I got another negative comment about Thailand as a location for Weruva’s food production and it discourages me that Americans are so incorrectly convinced that everything American is necessarily better — and everything from anywhere else (especially the continent of Asia) is automatically under suspicion. I have written a number of blogs explaining this and urge everyone to please take the time to read some of the blogs I take time to think through and write and post here. First of all, products from China are worthy of your suspicion and history has shown they should be avoided whenever possible. But Asia is a very large place, and Thailand is a highly regulated and civilized country. We all need to work together to improve the lives of our pets and the products we offer them. A fantastic company like Weruva is working TWICE as hard as any other company to make sure that human grade ingredients go into their cat food — which is made in a human food facility — and is made to the MUCH higher EU food safety standards – so they need to be applauded. Here is the posting that just went up on my blog at the tail end of another posting.

Bought the “Paw Lickin’ Chicken” and 3 of my pets have thrown up and have diarrhea. I can’t say it’s from this food, but strange that 3 would have same problem after eating. I read the label again. Noticed the small print says “PRODUCT OF THAILAND”. WHY is the food from Thailand? Is it processed in Thailand?? This really concerns me. Why can’t they make in USA?? From my research, it’s very difficult to prove products are really processed to safe standards OUT OF USA even though claim. I’m not happy about this. Won’t buy again unless they use USA food & process in USA… and even have to be careful with USA commercial foods!!

Okay, so here’s what I need to say to this person: many pets have digestive disturbances when they go from an all-dry diet to a wet one. This also can happen when they go from an inferior canned product to one that has a higher protein content and real vegetables, like Weruva does. So if this is the case, it means the cat’s digestive system needs to be introduced to this superior food slowly — add it in small increments to the cats existing diet. Go slowly when changing a cat’s diet — and make sure the cat eats slowly. Sometimes cats who are giving up “kitty crack” can wolf down the wet food so quickly it comes right back up, so you need to feed very small amounts at a time (like 1 teaspoon every few minutes).  As for this person’s “research,” he can rest assured that the food safety standards in the U.S. are definitely a challenge both to people and pets so choosing a food made according to the more strict EU (European) standards means you are getting a food made more safely. And it is made in a human food facility – American pet foods (except for a small handful of companies) are made from the rejected food from the human food chain and are regularly contaminated and also may contain no meat at all, only bones, beaks and feathers.

–Tracie Hotchner

Hi Tracie:

I have been a listener of your Cat Chat® show for many years, & I also have your book The Cat Bible. I received an email the other day from you & it mentioned your new food.

I drove about 12 miles to buy it & I bought many of the different flavors, but when I read the can at the very bottom, it says, “product of Thailand”.

I was very surprised because I thought it also says it is produced in a human facility. I thought it was made here in the USA.

Thank You,
Patty C.

So glad you got in touch so I can help clear up this frequent misunderstanding we Americans have about whether what is produced in other countries is good — or inferior to our own products. I think we all need to keep in mind that China is a country whose products have proven over and over to be either suspicious or dangerous — but that does not hold true for the rest of Asia by any means. Thailand, in fact, holds itself to the much HIGHER European standards. Plus it’s important to note that Weruva is made in a human food facility (which makes many of the foods eaten in restaurants across America). Once you know that, you can feel a whole lot better about letting your kitties enjoy Weruva. And rather than driving 12 miles, you can order Weruva from PetFoodDirect.com and get a special discount as a Cat Chat listener. Use discount code CATCHAT20.

I used my site’s Google search box to find a previous Blog I did about Weruva and the Thailand connection, so please take a moment to read this, too.

Best,
Tracie
P.S. if you’d like an autographed bookplate inscribed to your kitty to put into your THE CAT BIBLE please send your cat’s name & your mailing address and I’ll pop it right in the mail.

The Cat Bible

I received this from a listener I was able to help emotionally after a tragic accident in which her little kitten Emma got stuck inside a litter pail and died. Then I heard from her with concerns about the manufacture of Weruva cat food. I am blogging this so that it can educate all of us about the folly of thinking that we can each become plant inspectors, or that we even know what we are looking for. It is also another example of an uneducated assumption by some people in the United States that because there are serious health and safety issues with many food and products made in China, that somehow this extends to all of Asia. It is really lamentable and foolish assumption to make.

I have moved from Montana to Portland Oregon and I was looking for the pet store I buy Weruva from but could not locate it and stopped at a different one which sells only premium foods but no Weruva. He told me he only sells foods that he has personally been able to tour the processing plant. If he sees any trace of mice, workers don’t wear proper head and foot protection, etc. he will not carry their products. He said that in December he will be going to Thailand to tour the Tiki Cat plant. He has contacted the people at Weruva, but was turned down! I am very impressed that he goes to this extreme to insure that our animals have the best foods. I told him I would contact you and see if there was anything you could do to help him. My 3 babies and I love the Weruva. I think this owner is great to care so much. I am considering going to a food that he can attest to.

When I read this I thought that while the store owner might sound like a serious vendor, his claims were laughable of his having toured every facility whose foods he carried. Pet food plants let nobody in for a long list of reasons — and a fellow with a small specialty store would have no access whatsoever. Weruva (and Newman’s Own, and many top premium pet foods) are careful to keep the identity and location of their plants guarded not because they have anything to hide from consumers, but at least in part because the competition would make attempts to move in on their resources). Also, the very idea that this shopkeeper would know what to inspect for in a plant — anymore than average people could do a credible restaurant inspection — is blowing smoke. So I asked David Forman, the owner of Weruva, to comment on this shop owner’s claim:

I do appreciate a vendor going the extra mile (literally) to differentiate himself from his competitors by claiming to tour factories to see what is going on. However, I am not sure of this guy’s production/inspection background, so unless he really knows what he is doing, he really is not qualified to give anything more than an opinion. If he is an expert and can comment up and down, left and right, great — but highly unlikely. There is so much beyond a cursory review or tour of the plant.

Canada, for instance, recently inspected our factory in Thailand. They stopped ALL foreign importation of pet food into Canada until all facilities were inspected. Their shift was to eliminate any potential of BSE entering Canada. The inspection of our factory was to be a 2-day inspection and Canada passed it in one day because of its superior QC. The head inspector has seen hundreds of factories over 30 years of doing this. Cook and Thurber, one of the leaders in independent third party audits, often inspects the factory rigorously on behalf of Subway (David’s father’s business supplies all the tuna to the Subway chain in the United States). Subway sends members from its own team to inspect. The absolute strict BRC inspections, on human food standards, are conducted. There are qualified entities regularly going through our factory and inspecting on extremely sophisticated human food standards, of which the pet food side must pass. It goes way beyond “traces of mice and proper hats.” If you have to pass the barrage of human food inspections we do, questions like that aren’t even remotely considered. It goes without saying that the rudimentary sanitary and hygiene stuff is done. Like good pet foods these days, it is a very 101 question to ask if they contain by-products, wheat or soy. Customers are more advanced and get into the nitty gritty.

So Kim, I did some investigating of my own and can tell you two things: The Tiki plant in Thailand has no visits of any kind expected in December. And my personal opinion is that this shopkeeper wants to go to Thailand and is looking for a way to write it off as a business expense. Sorry, but that’s how I see it. Anybody who would disparage a company — and not carry their products — on the absurd assumption that he should have been allowed to tour their facility — is not a proper person, as the English would say. A friend in the movie business used to call people like that “14 carat phonies.”

UPDATE: Weruva Wins the Day!

Kim wrote back:

Tracie,

Thank you once again! The more I thought about it I decided that I felt Weruva was the best for my furry family! I have already found the original store I was looking for and am 100% committed to Weruva varieties. I knew you were the person to contact! My goal is to be able to meet you in person. Congrats on the new show. I hope to listen to it also.

Well, that is great news. They also have a less expensive brand they now make called BFF (Best Feline Friend) which saves money by alternating it with the other flavors. But it is fish-based so three times a week is about right for that.  Also PETCO now has a new well-priced canned food called Soulistic made just for them by Weruva – same high quality and a big bargain! You can order at Petco.com online and get a discount by putting MYCATCHAT in the coupon code box.

I hope we meet some day, too!

Tracie

I got this email from Laura — not the first time someone has been concerned about Thailand as a source of Weruva.

I emailed a while ago regarding my cat’s recurring UTI issues.  Thanks to your advice, I switched to Weruva and my cat Leo has been doing great!  In fact both my cats love the Chicken Soup.  They both eat 1/2 a can (5.5 oz) twice a day… is that too much?  If I try feeding them less, the both sit in the kitchen and meow loudly for more.

My other question is, bought a case of Weruva to minimize the number of trips to the store, and the label on the box indicated that it was a “Product of Thailand”.  I thought that this food was manufactured in the US in human-grade facility.  Are the food and factory standards in Thailand comparable to the US?

I’d love your opinion on this.

First of all, let your cats guide you in how much food they need at each meal. The CAT CHAT® rule is that you give them as much as they will eat in about 15 minutes and then pick up the dish. So even if they can eat an entire can apiece, that would be okay. In all likelihood, once the excitement and novelty of eating real food wears off, their appetite will stabilize and they will probably want only half a can at each meal.  However, cats will not over eat (like people and Labrador Retrievers do!) so there is no downside to being generous with the wet food, especially when it is as good a quality as Weruva.

Secondly, I don’t know whether you are aware that you can get Weruva from Pet Food Direct, who also gives a 20% discount to my listeners. You need to put CATCHAT20 in the coupon code box — and you can also order a mixed case of Weruva with an assortment of flavors. They also now have a less expensive line of food called BFF (Best Feline Friend) which is fish-based, so you’d only want to use that a couple of times a week since fish is not the most desirable protein source for cats.

Lastly, your concern about the safety of food coming from Thailand is a worry I have heard about before.  I think we’re all pretty suspicious of ingredients and foods coming from China, but Thailand is a completely different country, with very little in common with China except that they are both in Asia. Thailand actually has much more restrictive regulations about what can go into pet food so their standards are higher than the U.S. standards for pet food. There is a letter in my blog from David Forman, the founder of Weruva, explaining to another customer how the Thai food industry follows the British rules and regulations, which are apparently more stringent and cautious than our own.  Here is David Forman’s answer on the cat food made in Thailand issue. Standards for pet food in the United States are pretty lax, while countries like Thailand use the British code which is much more strict.

Hi there – I just love your show and yes I do own both the Cat and Dog “Bibles.” I read them quite often for advice unlike some books where the info is so limited you never refer to it again.

I had no problem switching the cats from ugly carbs to wet food and started using Weruva. I read their website however I am nervous using food made in Thailand. Is there any cat food out there that is made in the ole USA??

Thanks for all your animal love and advice
Marylou

Well, my dear Marylou and others who want to see how seriously the great Weruva family takes your concerns – look at the depth of information they shared with me immediately. Is it any wonder I love this cat food and this company so much? Good golly, they simply amaze me. Here’s what David Forman, the owner, wrote back:

Thank you for the email to Weruva. As pet owners ourselves, we genuinely appreciate your inquiry. Regarding our choice of Thailand as a place of manufacture, there are several reasons for our decision, yet price was not one of those reasons. As you have noted, our prices are not inexpensive, and the quality control measures under which we operate are reflected in the price.

With that said, we are very fortunate to have our manufacturing partner in Thailand, and we have the deepest trust in their quality control measures. The foundation of this trust was established decades ago by a relationship that my father started with them in the late 1970′s. Our sister company, started by my father, has been producing human food in this facility for years. If you look around the supermarket, you may be surprised to learn that much of the food for people has been produced in Thailand, such as fish and fruit. In fact, the US imports about 80% of its fish with the majority coming from Thai plants. If you eat fish at a restaurant, there is a strong chance that it was caught in Pacific waters and processed in an Asian plant.

Thailand is a huge world leader when it comes to producing food for human consumption around the globe. Our factory is ISO9001 certified, which means it shares a similar “language” to that of other ISO9001 plants around the world. ISO stands for International Organization For Standardization, which essentially means that all certified factories are on the same page and that, for instance, “free range” here means “free range” there

Moreover, the USFDA recognizes the Thai FDA, and our plant is USDA certified. In a nutshell, the US believes that our plant produces foods up to US standards. The FDA has gone in there and completed inspections to their satisfaction. In addition, the strictest human food processing standard is arguably that of the UK, the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Our factory earned an “A” on the BRC standard, making it not only one of the safest places in the world to make pet food, but making it one of the safest places in the world to make human food!

As we learned with the recall, close to 100 brands of pet food were produced in one facility. In contrast, my father’s company has the exclusive contract of all human food entering the US from this facility. We are not just another number in the production line. In fact, his biggest customer, the Subway Sandwich chain, awarded my father’s company as Vendor of the Millennium, which was based upon the quality of products produced for humans in these facilities over the course of 30+ years.

While we would like to think US produced foods are the safest, statistics illustrate that we are unfortunately not the safest when it comes to manufacturing food. For instance, over 100 brands of US produced pet food were recalled last year while no brands experienced a recall from Thailand. In addition, there are currently multiple active recalls on US produced beef, chicken and pork, and that only goes back to May of this year ( www.fsis.usda.gov/fsis_recalls/open_federal_cases/index.asp). In addition, a few months back, Whole Foods had a recall of US produced beef from Coleman, the same company that supplies beef to some US pet food manufacturers (www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/12/business/12food.php). In February of this year, the largest US beef recall in history occurred in California where 143 million pounds of beef were recalled!

As mentioned, Thailand is a world leader when it comes to food production for humans. Also as mentioned, the USFDA recognizes the Thai FDA. This notion carries over to a similar branch in Thailand called the Department of Livestock Development (DLD). The DLD is similar to our USDA. The DLD sets forth certain processing guidelines. On top of being antibiotic free, hormone free and free range, our chicken, for instance, is also DLD certified.

Part of our dog food line produced in the US. While it is made under great safety measures, our food produced in Thailand is done so under far greater scrutiny. Ultimately, our food produced in Thailand would be “safer” than our food produced in the US.

We encourage pet owners to contact manufacturers and inquire about safety measures. We urge them to focus on the company and their processes rather than country of production. If we look around in the news, we do not have to look far to the see recalls occurring in the US with frequency (http://www.fda.gov/opacom/7alerts.html). A few months ago, US based Hartz pet products recalled one of its US produced items for cats because of salmonella. As mentioned, a few months back, the largest beef recall in American history occurred in California. Headlines a few months back indicated that our country’s drinking water contains trace amounts of oodles of prescription drugs!

I hope this has been helpful. Please let us know if you have further questions.