This is discusting, but true....
My partner that I work with reccently purchased a bag of Beneful dog food. Normaly she feeds Merrick food but was out and just stopped into a walgreens on her way home and Beneful was what they had.
Angel, her Akita mix got sick after just one serving of this food. My partner didn't think anything of it and assumed it was the sudden change in diet she put the bad in her pantry and purchased her regular dog food the next day. This was just three weeks ago. It is important to note that this bag of food was in date and was stored at her home in a tupperware type container.
Yesterday I get a really angry and frantic phone call from my partner concerning this bag of food. Apparently she noticed what she first thought to be mold around the corners of her pantry cabnets, then upon further inspection she noticed this same mold on the side her her fridge right next to her pantry and on the ceiling above. Gross. She started poking around and pulling thing out of her pantry and she pulled out the container that had the bag of beneful in it. It is COVERED in this mold like substance. She clipped a bit of the bag and took it into the vet clinic who looked at under a micropscope. What they found was not mold or fungus, it was grain mites. She came home and jumped online to do some research on the subject and I am shocked and discusted by what she found. Try it for youself, type in "Grain mites and dog food" into your search engine and see what pops up. Beneful seems to be the main source and the very first result I got when I looked it up, (at her request) was an article about how this food was pulled from shelves in Virginia in Spet 2008. I spoke to the purnia comapany after seeing the bag of food (now tripped baged and sealed in an airtight container) for myself. My partner is devestated that in her mind she could have caused serious damange to her reccently adopted dog who is still recovering from treatment for what the vet said was one of the most serious cases of heartworms he's seen in a long time. The purinia company's response was barely civil at best and downright hostile on the second phone call. The first time we spoke to them, they tried to say that this was the first they'd ever heard of something like this. The proceeded to give detailed instructions on how to rid the infested kitchen of the mites.... ???? The second call was no better, a higher up called the shop today and tried to blame the whole thing on my partner. Meanwhile in searches on the internet for customer complaints about benefull we found several from a neighboring town, only about 40 minutes from the walgreens where the offending food was purchased. My partner just called me and reported that she had just gotten off the phone with the FDA. The lady she spoke with is appalled and took down a ton of info and requested samples of the food and the bag numbers and so on. She also did a keyword search on the food and the mites and according to clair was extremely surprised. She said that it might not be the first complaint to the FDA about this food in reccent months but it IS the first one she has delt with.
Apparently grain mites are extremely difficult to get rid of, not even bleach kills the little suckers.
I'nm not one to give in to he said she said and freak out about what I might read online about this food or that. However, after seeing with my own eyes, (and hearing representatives of this company with my own ears,) I came home from work and tossed every single purnia product in my home. Treats, cat food, the little bag of ONE that jazz is usuing to transition to Blue with, all of it along with the containers holding it. Jazz has been voiting every so often since being put on Purina ONE up from the pedigree she was eating when I got her.... It isn't worth taking the chance in my opinion.