Iams Lady in PAH

[Claire_smc]

Having said that many stores have a pet shop and there have been concerns over animal welfare, so ..... If you were going the raw route it's not difficult to source wild rabbit and Darlings offer organic: obviously you pay a lot more for that.

This is what I was referring to, as well as the source of the ingredients used in the food it is being sold in a pet shop where people have rasied concerns over the treatment of the animals which are bred and sold there, although they probably test their foods using the same methods as all of the other catfood companies. But like I said, if you looked at every possible food source for your cat a high proportion of them will have some sort of cruelty involved in some stage, unless you fed purely raw free range organic, but most of us are living on a budget and simply can't stretch to this as a normal everyday diet.

[Fire Fox]

Purina is a Nestle brand, of the baby milk furore and other ethically suspect practices.  That is not to critique anyone who buys products from that range - I know some cats are incredibly particular or have specific dietary needs. One of my criteria for cat food when I got Noah was ethical: I won't buy from Mars (James Wellbeloved, Royal Canin, Whiskas, Kitekat), Nestle (Purina, Felix, Go Cat), Colgate-Palmolive (Hills Science) or Proctor & Gamble (Eukanuba, IAMS).

I couldn't source a food that was ethical, high meat content AND affordable so Noah gets a mixture including free-range eggs but fresh battery chicken and non-sustainable fish.    I am working on the principle that feeding offal, offcuts and fish not suitable for human consumption does at least mean there is less waste from the food industry.

Pets at Home don't seen to have a parent company so couldn't find much info on the cruelty aspect, I only feed the fish Purely which is more likely to have had a decent life. Having said that many stores have a pet shop and there have been concerns over animal welfare, so ..... If you were going the raw route it's not difficult to source wild rabbit and Darlings offer organic: obviously you pay a lot more for that.

[Claire_smc]

I'm the same, I don't think the company will ever recover from it, I know I would never buy Iams either. The thing is, you'd probably find that even companies like Hills, Hi-Life, Natures Menu etc all test on animals as well. It would be pretty near impossible to feed a cat a cruelty-free diet, even if it was fully raw then where is the meat coming from, is it factory farmed? Is the commercial food you're feeding tested on animals? Purely from Pets at Home - are large commercial petstores guilty of cruelty to animals? It's such a tough one, but I don't think Iams should be singled out as worse than all the others is all, I think pretty much every food will have included some sort of cruelty to animals somewhere along the line

[Desley (booktigger)]

Oh, dont worry, I did tell her that while they have said they haven't for years, I just dont trust them, and there is the fact that their meat content isnt' as high as others, yet they charge a lot more. I didn't realise Purina did though, bit of a butter, Molly can only tolerate Felix, I personally prefer things like HiLife, Natures Menu, Purely, and that is what she spent her first 3.5 years with me eating, but she has intestinal lymphoma and can't tolerate them anymore.

[Claire_smc]

I'm going to play Devil's Adocate a bit here if I may  First I'll just say that I hate Iams and would never buy it from what they've done in the past, but I'm going to try and be a bit objective.

All the sites and articles and studies done into the Iams cruelty were from roughly 2000-2004 when the scandal was at it's highest. A lot of people still assume that things are exactly the same now as they were back then when this simply might not be the case. From what I've read online Iams have done a lot to change and no longer conduct some of the awful studies which they used to. 'In 2005, The Iams Company opened its Pet Health & Nutrition Center and by 2007, Iams ended all studies at external sites. According to Iams, more than 70 percent of its feeding trials are conducted by volunteers who participate in in-home pet food feeding studies, but for those that require a more controlled environment, the company-owned center is used for its necessary controlled feeding studies' The video of the facility which the PETA investigator worked at is no longer used by Iams as of 2003. Their sites now are within all codes and laws concerning research facilities in the area and are tested and visited regularly.

While this means that they still do conduct animal testing, I believe that so do most of the other major cat food companies. On the Peta website there is a list of companies which don't test on animals ('The following companies have assured PETA in writing that they do not test on animals in laboratories. Companies that are not on this list either responded to let us know that they do conduct laboratory experiments on animals or failed to respond to our numerous inquiries and are assumed to conduct laboratory experiments on animals') The following companies aren't on the list, so it can be assumed that they do test on animals:

Mars (Whiskas)
Purina (Felix, Go Cat)

I know it seems that I'm advocating Iams, which I'm really really not, but a lot of people seem shortsighted when it comes to things like this, and will continue to hate Iams and assume that things have never changed, while also not realising that they are now on a pretty much even footing with other major catfood companies in terms of animal experiments. Although what she was saying about nutrition is a load of rubbish 

[Desley (booktigger)]

Went to PAH yesterday for litter, and someone asked me if I fed Iams - well, that was just a stupid thing to do!! She apparently wasn't aware of the testing, so said she would check it out, and I also pointed out that with their ingredients, I can buy a better food for less money - she went on about how much they do with nutrition, and that was better than the meat content, but how can a lower meat content be a more nutritional food for an obligate carnivore? She didn't have an answer to that!! I also pointed out that I had heard a lot of cats being overweight or having urinary issues on Iams (although thinking about it, that might be Go-Cat!!). I think she wished she had never bothered to stop me!!