Blue Buffalo addresses Wilbur-Ellis petfood ingredient issue

Blue Buffalo has taken to its site to address an issue with Wilbur-Ellis petfood ingredients, after the Wilbur-Ellis' Texas processing plant mislabeled some ingredients.

"Blue Buffalo has recently learned from Wilbur-Ellis, a major US company that supplies ingredients to us and many other well-known brands of petfoods, that a Texas petfood ingredient processing plant they own had mislabeled some of the ingredients they shipped to their customers," said Bill Bishop, founder and chairman of Blue Buffalo, in an open letter to customers. "So while their customers were ordering and paying for 100% chicken meal, at times they were receiving shipments that contained poultry by-product meal.
"Since this Wilbur-Ellis plant was the source of some of our chicken meal, we may have received some of these mislabeled shipments, and there likely are numerous other petfood companies who also received these mislabeled ingredients," he said. "The FDA has been informed of this situation, and you may rest assured that this mislabeling poses no health, safety or nutrition issue. And while this is comforting, since the health and well-being of our dogs and cats comes before anything else, the fact that any Blue Buffalo food could include a mislabeled ingredient is totally unacceptable. As a result, we have stopped doing business with this plant."
The mislabeling issue was apparently corrected months ago, but Blue Buffalo strives for transparency, said Bishop, and he felt customers deserved to know.