THE grief cycle describes a common pattern of emotional responses to death, starting with denial, changing to anger and then depression, and ending with acceptance. Pet-owners in North America are adding another stage to the process—litigation. In mid-March Menu Foods, a Canadian contract manufacturer, pulled 95 brands of dog and cat food from shelves in America, Canada and Mexico. The recall came after reports from consumers of contaminated food were confirmed by the company’s own “taste” tests, in which nine cats died. Further tests by American government officials identified aminopterin, a type of rat poison, in the food.
Menu Foods has confirmed 16 animal deaths so far but that number will rise. Michael Dillon, a pet industry consultant, conservatively estimates a final death toll in the thousands. Local newspapers issue sombre reports on victims such as TJ, a Yorkshire terrier in Missouri who enjoyed the smell of roses. Enter the lawyers. Distressed owners have filed class-action lawsuits against Menu Foods, as well as against a retailer who stocked the items and a manufacturer who used the Canadian firm to make its products.
The depth of response may baffle the petless but comes as no surprise to industry insiders, who identify “humanisation” as a principal feature of the sector. Many owners think of their pets as children—childless consumers accounted for 60% of pet-related expenditure in America in 2005—and treat them more like people than animals. Trends in human food are quickly replicated in pet products, says Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association.
The recalled pet foods were “cuts and gravy”, which are designed to mimic the food people eat (wheat gluten, the probable source of the contamination, is used to thicken the gravy). Health foods are fast spreading from dinner tables to doggie bowls: Wal-Mart and Target, America’s two biggest retailers, both introduced natural pet-food lines last year. The recall is likely to reinforce this trend.
Doting owners don’t only spend big money on food. Overall, pet-related sales are forecast to hit $40.8 billion in America this year, 6% more than in 2006. Absurdities such as diamond-studded Cartier dog collars and Goyard travelling bowls are out of the reach of most owners but the better-off are happy to splash out on branded carriers and clothing. Pet services are booming too. Speciality retailers already boost sales by offering grooming and boarding. Mr Dillon expects to see “human” retailers such as Wal-Mart branching into pet services over the next couple of years.
The pet-food recall highlights two risks faced by firms using contract manufacturers. One is reputational. Many pet owners have expressed surprise that premium brands were being made with common ingredients and at the same facility as a host of cheaper, own-label brands. Why pay more for branded goods, they ask? The criticism may be unfair—differences between products lie largely in the varying proportions of ingredients used—but the perception of reduced value will be hard to shift.
The second risk relates to extended supply chains. The pet-food industry is more lightly policed than the human-food one and testing procedures were in the hands of Menu Foods. Aminopterin is banned in America but the wheat gluten at the centre of the contamination investigation was imported from China, where the poison is used. There are mutterings about how quickly Menu Foods reacted to reports of pet deaths. Things can go wrong at companies’ own facilities too but Mr Vetere predicts that the recall will prompt tougher provisions in agreements with contract manufacturers.
Just as owners come to resemble their dogs so too the human and pet markets are converging. Picky customers and growth in premium products are already familiar features of many consumer landscapes. But pet owners turning to the courts for redress over the loss of a loved one will notice that people and animals are still different in law. Pets are treated as property not as people, severely crimping the opportunity for bumper payouts to the bereft that Americans have become used to.
