Alrighty, on the laptop so here we go. I'm sorry if this ends up super long, especially since it wasn't what you were looking for.
Blue Buffalo info. Let's start with the company first. The company was founded by the same man who owned SoBe. He's a typical business-type ass, simply put. Whenever any legal claims come across his desk, he throws a bunch of money around to keep it hush hush and lets everything slide under the table. He tries hard to keep his company in the spotlight with shady business. In the past, this included recalls and as I said before, legal claims such as false advertising. Blue Buffalo has a lot of consistency issues with their food, and it is regularly noted each time it is inspected. It never reaches recall status because the inconsistencies are never enough to "cause any serious issues". Vit D recall of 2010, anyone? Claims of sick dogs were going on for months before it ever hit the news, and even then it was a "volun-told" recall. They had the option of pulling their products or the products were going to be pulled for them. Company is all about the good image, so they pulled them voluntarily. Something similar happened in 2007 with the melamine contamination.
After the 2010 Vit D recall, there was a brief period where BB was no longer sending out their stock to stores and retailers. Word down the ladder was that there wouldn't be any new stock until the first of the year. Regardless, Reps were instructed to tell customers that new stock would be in soon, and to keep checking back or switch to a different formula of Blue. It was assumed that they were assessing the issue and checking their product for further issues.
By January of 2011, they had completely re-introduced their products to the market. Unknown to the public, these products had many changes in the formulas and their packaging, and a few new formulas were set for release - including Wilderness Puppy, Wilderness Senior, and a few Small Bites variations on some products as well as others. More dogs got sick, questions were asked, no answers were ever given and no answers have been given since. Eventually it faded out to what the BB market is today.
Nothing seems to have changed since then. There are still dogs getting sick from the formulas and BB is still covering their tracks and refusing to address these issues.
Here is a quote from one of their false advertising issues that never made it to media light...
NAD'S SELF-REGULATORY PROCESS
The staff of FTC's Division of Advertising Practices conducted an
investigation into whether representations made by the Blue Buffalo
Company, Ltd. regarding its pet foods violated Section 5 of the Federal Trade
Commission Act. This investigation came about after a referral from the
National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus
(NAD). Blue Buffalo had participated in NAD's self-regulatory process and
appealed one of NAD's adverse findings to the National Advertising Review
Board (NARB), which agreed with the NAD decision.
CLAIMS BROUGHT TO FTC STAFF’s ATTENTION BY NAD
FTC staff reviewed claims brought to its attention by NAD as well as some
additional claims. This review included Blue Buffalo's claims that its pet
foods—
• contained "no animal byproducts,"
• contained human-grade ingredients,
• helped protect pets from age-related diseases, and
• contained ingredients that had been proven to provide a number of
significant health benefits for pets.
FTC didn't recommend enforcement....
CONTINUING CLAIMS
In addition, FTC staff reviewed, at NAD's request, Blue Buffalo's
continuing claims that its pet food ingredients provided superior antioxidant protection, after Blue Buffalo promised to stop doing so.
Accordingly, FTC staff determined not to recommend enforcement action
at this time. Among the factors that FTC staff considered were—
• Blue Buffalo's substantial website changes, which included the
removal of age-related disease claims, establishment claims, and
human-grade ingredients claims; and
• Blue Buffalo's removal of "no animal by-products" claims from
its website and packaging.
So yeah. It's a pretty sucky company, and not a food I would ever be comfortable feeding.
Could you maybe post your dogs' needs in a new thread, or PM me? and I'll gladly go food hunting for you. BB is way overpriced for what you are getting.