Update on Instinct Chicken Meal Formula Production

As we communicated on 02-27-08, some of our customers who are feeding Instinct Chicken Meal Formula grain-free kibble for dogs may have noticed loose stools and occasional vomiting in their pet. Again, if your dog has experienced this and your bag of Instinct Chicken Meal Formula displays a “best if used by” date of 1/3/09 or 1/10/09, you may return it to your retail store for a replacement or refund. The “best if used by” dates are located on the back of the package.

Recently, we added a secondary kibble production facility as co-packer for Nature’s Variety to help meet growing demand. Contrary to our specifications, the Instinct Chicken Meal Formula mentioned above was produced more nutrient-dense relative to our standards. Some of the product in these two code dates is a richer diet for your pet, potentially causing digestive upset in some dogs.  Please click here to read an extended list of QUESTIONS & ANSWERS about this situation.

At Nature’s Variety, our mission is to make all of our products with integrity and care for the health of your companion animals. We are pet owners ourselves and deeply regret this situation. Please know we are taking any and all necessary steps to assure the quality of our products through the following actions:

1. Immediate suspension of production at our secondary manufacturing facility where we identified the density issue, and we will not resume production at this facility until production standards meet our high level of quality
2. Increased the frequency of testing of our products in our warehouse before we ship
3. Hired an additional quality control manager with 25 years of experience to  implement new quality control protocol and reporting requirements at our co-packers

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. Just click the Contact Us link at the top of this page, and our team will respond to you as quickly as possible. Thanks again for choosing Nature’s Variety.