Natural pet food sales booming since contaminated wheat gluten incident

May 28, 2007

Specialty pet food businesses are reaping the benefits of the melamine tainted wheat gluten from China incident, with sales of natural pet foods booming.

As a result of this latest food scare from China, consumers and businesses alike are putting a new emphasis on food quality and safety, and good nutrition, for themselves and their beloved pets.

With people now choosing more holistic and nutritionally better foods for their pets some people are suggesting that this may be a permanent change, and the major pet food manufacturers implicated in the contaminated wheat gluten incident will have a hard time trying to win consumers trust, and hard earned cash, back.

With specialty pet food sales increases of 25-30%, taking the market share to over 35% since the first pet food recall, the smaller manufacturers are finally reaping the rewards of their attention to good nutrition and natural, good quality ingredients. However retail analysts are already prophesizing that with this major increase in natural pet foods, the large manufacturers, many of whom were implicated in the recent recalls, will be angling to take a large piece of the natural pet foods action back by producing their own natural products.

Before this recall most pet food manufacturers didn't know the country of origin for every ingredient that goes into their products, that is however now changing. Consumers are voting with their cash and therefore if manufacturers expect to sell their products they need to be aware of the ingredients origins for their products. As a result some manufacturers have already stated that they will no longer be purchasing vegetable protein from China.

The Chinese government has closed two of the plants found to have used melamine, however closer scrutiny and stricter standards are also required to avoid this happening again.

In the meantime the specialty pet food manufacturers who have produced human grade, nutritious, natural pet foods will continue to reap the rewards for manufacturing with a conscience and high quality ingredients, and long may it continue.