[Esetter]

We have been using the Black Gold Ultimate performance food 32/21 food for years and when we went back to the store, and asked for the Ultimate blue bag as always, we got a different formulation. It does say 28/20 on the bag instead of 32/21 but it is the same price and if you didn’t really look at it you may not realize you just bought something else since the bag colors are identical. The 32/21 food is now in a purple bag and is called super premium. Ordinarily you may not have a big problem with this switch unless your dogs don’t digest brewer’s rice with the same efficiency as corn and have horrendous GI problems for more than a week. Fish meal went from the third ingredient to the eighth ingredient. Eventually they did adjust but there was no option to transition since the change in formulation was not very obvious and no one said anything. No old formulation was available to transition with and the store had no idea the purple bag version existed to order any. Why did they have to change the food and call it the same name as another and then rename the old version? The person on the phone at Black Gold said people didn’t like the corn. They just said to feed a little less. Well the bag feeding directions have you feeding more per dog per day also. Well corn is not my favorite ingredient either, but the way they did the switch was not good business. Since someone else dumped the bags into the feed container the person feeding had no idea the formulation changed. I was a little tired of trying to deal with liquid stools and gas problems. You could not be in the same room with one of them it was so bad. At least I figured out the problem before having a large vet bill. This sort of situation could send an elderly dog over the edge, health wise – one of my 13 year old dogs did not deal with this very well. I just think this was a really stupid choice on Black Gold’s part. Does adding more rice increase the arsenic content? I asked and am waiting for an answer next week.

[pugmomsandy]

Sorry to hear about your ordeal. Unfortunately dog food manufacturers can change ingredients any time and can get the ingredients from different sources. That’s why I feed several different foods so my dogs don’t get used to one product. If a recipe suddenly changed then they would be ok.

[theBCnut]

I think this is the shadiest practice in dog foods. Many companies do this, and it sends me over the top. I think it should be the law that when they change the formula the bag must reflect that. But instead they are allowed to change the formula at any time and even continue to use the old bags until they use them up. They could add an ingredient that you know your dog is allergic to and you would never even know until you suddenly have a life threatening reaction. It’s crazy.

[Esetter]

My concern was not that changed the formula so much as the way they did it. It does indicate on the bag the difference it was just not very obvious. When you pay at the counter and then they load the vehicle at the dock you are not looking at the bags before you purchase. It is just ridiculous that they renamed the food I had been buying to something else (super premium 32/21) and used the old name for a different product in the same colored bag as the old product. For those who are not familiar with Black Gold products they use the bag color as the Part of the ID for the product. People ask for the ultimate blue and gold food or the black bag food. Every kind is a different color. Not even the store people understood what was going on.

[Author]

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