Contaminated pet food settlement leaves owners cold

"As far as the 'settlement,' I certainly hope it is, at a minimum, going to reimburse pet owners for the vet bills for the treatment of the sick and deceased pets," said Carol. V. of Rhode Island.

Her two cats -- Jessica and Smudge -- became gravely ill last year after eating Menu's Special Kitty food.

Jessica made a remarkable recovery, but the 15-year-old cat went back into renal failure last December. The family made the difficult decision to euthanize Jessica.

Carol isn't sure Menu's settlement will cover any of her vet bills. She didn't join any of the class action lawsuits filed against the company in the wake of its massive March 16, 2007, recall.

More here at Consumer Affairs.

Organic pet food sales grow after pet deaths

The New York Times has a piece about the steady growth in this industry:

Pet Promise pledges its foods are made from “source-verified, natural ingredients.” Although a 25-pound bag of its dog food costs around $43, compared with around $24 for a 50-pound bag of the conventional stuff, sales rocketed by 300 percent at the height of the recall, says its co-founder, Dave Carter. But the company didn’t sustain those supercharged growth levels; for all of 2007, Pet Promise had high double-digit growth, which was in line with annual growth trends in previous years. After all, the natural and organic pet-food category has expanded at a steady clip for a while.... Yet the category remains a very thin slice of the pet-food business — probably less than 1 percent. Pet-food sales in grocery and mass-merchandise stores, which sell a lot of regular pet food, took a hit in the second quarter of 2007, according the Nielsen Company, but had rebounded by the end of the year.