A pet owner contacted TruthaboutPetFood.com when he received no response from Petco or Merrick after finding many small nails in Merrick Dog Food. Merrick has since contacted the pet owner. Here’s the story…
On August 19, 2012 the following message was sent to Merrick Pet Food and Petco by the pet owner…
To whom it may concern,
Recently I noticed a 3/4 Brad Nail in our dog food bowl, not being able to make any sense of where it had come I removed it and disposed of it. Then not to long after I found the same sized Brad Nail on the floor near his food bowl. Again with some concerns I still could not comprehend where this other one had come from. Unknown to me, my wife had discovered the same type of Brad Nail in the dogs food but she had also dismissed the incident until we happened to be speaking about dog food and we both mentioned the finding.
Since then upon feeding our dog we have paid more attention when we poured the dog food into the bowl and found that on two other occasion the presence of 3/4 Brad Nail. These Brad Nails go undetected between the grains of the dry dog food and the steel colored bowl, but once we knew what we where looking for they have been easy to spot.
On August 15th on my last discovery I became seriously concerned and called our local Petco on 9717 Roosevelt Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19114-1010 to inform and inquire if anyone else had reported such a case. After explaining to the manager what had transpired who showed an air of indifference, she was able to track down our purchase through the Petco member account. The results showed that on July 21 we had indeed purchased item 001368095 Mer-Dog (Merrick)30# 5s WIL $46.98 Regular price $62.99 along several other items. Our name or phone number was never asked and as of this email we have not heard from the Pecto manager.
Since then, with the uncertainty that our dog may have already swallowed some of these Brad Nails, we have disposed of the remaining Merrick dog food and replaced with a 30# XXXX purchased at Pet Smart. We hope and pray that because of his large size and with the possibility that we may have caught what may have been the beginning of the appearance of the Brad Nails because of the consumption of the dog food there is no effect on him.
We are not only concerned for the welfare of our pet Cooper but for others that may ingest several unexpected Brad Nails, causing severe health damage or death. The same letter will be forwarded to the Merrick dog food manufactures.
Sincerely,
Merrick responded to this pet owner – 2 days after the first email was sent – stating “is a very isolated incident and that we have not had any other issues such as this reported.”
This is Cooper.
And this is an image provided by this concerned pet owner of some of the food and nails they saved from the bag…
We send this family and Cooper our best wishes. I thank them for wanting to share their story with other pet owners. Fingers are crossed that Cooper did not consume any nails.
To any pet owner that feeds Merrick Pet Food – please closely examine the food. This could be an isolated incident just as the Merrick Customer Service representative stated – or the nails could be in more bags. Please pay attention.
Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author, Buyer Beware
Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
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Diane Rise
January 7, 2013 at 12:43 am
I had two similar experiences with Merrick dog food a few years ago. Their food had just been introduced into the Seattle area. They were still a small mom and pop company. The first incident involved finding a piece of wire in a can of one the poultry varieties. It was about the size of a paper clip that had been partly straightened. I took pictures and emailed them to the company. I received a response from Tyler Merrick, the son part of the father/son company. He apologized, said they were working on their quality control and were expanding and putting in new equipment. They sent me a case of canned food. Not long after that I noticed that the cans often contained a majority of large chunks of chicken fat, a lot of gravy and little actual pieces of meat. I took pictures and sent them in…don’t remember a response, but after that I would shake the cans before purchasing them. If they sounded “sloppy” I wouldn’t buy them. The final straw was finding a metal clip with a lot of writing on it. Took pictures, sent them to the company and received another response from Tyler, this time asking to speak with me by phone. So I called him and he explained that they had gotten chickens that had clips on each one showing they were kosher, and they were not removed before processing. We spoke again about quality control. When he offered to send another case of food, I told him I didn’t want the food, I just wanted the QC problem taken care of and to donate the food to a shelter. He assured me that they were already supporting a local shelter. So, I’m concerned that there are still problems with their food. I’ll be interested to hear any further developments, but it’s obvious these are not isolated experiences. How many more incidents have gone unreported? I also suggest any further incidents be sent directly to Tyler Merrick and bypass customer service….at least he can’t say he hadn’t heard of any other problems. Diane Rise
Jim
October 30, 2013 at 7:49 pm
I found chicken bones in two different cans of Merrick Grain Free Dog Food, two varieties purchased at two locations six months apart. These folks have serious issues with quality and safety: beware!
Anthony Rowley
January 26, 2015 at 3:32 am
Thanks Jim! That was a lot of help.
Mary
February 11, 2014 at 12:08 pm
I would suggest that someone get a media outlet to cover this……maybe a national media outlet. It is time to be an activist in EVERY single incident of this nature when a pet food retailer and pet food manufacturer are not 100% responsible to the customer. There are many pet food companies that people can hooks from and if people became aware of these issues on a broad scale they would stop feeding this garbage.
Obviously, someone at the pet food company is purposely dumping this stuff into the food. Also, it is obvious that these companies do not utilize high powered magnets to attract this metal garbage at some stage of the process where these metal items could be easily drawn from the food.
STOP BEING A VICTIM. GET ACTIVE. GET BUSY. CALL THE MEDIA.
I would also like to suggest that if or when you suspect that your animal may have swallowed something metal you immediately take them to the vet for an X-ray. A sharp metal item like these brads can easily puncture a bowel. Would you rather spend the money on an X-ray and KNOW or possibly spend thousands treating a bowel puncture, or even worse yet have your dog die from peritonitis due to bowel contents seeping through the areas damaged by the nail.
YOUR PET DEPENDS ON YOU TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
You can also cook a large batch of oatmeal and have your dog eat it immediately. The oatmeal is mucous and can help to surround any metal object that may be in the GI tract. Often vets will take a wait and see approach, so anything you can do to help cover the nail in bulky residue in the gut would be very, very helpful.
Debi
January 27, 2015 at 9:33 pm
NEVER feed Merrick products; they are horrible. Merrick owns their own rendering plants and all that toxic sludge goes into their products. Diseased, already dead, euthanized animals, road kill…anything goes at those places. There’s lots of info online for you to verify this. Tell others to save their animals’ health and lives. Another greedy, stinking human only interested in $$$$.
Anne
May 2, 2016 at 2:33 pm
Debi, if that were true, Merrick would have to list “meat and bone meal”, or “animal by-products” on their ingredients list.
Last time I checked, Merrick dog food had no such ingredients listed.