Hi Mountainhound,
I take a different approach when evaluating a food. I start by looking at the company and evaluate if they have sound nutritional information. I want to know who formulates the food, what their nutritional training is and ask questions about quality control.
When I contacted this company I talked with Scott Freeman who formulates the diets. He holds a degree in marketing. He has no formal nutritional training and this is quite evident when talking to him. He doesn’t understand some very basic nutritional concepts. He is not someone who I’d want formulating a diet.
The diets fall way below AAFCO in some key nutrients (Vit D, E, Zn) and the company gets around this by feed trialing one formulation and then using the family rule to put an AAFCO statement on the foods.
The nutrient analysis on the website are not the analysis of the products. The same levels are reported for nearly every product and every nutrient. Scott said nearly 6 months ago that the website just needed to be updated. Three months ago he told me he had sent all the new info to the webmaster and it would all be posted within days, but the same numbers are still posted.
Some real head scratchers can be found in the NA. The Beef Ca is reported as 2.123% and the phos as 2.95% YIKES! An inverse ratio! Scott said these numbers are incorrect but months later the same numbers are still being reported/ posted as the actual analysis. I asked him if the Beef Ca level was ever actually 2.123 % (which is a calcium level reported in many of the diets) or was it actually higher than the 2.95% Phos. He said he had no idea where the reported 2.123% Calcium number came from.
I asked him about the ash levels in the venison meals and he said it was over 25%
I asked him about quality control. He doesn’t do any testing on any of the ingredients before going into production, he relies on the spec sheets that come with the shipments. Other companies I’ve talked to do their own analysis on incoming ingredients to verify the spec sheets are accurate. He seemed uncertain as to what post production testing was done by the co packers.
I think this company is good at one thing…. marketing which makes sense as that is the only field that this company’s formal education is in.
You can draw you own conclusions but I couldn’t ever recommend this food.
