PET FOOD RECALL:

ONCE MORE MOLLY IS PISSED OFF:

Twice now Molly has received anonymous comments on her blog insisting that this Canadian blog make it plain that the Royal Canin recall of the Dissolution Diet ONLY applies to Canadian product NOT American product. Well for all that is worth this is true. So far no American product is involved. Why am I annoyed ? BOTH of these comments have come from the email address of 68.143.119 in St Louis Missouri. As of 2004 THIS was the corporate headquarters of Royal Canin in the USA. Is it still the headquarters ? Now, Molly has nothing particular against the Royal Canin corporation, though she was dismayed when they swallowed Walthams awhile ago as she thought that general quality might decline because of this takeover. I both feed my own cats Royal Canin products and sell them to clients. But, but, but the very next day after the recall from the Hill's Corporation came out about the recall of their M/D diet I sent an email to Royal Canin as I sold their diabetic diet to clients asking for assurance that their food contained NO WHEAT GLUTEN FROM CHINA. Was this email replied to ? No and double no ! The Royal Canin people sent out a press release to us Canadian veterinarians en mass assuring us that their food was safe.

Fine and good. that was your impression at the time, and it may indeed be cost effective to send out a mass mailing rather than to pay people to reply to each and every inquiry from a Canadian veterinarian, especially one who runs a small practice in Winnipeg Manitoba. You may indeed have been surprised by the course of events which showed that your Canadian product was contaminated in one case with one product in your line. But "cost-effectiveness" ???? How much does it cost to hire FLACK RUNNERS who prowl the internet to discover blogs such as this and reply to them ????? Is it 10,000 times as much as it would have cost to reply to queries from individual veterinarians or is it more ???? What is the cost of this flack running as compared to a proper inventory search almost a month ago, assuming Royal Canin keeps the sort of records that consumers expect it does. Is it a million times more or perhaps "infinity" because the employee who should have been tracking waybills was on salary anyways. Any number divided by zero (the extra cost of assigning a task to an employee who would be paid salary anyways) is infinity.

As I have said in previous posts I AM annoyed that the main site for the Royal Canin corporation in France says nothing (at the time I visited it) about this matter. It looks like a cover-up. Similarily, I am annoyed that I keep getting these posts from what I assume is the PR department of Royal Canin. Yes , so far no American product has been implicated. But this is what we Canadian veterinarians heard a couple of weeks ago from your Canadian subsidiary. Your attempts at "flac running" have diminished rather than enhanced my opinion of Royal Canin as I see that you are willing to devote considerably more resources to public relations than you were to quality control.

Mollymew