Hi there, I've been researching canned foods online and found a posting about Fancy Feast canned food making some cats sick.
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/183421
Anyone here have that experience? My 1.5 yr old cat loves that brand and didn't take to Wellness canned when I tried to switch him. Anyone have recommendations or insight on to which brand is the healthiest. The ingredients in Wellness do look better than Fancy Feast. Royal Canin seems popular with the breeders, why is that? It seems to contain a lot of corn.
That does not seem a very reliable source of information. I would not worry about the safety of Fancy Feast, although some foods may be "better," depending on how you define that. Obviously, a "better" food that your cats will not eat is not a better food for you. People report high levels of satisfaction with RC foods.
I feed my baby canned Wellness kitten food and Evo Turkey and Chicken Formula. He prefers the Wellness kitten food over any of a variety of other canned foods I've given him.
Royal Canin supplies breeders with free food--so I am suspect about how nutritious it really is. It looks to be mostly meat-flavored corn to me. I try to feed only or primarily grain-free. When I got him home from the breeder, I transitioned him to better food right away.
I personally don't like RC. As far as Fancy Feast canned the "gourmet" varieties are better than the chopped, grilled, with gravy, etc.
RC has promotions and discounts, like many cat foods. I doubt it is much of a factor for most. It is a very good food generally available for pet homes and that appeals to breeders. It also has very targeted blends and prescription foods when those are needed. Most cats do well on most foods. Some cats are delicate and do need to avoid some ingredients. You can read the recommendations of a consensus of vet school nutritional experts at
http://www.consumerreports.org/health/he...ood-ov.htm
RC has a breeder's program that gives you free sample packs of kitten food. When you have a litter, they send the same number of sample packs and we include them in the kitten pack for new owners. We don't really get anything out of it, and the new owners get some free food that the kittens have been raised on. Besides that, our raggies love RC (we've tried lots of foods including SD and supermarket brands), so most of the reason we stick by it is because they'll eat it! And the boys are on a prescription dental diet that only RC and SD seem to provide.
Thanks for posting those links, Jamasian.
The state of the pet food industry is really scary! Who knows what is lurking in those cans and pretty packages?! I hate that it is so unregulated. The greed and carelessness of many pet food manufacturers is shameful and horrific.
We should all do our research and try to choose the best possible foods for our beloved kitties!
The melamine contamination was in 2007 from Chinese origin wheat gluten - turned out to be unrelated to rice. Melamine was also used in China in infant milk formula and the perpetrators were executed. Not very relevant to selection of pet foods today.
The attempted class action was two years ago.
You can have a very good idea of what is "lurking in those cans" based on nutritional labels and ingredient lists.
There are a lot of artificial ingredients in labels for both human consumption and pet consumption. Until reading more about what the cat label jargon means, I had no idea what that stuff was actually made up of. Yuck...
http://www.messybeast.com/cat-food-industry.htm
I agree with you JanH that we can feel confident that what's on the pet food labels is what is in the can, but the industry terminology makes some of ingredients sound agreeable; however, when the industry terminology is translated into everyday English, the ingredients can be grotesque to pet parents.