Leading pet food firm Purina has hit back at claims that discredit one of its leading brands, Bakers, stating it is “committed to creating nutritious foods that will keep pets happy, healthy and content.”

The claims were made by Pooch & Mutt who said it had produced an exposé on Bakers pet food.

According to Pooch & Mutt its investigation had shown that Bakers pet food included: crushed insects, known carcinogens, the controversial antioxidants BHT and BHA (which McDonalds and General mills both stopped using due to public pressure) and potentially just 1% chicken in the ‘chicken’ recipe. None of these ingredients are said to be shown on the pack of food.

But Purina has responded by stating to Pet Trade Xtra: “As a responsible pet food manufacturer we are concerned the campaign will cause pet owners unnecessary worry about the quality of food they are feeding their pet.

“All Purina products comply with the strict UK and EU legislation for pet food to ensure they are safe to feed your pet and are nutritionally balanced.

 “The production of pet food is highly regulated to ensure that it is of the utmost quality. The colours and all other additives that we use are carefully regulated by a number of authorities and are permitted for use in cat, dog and human food in all EU member states.

 “Purina is committed to creating nutritious foods that will keep pets happy, healthy and content.”

In the UK, pet food manufacturers have the option of declaring individual ingredients in their food, or declaring them by categories. Independent pet food companies, like Pooch & Mutt, tend to declare individual ingredients, as they want customers to know about the high quality ingredients that they put in their foods. Multinational companies tend to list ingredients by category.

Guy Blaskey, founder of Pooch & Mutt, commented: “There was a of lot of criticism of Bakers’ old recipe online, and it was good to see that they responded to this with an updated recipe.

“We feel that Pooch & Mutt plays an important role in helping customers do what is right for their dogs and to better understand what they feed their pets, and therefore demand more of manufacturers at all ends of the spectrum. We first looked at the recipe out of curiosity, as we delved deeper we were pretty shocked.

The report that we have published is intentionally objective, simply linking the ingredients that we found out were in the food to independent information, commentaries and studies on those ingredients.

“However, on a personal level, I find it incredibly disappointing that a company would act this way whilst claiming to care about the health of customers’ pets.”

Pooch & Mutt’s report can be viewed at http://www.poochandmutt.com/bakers_dog_food/