skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Wellpet LLC in recalling one of its Wellness dog food recipes because a portion of the recalled product was found to have a high moisture content, which may cause the petfood to mold before its expiration date.
The recall applies to 12-pound bags of Wellness Small Breed Adult Health dry dog food, marked with a "Best By" date of August 18, 2013. Wellpet says they believe the high moisture content poses no health risk.
Consumers who have purchased the recalled dog food may contact the company for a replacement at +1.800.225.0904 beginning at 8 a.m. EST. Wellpet asks consumers to call back if their call does not go through the first time, as the company is located on the East coast of the US in an area affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Pet food manufacturer Nestlé reported more than a 20 percent increase in sales its pet care segment for the first nine months of 2012.
In the Americas, pet care maintained positive growth, with good performances in the cat category from Friskies and Fancy Feast, as well as the Beneful line for dogs. The pet care segment's growth helped the company achieve overall sales in the Americas of CHF20.9 billion (US$31.1 billion), with organic growth of 5.5 percent.
As a whole, for the first nine months of 2012, Nestlé reported 6.1 percent organic growth and 2.9 percent real internal growth, with sales up 11 percent to CHF67.6 billion (US$72.5 billion). The company expects organic growth of 5 percent to 6 percent for the full year.
Cambrian Pet Foods is investing £1.4 million (US$2.2 million) to expand its pet food production line and create 22 new jobs.
With help from a £500,000 (US$801,104) through the Economic Growth Fund, the petfood company will install a new petfood production line to expand into the growing market for premium petfood in convenience packaging. The new range of premium dry petfoods will launch in 2013.
“Funding support helped to bring it to fruition and was vital to enable us to go ahead with this investment," said Richard Davies, Cambrian Pet Food director. “We operate in an increasingly competitive international market and as a small company we have to remain nimble and react to customer demands and trends."
Vitakraft has entered into cooperation with Wanpy, a Chinese manufacturer of dog and cat treats, to expand its pet food offerings into the Asian market.
As part of the cooperation, a new pet food factory in Yantai in Shandong province is expected to begin production at the end of 2012. The newly established distribution company, Vitakraft China, will market the new range of dog and cat food, as well as continue distributing pet products from the other segments of Vitakraft to the east and southeast Asia-Pacific region.
The Brazilian Association of Pet Products Industry, Abinpet, recently hosted a Brazilian pavilion at Zoosphere 2012, the Russian trade show of products and services for pets, which was held in October 11-13.
Three Abinpet-associated companies took part in the Brazilian pavilion at Zoosphere: Brazilian Pet Foods, Eccopetz and Guabi Group, all of which exhibited new products for dogs and cats, including petfood and natural pet treats. Aimed at stimulating Brazilian exports, the Abinpet-associated companies networked with 250 other companies from countries such as Belarus, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, China, Thailand and Ukraine.
“A pavilion made of Brazilian companies reinforces the potential of Brazil in the pet sector. The Brazilian space called the attention of the public and let importers confident for future businesses. Companies' credibility increases due to the support of Abinpet and Apex-Brazil,” said Robson Fonseca, international trade manager at Guabi.
Researchers at the University of Illinois looked into the common belief that cats, carnivorous by nature, are healthiest when fed high-protein diets.
A team of researchers examined the effect of dietary protein-to-carbohydrate ratio on the gut microbiomes of growing kittens. “There are a lot of diets now, all natural, that have high protein and fat and not much dietary fiber or carbohydrates,” said animal sciences researcher, Kelly Swanson.
One month before mating, eight domestic shorthair female cats were randomly assigned to one of two dry diets: high-protein, low-carbohydrate (HPLC) or moderate-protein, moderate-carbohydrate (MPMC). When the kittens were born, they were housed with their mothers until they were 8 weeks old, weaned and then fed the same diets as their mothers.
After weaning, the more than 30 kittens were twin- and triple-housed within the dietary-group cages. Twelve of the kittens became part of the study, from which researchers took fecal samples at weaning and four and eight weeks after weaning. They extracted bacterial DNA and used bioinformatics techniques to estimate total bacterial diversity.
The researchers found important differences between the two groups in microbiome composition. As they had expected, levels of proteolytic bacteria that break down protein were higher for kittens on the HPLC diet and levels of saccharolytic bacteria that break down carbohydrates were higher for kittens on the MPMC diet.
In addition, researchers looked at relationships between the diets and physiology. The kittens fed the MPMC diet had high levels of bifidobacteria, which was linked to higher blood ghrelin levels. Ghrelin is a hormone that stimulates appetite and thus, may be linked to weight gain, according to researchers. Meanwhile, the bifidobacteria may promote better gastrointestinal health, as low levels in humans have been linked to inflammatory bowel disease.
Other bacteria found at higher levels in the MPMC kittens, including lactobacilli, are also linked to gut health. The researchers found a positive relationship between lactobacilli, blood cholesterol, and blood leptin levels. Leptin is the signal that tells the body to stop eating. Hence, lactobacilli may be linked to cholesterol metabolism, appetite and body weight regulation.
Although kittens fed the HPLC diet had lower levels of some health-promoting bacteria, including Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus and Megasphaera, all the animals were healthy throughout the study.
“The cat is fairly unique metabolically,” Swanson said. “But when it comes to gut microbes, there are a lot of similarities to other species. If you feed the bacteria in a cat, dog or human colon the same substrate, there are probably going to be similar outcomes.”
The complete research has been published online in British Journal of Nutrition.
Research and Markets has added Global Markets Direct's new report, "Cat Allergy - Pipeline Review, H2 2012," to its offerings.
The report provides an overview of the indication's therapeutic pipeline, with information on therapeutic developments for cat allergies, updates on late-stage and discontinued projects, and a review of key market players. The full report may be purchased online.
