13 December 2000

Nutro & Iams Lock Horns

Two premium petfood manufacturers, Nutro and Iams (a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble) have come head to head in the U.S. courts over nutritional claims on the packaging of Iams and Eukanuba dog foods. In a lawsuit Nutro Products Inc., has charged the Iams Company with publishing misleading information that "constitutes economic fraud upon consumers," and promotes a diet that causes dogs to lose weight at a dangerous rate. Nutro's concerns centre around claims made by Iams for its new Iams Chunks and most other dog foods marketed under the Iams and Eukanuba brand names. Nutro says that Iams falsely claims that the nutritional requirements of a dog can be satisfied by feeding smaller amounts of its product than those which Nutro recommends for its own products which gives Iams an economic advantage of lower cost per feed. According to Nutro the Iams recommended quantities "are not sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the average pet," and "pets that are fed according to the feeding instructions on the Iams Chunks bag will lose weight rapidly and unhealthily." Jerry Sicherman, president and chief operating officer of Nutro said he told Iams and P&G that Nutro wouldn't sue if the feeding instructions were changed "to more realistic levels," and that if they had any data contrary to Nutro's, Nutro would "reconsider our position" on the issue. But instead of supplying any data, Iams turned the tables and sued Nutro. As a result, Sicherman said, "Nutro had no alternative but to make its position clear and sued Iams in California." Nutro is now apparently seeking extensive damages from Iams. Nutro says that when it became aware of Iams' revised formulation and feeding instructions in April 1999, it "immediately commissioned a series of independent clinical feeding trials to determine the truth of the claims." According to Nutro, several independent kennels conducted a series of tests. Although the tests were originally scheduled to last 26 weeks, "all were terminated earlier because of excessive dog weight loss beyond criteria set by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee," the Nutro complaint states. The average weekly weight loss ranged from 3.7% to 5.2%, Nutro asserted. "For all of the trials combined, the average weekly weight loss was 4.4% of initial weight." However according to industry literature a weight loss for even obese dogs in excess of 2% per week, is unhealthy.