Oh, No, Blue Buffalo!

Blue Buffalo admits to by-product meal in its products, even though the company’s Web site and advertising state that they do not use by-products.

Have you ever taken Blue Buffalo’s True BLUE Test on the company’s Web site? Or maybe you’ve seen Blue Buffalo’s many advertisements about how their products contain superior ingredients to other pet foods, including the assertion that they never use chicken (or poultry) by-product meal.

Well, hold on….

In yet another disturbing twist in the commercial pet food industry (see my previous post on the class-action lawsuit against Nestlé Purina), Blue Buffalo admitted in court on May 6, 2015 that a “substantial” and “material” portion of its pet foods contain poultry by-product meal, even though the company has continuously advertised to consumers that its ingredients are superior to those found in other pet foods and do not contain by-products.

This admission by Blue Buffalo comes a year after Purina sued Blue Buffalo in Federal Court in St. Louis for false advertising, commercial disparagement, and unjust enrichment. Fed up with Blue Buffalo’s claims of superior ingredients, Purina hired an independent laboratory to test Blue Buffalo’s products. The laboratory testing found poultry by-product meal in some of Blue Buffalo’s top-selling pet foods.^[1]

So, how did Blue Buffalo respond to last year’s laboratory finding?

Blue Buffalo founder and CEO William Bishop called the lab’s testing methods “voodoo science” and continued to defiantly assert that, “Blue Buffalo does not use chicken byproduct meal or poultry byproduct meal in any of our products.”^[1]

Steven Crimmins, Purina’s chief marketing officer for U.S. pet food, has gone so far as to state openly that Blue Buffalo, “is built on lies.”^[2]

Now, I’m the last person to claim that Purina is a saint in the pet food industry. The company is in the midst of a class-action lawsuit alleging that several of its products have sickened or killed thousands of dogs, in 2007 they were involved in the horrific melamine contamination that was traced to Chinese suppliers and just last year they had to recall all of their Waggin’ Train and Canyon Creek Ranch treats that were made in China with unapproved antibiotics.^[2]

But could Crimmins be on to something when he alleges that Blue Buffalo “is built on lies”? Check out this quote from Blue Buffalo’s Bill Bishop from a July 24, 2014 article on BloombergBusiness:

“You can get into the [pet food] market small with contract manufacturers making the stuff. Slap on a good label, come up with a slogan, and off you go. There were already a lot of smoke and mirrors in how pet food was advertised, and that was the sort of stuff we were good at.” – Bill Bishop, founder of Blue Buffalo^[2]

And now that Blue Buffalo has had to admit in court that some of its foods contain poultry by-product meal, what action has the company taken?

It has blamed its ingredients suppliers and named them as defendants in the lawsuit.^[1]

In my opinion, Blue Buffalo should be blue in the face.

Bill Bishop may be a marketing genius, having come from a background in advertising at some of the country’s largest ad agencies, hawking products such as Kool-Aid, Tang and even cigarettes^[2] to consumers, but this issue goes way beyond truth in advertising. This involves the health of our beloved companion animals. Consumers have trusted Blue Buffalo with their pets’ nutritional welfare, helping the company become America’s fastest-growing mass-market commercial dog and cat food company, raking in $1 billion in sales last year.^[2]

Bill Bishop started Blue Buffalo in 2002 because his dog, Blue, was suffering from cancer and he wanted a higher quality commercial pet food. How would Mr. Bishop have felt if he were deceived about the nutrition he was feeding his own beloved dog? And what impact does this latest development have on the ever dwindling trust that consumers have in commercial pet food companies?

As always, I’d love to know your thoughts on this.

References

1. ^[1] Blue Buffalo admits to byproduct meal, Purina Responds (2015). PetFoodIndustry.com (7 May). Retrieved from http://www.petfoodindustry.com/articles/5166-blue-buffalo-admits-to-byproduct-meal-purina-responds. ↩
2. ^[2] Barrett, PM (2014). Dog Fight! Purina Says Blue Buffalo is Built on Lies (24 July). Bloomberg Business. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-24/blue-buffalo-vs-dot-purina-in-dog-food-fight-over-nutrition-claims. ↩

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