Iams - Exposing the Nasty Truth

The pet food industry is, as we all discovered in March with the Menu foods recall, perhaps not as well regulated as it should be. Manufacturers routinely use substandard ingredients, by-products, and other dangerous products which shouldn't be fed to any living thing, let alone pets. It is this search for cheap filler ingredients that led to the Menu recall, in which wheat from China was discovered to have been tainted with Melamine.

In the midst of their competitors lies the Iams company. For at least the last decade, Iams (which manufactures the Iams and Eukanuba brands) has been the proud owner of what is quite possibly the most effective and deceptive marketing campaign in the pet food industry. Claiming that their products are far superior to other brands and that eating an Iams diet can promote health and well being, Iams has managed to secure a niche in the "premium" classification of the mainstream pet food market.

The question remains: does Iams truly deserve to be promoted as a more healthful alternative to many other pet foods? The answer might surprise you.

When it comes to ingredients, Iams is no standout. By-products- which often include beaks, feathers, feet, hooves, and other seemingly inedible parts of animals, are still used in Iams products. Unfortunately, even the non by-product animal sources they use are most likely from animals which are deemed unacceptable for the human food supply- diseased, dead, dying, or disabled animals. Obviously, these practices are not merely confined to the Iams company, but the fact that a supposedly "premium" pet food can claim to be healthy while using highly substandard and, in some cases, contaminated meat, should be appalling to the consumer who, thus far, has been willingly shelling out substantial money for a better product.