) Lets put it this was Pet Express and possibly Petcurean I believe *each* had to pay out 700,000 dollars in compensation for the animals harmed in this recall  It was mostly dogs, a few cats but not many. The woman with the Goldens was very very vocal on lists and message boards in explaining her entire experience. Anyone who questioned her or argued with her about this she put up a large amount of money in offering them to feed the food they claimed had nothing wrong with it to their own dogs (the food she had saved as evidence) No one took her up on this, no one. It was a very traumatic event for many owners and some of them I believe were threatened as well  The woman with the Goldens did finally settle and as a result of the confidentiality agreement she had to "scrub" (this means removing all evidence of from the internet for those unfamiliar with the term) everything she had posted online and could no longer continue to discuss the issue. The FDA did thorough testing of the lot of food and posted the results on their website for everyone to view...it is now gone. If I remember correctly the results should abnormally large amounts of BHA (which should not have been in the food to begin with) in the area in some formulas of 10x the expected levels, they varied all were LARGE. The test also showed high amounts of certain trace metals.... they were never sure what was causing the problem exactly but make no mistake, it was the food and Merrick behaved badly in the situation. If I remember correctly nasty statements from the owner were passed around, threats and overall denial of the problem and refusal of a recall from both Merrick and Petcurean. They finally issued a voluntary recall.

This is the FDA report, I found it linked to on a web archive
http://web.archive.org/web/20061014042637/http://www.fda.gov/cvm/Documents/HHEGoNatural.pdf

Wish I could have found more, but it is quite hidden  Hope this helps?


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