Why we chose to remove Farmina from our shelves

 

I won't sugar coat it and I wont take your entire day to talk about this. Here are the key reasons why we have chosen to remove Farmina from the store. 

• Unannounced Recipe Changes: We and all other retailers in the United States began receiving bags with stickers over the ingredients on the bag with new ingredients. This happened without any communication from Farmina to distributors, retailers, or consumers. The sticker had a list of new ingredients on each bag. This lack of transparency is quite honestly scary, and shady as they knew they would get backlash on the changes they made. 
• Ingredient Alterations: This isn't the same point as above, my primary concern above was the lack of communication. If we didn't look further and just trusted a company that has focused on quality up until now, we wouldn't have caught what was changed. Instead of using fresh chicken for example, they began using cheaper products like dehydrated chicken. That isn't so bad in and of itself if it wasn't for the fact that they added it to recipes that did not have chicken before, and folks feed these foods to avoid chicken allergies. They also did not change the price to reflect the cheaper ingredients and still wanted to charge premium prices for a cheaper product. Next, Farmina also added Wheat which is probably the most egregious issue as it is the highest allergen in dogs and is a very cheap filler and source of non-appropriate protein. This is a company that put a wheat picture crossed out as advertising on their bags. Picture below taken from their website

• Pet Illness Reports: Their are various online social media groups and forums where pet owners are now reporting their pets getting sick on the new formulas (again, folks were feeding Farmina for high quality ingredients and avoid known allergies for their pets). We weren't about to let this happen to our customers, so before any issue could occur, we removed every bag from our shelves. 

I honestly can't fathom why these changes were made, they even received awards in early 2025 on their foods for it's high quality ingredients and alignment with AAFCO and WSAVA guidelines. Their new USA plant opened this year and I can only speculate that now they were not beholden to their European guidelines and customers, and sought to make it cheaper to manufacture while still charging the same amount and making more profit. That is pure speculation on my part but it's the only thing I can figure as to why these changes were made and with no communication. 

We love our customers on both 2 legs and 4, it doesn't matter the brand or how much money we make. We have built our business on very strict core values and we will not sell something in our store that we are uncomfortable with or would not feed to our own Paw Family. 

Best Regards,

Ryan Meeks

Paw of the Family