We go around on things like this, My Beloved and I: Consumer Reports likes the Great Value ground decaf. Not the whole bean and not the regular coffee, where the magazine prefers Eight O’Clock whole bean. The Wal-Mart house brand Great Value in other foods seems very much like the more expensive name brands.
Then why so much cheaper? Let’s assume the consumer is not paying for marketing, the polished ad campaigns.
Great Value peanut butter ends up being Peter Pan or, rather, both made by ConAgra. They were recalled last month – a touch of salmonella.
In the last week, dozens of pet foods were recalled. All were made by a Canadian company, Menu Foods. It and the U.S. FDA researched reports of cats and dogs dying of kidney failure. They had eaten cans or pouches of wet food made by this overall company in common.
(To clarify, Menu Foods lists 42 cat food brands and 53 dog brands — with each split several times into can or pouch, size of can and item name — so this is a lot of spinach (whose recall last summer was just 37 brands, from essentially one company).)
I trust the veterinarians I’ve had over the years. One was just profiled. All advised MB and me to feed our cats whatever’s marketed as top-quality, such as Iams and especially Science Diet.
A few Science Diet items are among those recalled, as are those under the supermarket brands Hy-Vee and Price Chopper. Menu Foods also makes some of the products of Eukanuba (classier than the gourmet Iams) and PetSmart’s house brand Authority.
The vets did not know it’s all run out the same tubes. Here is Slate.com on that. Maybe it’s not. Maybe Menu Foods creates each differently, to the specs of each company.
Maybe you should feed your animals Jif or Skippy. -30-
