Some of you may have heard that very recently, Natura Pet Foods was acquired by Procter & Gamble.  Prior to the acquisition, Natura were the makers of Innova, EVO and California Naturals dog and cat foods. 
 
When the sale was first announced, it gave me great pause, and after several days of careful thought about the situation, Doggy Style Pet Shop has decided that we can no longer support the Natura brands.
 
Why?     
 
We're removing the former Natura products from our shelves for several reasons.  First , Doggy Style's philosophy and ethics just don't square with the philosophy and ethics of Procter & Gamble.  P&G openly admits to testing their home and cosmetic products on animals, including tests that cause serious pain, injury and death.  P&G has consistently been criticized for spending more money on advertising in 5 days than they spent on finding cruelty-free alternatives to animal testing in 14 years!  I cannot support a company that is more interested in its bottom line than in seeking out safe, cruelty-free alternatives that are readily available and used by many other companies.  It just doesn't make sense.
 
In addition, P&G announced that its intent, in purchasing Natura Pet Foods, is to use its distribution chain to put Natura products in big-box pet supply stores (PetSmart/PetCo) and mass retail (grocery stores/Walmart).  We've seen this before in the pet food industry, where a pet food company is swallowed up by a large corporation who ramps up production, cheapens ingredients and changes formulas in order to lower the cost and moves the product into the mass retail arena.  Our biggest fear with this scenario is that pet food companies don't have to tell you about recipe changes for 6 months after they've made the change!  And they don't have to tell you at all if they cheapen the quality of the ingredients.  
 
Don't believe me?  Good.  Feeding your pet is an important matter and you should take it very seriously.  We do.  So I did a little digging and was able to find this evidence that Natura/P&G are already setting themselves up to lower the quality of their brands.  Check this out.  HERE is the Natura/P&G website as it is current today, listing the ingredients of Innova EVO dog food.  Click on each ingredient to see how Natura/P&G describes it.  THEN, click HERE to look at an online retailer's website.  This retailer clearly just cut and pasted copy from Natura's website, presumably at a date prior to Tuesday's sale to P&G.  You can very clearly see that Natura/P&G has already have removed descriptions of the meat they use as being "human grade," and no longer claim it to be hormone, antibiotic, pesticide or even chemical preservative-free.  You don't need me to tell you that these changes are not good. 
 
Rest assured that Doggy Style has not decided to phase out Natura because we are afraid to compete with large retail stores.  We have competed with them for quite some time with certain overlapping brands like Wellness and Solid Gold.  Indeed, our prices are usually in line with these companies OR BETTER.  But at Doggy Style we place just as much emphasis, if not more, on the quality of the products we carry as the prices we offer.  We still continue to support brands like Wellness and Solid Gold (albeit with a wary eye) because pet food and supplements continues to be the sole focus of the companies that make them.  It isn't just a segment being used to increase their distribution chain and provide them access to more market share to pad their bottom lines and ultimately provide huge bonuses for their corporate executives.  At our bottom line, we have to feel like we can trust the companies that supply us with the products we support, and I just don't feel like we can trust Procter & Gamble enough to recommend that you buy it.  Ultimately, that is why we are dropping Innova, California Natural, EVO and Mother Nature products.
 
We will be phasing out the Natura brands over the course of the next 60 days.  For those Natura customers who would like to switch their pets to a different pet food please stop in or give us a call.  We've put together a number of alternatives for each of the Natura products we carried and are having our distributors provide us with samples for you so that you can safely and slowly transition yor pet.  For those of our customers who do not want to change food, we will continue to support your decision as well.  Please contact us and we will be happy to special order your Natura food for you.

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We Carry
Fromm
Nature’s Variety
Lotus
Sojos
Honest Kitchen
Grandma Lucy’s
Tiki Cat
Tiki Dog
Stella & Chewy’s
Primal
Orijen
Solid Gold
Weruva
BFF
Go!
Merrick
Canidae
Felidae
Artemis
Holistic Select
Wellness
Evangers
Born Free
Canine Caviar
Vital Essentials