Iams Feline Renal Formula Recall

P&G is recalling some prescription cat food due to possible salmonella contamination:

CINCINNATI, July 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) (NYSE:  PG), is voluntarily recalling two specific lots of its prescription renal dry cat food as a precautionary measure, as it has the potential to be contaminated with salmonella.
Iams Veterinary Formulas Feline Renal 5.5 lbs
Lot Code: 01384174B4
UPC Code: 0 19014 21405 1

Iams Veterinary Formulas Feline Renal 5.5 lbs
Lot Code: 01384174B2
UPC Code: 0 19014 21405 1
This product is available by prescription through veterinary clinics throughout the U.S.
For further information or a product refund call P&G toll-free at 877-894-4458 (Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM EST).
[...]
No illnesses have been reported.  A FDA analysis identified a positive result on the lot codes listed above.  Lot codes can be found in the lower right corner on the back of the bag.

Thank You Lillian, Stella & Margaret!

Hey Everyone!

I've typed this blog about a hundred times, but I can't seem to express the words that are in my heart as well as I'd like.  You see, yesterday Lillian and Stella, our winners of last year's Year of Free Treats, came in for their very last free treats.  And it made me want to break down and cry right there in the store.  I know, that probably seems ridiculous, but here's the thing.  Lillian and Stella are truly remarkable dogs.  And I feel blessed and honored to have been able to provide their treats over the past year.  I'm sure I'm still not making any sense.  Perhaps I should mention that Lillian and Stella are search and rescue dogs.  And that they recently worked at Albert Pike State Park.  Along with their owner Margaret Choffel, they do a job that I can only imagine is back breaking and heartbreaking.  I know that I could never bring myself to do their job and that makes me so grateful that they do it, because I also know that families need answers and closure in situations as devastating as the recent flash floods.  So, I feel like giving Lillian and Stella treats for a year was the very least that we could do and I feel like there will never be enough words to express how truly grateful we are that they do the work they do.

And since the words to say all of that are just not making themselves available, I will simply say this.  Thank you Lillian and Stella and thank you Margaret.  I am truly honored to call you customers.

Below is Margaret's winning entry from last year's story contest.  We will be announcing the winner for this year's photo contest at our birthday party on Saturday.

"My name is Margaret Choffel, I am part of the K-9 unit for Washington County Search and Rescue. I've been part of the team for the past ten years. My first search dog, Annie, was a hero, with finds to her credit, sadly died in her prime at five years of age. I currently have two Labrador females, Stella does area air scenting live find searches and cadaver searches.. She has helped to find lost victims, and has been on recovery missions as well, she is five years old and when she isn't doing SAR work, Stella goes to the Veteran's Home weekly to visit the patients, I also show her in local dog shows.. She loves her ball and as a Lab she loves treats as well.

Lillian is a yellow Lab, she is half sister to Stella and is a year younger at four years of age. Lillian's speciality is land cadaver, she has a very nice passive indication and loves treats as a reward. On her off time she also joins her sister in weekly visits to the Veteran's Home and likes to strut in the show ring when she can.. Search and Rescue requires lots of time and effort and is all voluntary. 99% of the expenses are born by the handler, the Girls work for treats, so a year's worth of treats for rewards would be very welcome."

Bigwag in Citiscapes

Hey Everyone!

We were recently included in an article by Wendy Teal on Pets Going Posh that ran in this month's Citiscapes.  You can check out the complete article on us and many other fine pet businesses in NWA by clicking here!

Bigwag employee has a warrant for her arrest!

It was a usual day at Bigwag, baking treats, helping guests in the store, and answering the normal phone calls. The phone rings, "Thank You for calling Bigwag. This is Brandi, how may I help you?" "Ma'am, did you say your name was Brandi? We have a warrant out for your arrest and your bond is $1,000." Erin knew immediately that there was something wrong with this phone call by the expression on my face. The voice on the the other end of the line says "Brandi are you there? Someone had turned you in for being a kind person and we have probable cause that you would be a great inmate at the March of Dimes Jail & Bail." So, I need your help! I will be turning myself in peacefully on August 5th, 2010 at MiMi's Cafe in Rogers.

Here, at Bigwag, we not only like to help animal shelters and animal related charities. We enjoy helping with whatever we can! I asked myself, "Why not?" It will be a fun and I would love to support March of Dimes Charity. I have my own website that you can check out and make donations if you would like as well. We will also have donation jars in the store! All donations are 100% tax deductible and will help to fund important research, grants, and educations to further the mission of improving the health of Arkansas' babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.

If you would like to be an inmate or would like to turn in someone you know to the March of Dimes Jail & Bail, you may contact Hannah Jennings at (479) 751-5475 or hjennings@marchofdimes.com.

CNN Money names Rogers, AR #10 top place to live

CNN Money names Rogers, AR #10 in the US in it's 100 best places to live 2010.

"If you focus only on the averages, life in the typical American town frankly doesn't seem so hot right now. The median home continues to lose value. Cash-strapped state and local governments are cutting services. And unemployment, at 9.3%, is still high.


But those bummer statistics obscure one important-and encouraging-fact: There are plenty of outliers. MONEY found them through its annual search for the best places in America, which this year focused on the nation's small cities (those with populations of 50,000 to 300,000). Reporters crunched reams of data to find the optimal combo of job opportunities, fiscal strength, top-notch schools, low crime, good health care, lots to do, and many other factors that help make a town great for raising a family."

The details:

10. Rogers, AR
Population: 57,000
Unemployment: 5.8%
Pluses: Low cost of living, diversity
Minus: Strip malls

If you're inclined to dismiss a small city in Arkansas as a backwater, you're making a big mistake. Rogers is right next door to Bentonville, where Wal-Mart is headquartered.

Given the power of the retail behemoth, many Fortune 500 firms that sell it their wares have moved executives to the area. Lots of them have settled in Rogers, giving it a cosmopolitan feel. (Wal-Mart's CEO, Mike Duke, also calls Rogers home.)

They're drawn by top-notch schools and outdoor activities, including swimming and wakeboarding on the town's two lakes and golfing on its five courses.

(Not all is picture perfect: Rogers does contain some rundown areas.) Though Wal-Mart has had layoffs in recent years, the jobless rate here remains low.

To see the whole article, click here. We kind of like it too ;)

Kibble Crack - The Dirty Dozen

We know that sugary pet treats are bad. When pet treats first started out, there wasn't any sugar added as an ingredient. As large companies began vying for shelf space, two factors became universally important - cheap ingredients and that dogs love them. One of the ways large manufacturers found out they could solve both problems was to use sugar or corn syrup. These in themselves are a cheap ingredient, but dogs have a sweet tooth, and lots of sugar meant that you didn't have to really worry about adding anything else they might want, like peanut butter or liver.

Dr. Ernie Ward, pet expert for WebMD writes

"What I want to bring attention to is what ingredients are in pet treats – and why. Pet owners must begin to question why there is sugar in a treat that claims to help teeth.” Following the trend of sugar-laden children’s snacks, pet treat manufacturers are tapping into a dog’s sweet tooth to boost sales. “One of the key reasons I became involved with fighting pet obesity was when I began seeing sugar added to pet treats. I think if more pet owners were aware of this, they may choose their treats more carefully.” says veterinarian Dr. Ernie Ward, founder of the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP) and author of “Chow Hounds: Why Our Dogs Are Getting Fatter – A Vet’s Plan to Save Their Lives” (2010 HCI). “When you have popular treats such as Snausages SnawSomes that list sugars as three of the first four ingredients, you know there’s a problem.”

And the problem is huge. APOP estimates that 45% of US dogs and 58% of cats are too heavy. That equals an estimated 89 million pets that are at high risk for developing conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure and more.

Ward says the problem is linked to money – lots of it. With US pet treat sales estimated to be nearly $2 billion in 2010, the treat bowl has turned golden. “Sugar is incredibly attractive to dogs. If a dog gobbles a treat quickly, an owner is more likely to give another – and another. This adds up to more sales – and profits. In the race for pet treat profits, our pets’ health is being bankrupted.”

Ward also contends that added sugar has behavioral consequences. “Numerous studies in rats demonstrate that overfeeding sugar can create symptoms similar to drug addiction. A dog’s daily sweet treat may be contributing to overeating and other undesirable behaviors. This is why I call today’s high-sugar treats ‘kibble crack.’”

Dr. Ward has compiled a list of "The Dirty Dozen" = sugar pet treats you should avoid and why:

1. Canine CarryOuts Chew-lotta Dextrose first ingredient
2. Snausages SnawSomes! Beef and Chicken Flavor Sugars 3 of first 4 ingredients
3. Pedigree Jumbone Mini Snack Food for Small Dogs Sugars 2 of 3 first ingredient
4. Petrodex Dental Treats for Cats Dextrose second ingredient
5. Pedigree Jumbone Sugar third ingredient
6. Milk Bone Essentials Plus Oral Care Sugar third ingredient
7. Pup-Peroni Lean Beef Recipe Sugar third ingredient
8. Science Diet Simple Essentials Treats Training Adult Treats with Real Beef Sugar third ingredient
9. Cesar Softies Dog Treats Sugar third ingredient
10. Milk-Bone Chewy Chicken Drumsticks Sugar third ingredient
11. Meow Mix Moist Cat Treats Corn syrup fourth ingredient
12. Pedigree Marrobone Sugar third ingredient

Other common sugar-containing treats according to Dr. Ernie Ward:

• Beneful Snackin’ Slices – Sugar fourth ingredient
• Pit’r Pat Fresh Breath Mint Flavored Cat Treats – Maltodextrin first ingredient
• Three Dog Bakery Lick ‘n Crunch – Dextrose third ingredient
• Beneful Snackin Slices – Sugar fourth ingredient
• Busy Chewnola – Maltodextrin second ingredient
• Exclusively Dog Vanilla Flavor Sandwich Creme Dog Cookies – Sugars first two ingredients
• Canine Carryouts Dog Treats – Corn syrup second ingredient

You can read Dr. Wards full article here.

I know I don't really need to do this, but here is the ingredient statement from one of our most popular treats - Where is the sugar? There isn't any. I can't really put it any better than Dr. Ward. This has been one of our founding principles since we opened the bakery in 2006. I also completely agree with Dr. Ward - READ THE INGREDIENT STATEMENTS!

Bacon and Egg Piglets - Ingredients: Whole Wheat Flour, Oats, Water, Whey, Pork Fat, Bacon, Egg, Cheese, Yeast, Baking Powder, Garlic.

Recalls making us sick, or are we sick of recalls?

Today a front page article in the Washington Post indicates a new study shows that the US is experiencing "Recall Fatigue"

"One recent study found that 12 percent of Americans who knew they had recalled food at home ate it anyway. After Hasbro recalled the iconic Easy Bake Oven in 2007 because about two dozen children had gotten fingers stuck in the door, the toymaker received 249 more reports of injuries over the following six months. One 5-year-old girl was so seriously burned that doctors had to partially amputate a finger."

As Gina points out over on the Pet Connection Blog, this seems like a "Dump and Run" to me. What is a "Dump and Run" you ask? Well, a "Dump and Run" recall is a recall that is issued very late on a Friday, as in Friday evening, so that the recall gets minimal press coverage. This one was even worse, because they did it before a 3 day holiday weekend. Merrick issued a recall last Friday on it's Beef Fillet Squares. The recall details are here in a previous post. There has been a lot of speculation on both sides this week. Did they know about this earlier or was this unintentional? Hard to tell.

There seems to be two contributors to this "Recall Fatigue". One is this type of corporate behavior. I'm not really making the claim the Merrick's behavior was ill repute, but enough companies have done this to warrant the question. There are plenty of good examples out there of how to execute a recall.

The second is QA. Taking shortcuts across your production line is not a very good way to minimize the amount of QA failures you have. Not cleaning your equipment between production runs - like how does salmonella reach a product that is baked and never is an original source of salmonella in the first place? It has to be either the production line or the packaging equipment that was not properly cleaned in between runs or never cleaned at all. Companies are being forced to to more amounts of QA testing these days, but they really aren't making the necessary production processes or methods to prevent test results from showing the problems. Hiding, retesting because you believe the results are false positive, and trying to minimize recall impacts by "Dump and Run" tactics are all shortcuts that do not address the problem.

Corporate responsibility has got to start to look at taking the high road, because yes, I am sick of all of the recalls myself, I am sick of sorting through them all, but that doesn't mean I don't need to read or act on them. I want them to stop happening in the first place. The "cheap way out" is no longer going to cut it as our global food economy starts to become more transparent. Hiding, misinformation and misdirection may have been the way of the past, but it will be the way of the dodo bird before too long. The longer companies engage in these tactics the faster you are planning your own funeral. There are too many choices and things are becoming too transparent to make this your corporate strategy.