Nutro pet food recall

Nutro is recalling their dry cat foods with "use by" dates in a certain range. Details are on their web site.

I was at Petco today to return the food we had that was in the date range and was surprised to see some Nutro dry food still on the shelves. Before I could look to verify that the production dates were in the "safe" ranges, a Nutro rep ran up to me and wanted to know if she could answer any questions. I said, "Why is this food on the shelves?" She replied that it was in safe date ranges, but that the problem with the recalled food was "just inaccurate labeling" anyway. (Long story short: some recalled food contains very high levels of zinc and all of it has low or no potassium.) In spite of this "inaccurate labeling" claim, Nutro's web site suggests that owners be on the lookout for stomach upset, vomiting, refusal of food, etc.

Ham had a few rough days about two weeks ago during which we'd just gotten a new bag of Nutro kitten food and he was eating some of it. I will spare you the details, but he had some fairly serious gastrointestinal issues. In an unrelated move, we decided to switch to feeding both cats adult cat food for a while, and Ham's issues cleared up (in fairness, the adult food is also Nutro, but with a different expiration date so therefore in a different lot).

Lucky for the Nutro rep I had two impressionable young children with me in the store. I still told her in no uncertain terms that she had no business acting like the recall was no big deal or just an administrative move, and told her that my cat had been sick before I knew about the recall but taking him off the food solved his problems. She backpedaled and apologized, but in my mind it's still too little, too late. As soon as I can phase the cats off of Nutro food, I will switch for good.