Me too. I'm not going to get all hysterical about a salmonella scare. My dogs do great on it, and none of the product I use was recalled.
I'm not all hysterical over salmonella, to be honest. Although dogs CAN and obviously HAVE been getting sick from it, and so have some people, but to me... it's more about their quality control. I don't believe it's up to par personally. The only reason they recalled these was because of the FDA so yeah, it's being called "voluntarily" but it wasn't their "amazing control" or anything that caught it.
I'm not saying TOTW is a "bad" food by any means. When it comes to a nice ingredient list and a nice price, Diamond and TOTW win. With that said, I don't trust them. They are an actual Diamond brand food, meaning they aren't simply made at their facility, they are the ones producing the food at their monster clustered facility also producing lots of low-quality foods AND were a HUGE involvement in the big 2007 recall.
They've lied in the past, why would they not lie again? It's hard to forgive the melamine recall, IMO. From what I've heard, there were likely thousands of deaths, not counting the violently ill pets, but of course, it can't be confirmed because there wasn't a govt. database for such a thing. Also, I think Diamond was the only brand involved with aflaxtoxin contamination causing over 400 confirmed deaths, if not more unreported.
Obviously, Diamond was not the only company involved, but EVERY single one put $$$$ before health of our loved pets. I also don't like how they try to skirt around the issue and don't report things right away, etc. Apparently, Diamond killed a bunch of cats about 3 years ago too and NEVER even put it on the site.
I guess that's my whole thing, I don't want to support a business like Diamond. Recalls, I don't even mind so much. Hey, stuff happens, mistakes occur... but to me, it's about how it's handled and WHY there was a recall. How many animals got sick, how many died, was it because they were purposely putting in a chemical or ingredient that they KNEW was questionable, but continued to do so? Or was it really an accident? Like, back in 2007, I know they would purposely wait until a Fri. night to release some of the stuff, because they knew the news outlets wouldn't pick it up. That kind of stuff pisses me off.
NO company is going to be 100% perfect. But I definitely prefer a company who is not shipping ingredients out to co-manufacturers, producing in-house, etc. (which I know is rare). Champion doesn't make canned food because they don't have the proper facility to do it. So they are not going to go off to someone else and get them to make it. Lotus didn't like the other canneries, so they made their own. Etc. etc.
So, to me, it's just a matter of trust, finding out where the food is being made, or where it's coming from, and going with your instincts. Nobody can know anything for SURE unless you are in that factory making the food yourself. So I guess bottom line is, go with what your dog does well on, what you can afford, and what you are comfortable with, because obviously each person is different. I doubt dogs are dropping dead left and right because they're eating a Diamond food... but it's just something I don't feel comfortable with.
Having Schnauzer mixes ... low fat is better than high. I may give this a try myself as a rotation food. Right now I just went from 4Health and TOTW to Blue Buffalo Fish and Sweet Potato for all my dogs.
