If only they had listened to that guy from Dayton

Near the end of this AdAge piece about Procter & Gamble's Iams -- damn competitors, always refuting your best claims! -- there's this:

"About five manufacturers that process more than 50 brands and retail private labels were affected by the pet-food recall, but P&G had more products recalled and has suffered a larger drop in market share than any other marketer....The recall began when Menu Foods, a contract manufacturer of wet and semi-moist pet food, said 16 pets that had been fed its food had died. P&G was the biggest among dozens of Menu Foods customers, having sold its only wet-pet-food plant to the company in 2004. P&G has stopped buying products on the recall list from Menu Foods, and Menu Foods announced earlier this month that P&G would no longer buy any of its wet-pet-food products as of Oct. 1."

The culprit of course was wheat gluten, a substance that's added only for visual appeal. It has no nutritional value for dogs and cats. And honestly, all this might have been avoided if P&G had simply remained true to the Paul Iams ethos -- "a key difference in Iams products was a heavy reliance on animal protein, instead of the grain proteins found in many pet foods." Something about being carnivores, I think.