# Natural Balance Changes Duck Meal; No Longer From USA



## mitchb13 (Jul 8, 2009)

*Natural Balance Changes Duck Meal*

Title should say DUCK MEAL instead of CORN MEAL.

I have 2 dogs that have been eating Natural Balance Potato and Duck for a couple of years now without problems. I recently bought a new bag of the stuff and one dog will not touch it and the other ate it all then puked it all out 3 days in a row.

I fed them both rice and chicken for a couple of days, then switched back. Same deal. One will not touch it, the other throws it all up.

I wrote the makers of Natural Balance and was not thrilled with the response:Hello,
Thank you for contacting Natural Balance regarding the Potato & Duck Formula. Please know that we have implemented a recent change to this formula. As Natural Balance continues to grow, we have found it increasingly difficult to obtain the quality and quantity of duck meal from the United States that our rigorous standards require. In order to address this issue before supply becomes a problem, Natural Balance has decided to add more fresh duck and potato protein to the Potato & Duck formula. We have found this adjustment enhances the palatability and performance of the product, but may lighten the kibble color. We have been feeding this formula for the last six months to many of our own Natural Balance pets and it has produced exceptional results. A very small percentage of dogs with sensitive stomachs may experience a temporary digestive upset with the formulation change to the Potato & Duck Formula. For this limited number of dogs, we recommend feeding smaller, more frequent meals, combined with the old formula (if available), over a 5 to 7 day period to adjust to the new formula. You may also try any of our other LID formulas, which include the Sweet Potato & Fish, Sweet Potato & Venison, or the Lamb & Brown Rice. Have a good day.


Sincerely,

Kristi Choy, B.S.
Animal Nutrition
Natural Balance Pet Foods, Inc.​This product has always been hailed as a quality and made in the USA dog food. The "Made in the USA" claims on the web site have been quietly removed from their FAQ's page. No notice was given on the bags to tell owners that things have switched and that your dog may puke afterwards. Also there is no indication on where the corn meal is from. Is it from China where recalls on dog food have been the problem in past years?

I'm done with this company. I bought their foods at a premium price because I thought they were legit. Now it seems they try to hide things from the consumer. I hope that other pet owners find this information useful.

-Mitch


----------



## Binkalette (Dec 16, 2008)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

Thanks for the heads up!


----------



## Dozi (Jun 9, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

Thanks for the info... this really p*sses me off! I've only found this dog food about a year ago after my dog ended up being allergic to ever single dogfood known to man! And the duck & potatoe formula is the ONLY dog food she has had no reaction too. (and I've tried other NB flavors... she had an reaction to all)
VERY disappointing


----------



## FourIsCompany (Apr 18, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

Natural Balance LID don't have *corn meal* in them. They are grain free. Your title is incorrect. It's the Duck Meal that changed. Having said that, I'm glad I'm switching to raw. I feed NB Venison. Who knows when they'll switch that, too?


----------



## mitchb13 (Jul 8, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes DUCK Meal; No Longer From USA*

You're right. I meant DUCK meal. Sorry, being in South Dakota has made me a corn nut. 

I just got back from the pet store and they recommended California Natural. It is all 100% USA made and my dogs just ate the product just fine. I doubt we'll have any problems.


----------



## LadyD (May 10, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

This is similar to what Canidae did. They changed their formulars to include ingredients that are cheaper and are of lesser quality. Canidae didn't warn customers about the change and there were a lot of sick dogs.


----------



## FourIsCompany (Apr 18, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

That's when I switched away from Canidae. And now I'm switching to raw. I'm tired of being at the mercy of these dogfood companies!


----------



## mitchb13 (Jul 8, 2009)

A couple of reps from Natural Balance addressed SOME of my questions. There are as follows:

I am the Director of Customer Service and staff Registered Veterinarian Technician at Natural Balance Pet Foods, Inc. When reading this post, I found it imperative to respond. Please know that ALL of our products are manufactured in the United States. They are NOT manufactured in a foreign country. As stated from our customer service representative and on our website; we removed duck meal from our formulas because there is not enough duck meal manufactured in the United States to support our products. Since Natural Balance is NOT willing to use duck meal from foreign source, we have elected to remove it from our formulas. Specifically with our Potato and Duck Dry Dog Formula, we have removed duck meal due to the reasons I mentioned above, and replaced it with more fresh duck and potato protein. Again, this product like ALL of our other products are manufactured in the UNITED STATES. For any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email or phone.​
I replied with a few more questions:

Thanks for your post Jennifer. Please point me to the page on your web site that says your product is made in the USA. If this is true, I would like you to include information on where ALL of your ingredients come from. Not where it’s made, where it all comes from.

I have a few other questions as well:

1. Why does it not say on the bag “Made in the USA”?
2. Why wasn’t there information on the bags of food I purchased informing me of a formula change?
3. Why doesn’t any of the stores I went to that sell your product know nothing about the change?
4. Is Duck Protein lower in price than Duck Meal for your company to acquire?
5. Why wasn't any information about the formula change posted on your web site? If I am wrong about this, please point me to the page.
6. Why did it say on your FAQ page that the product was made in the USA, but now that information has been removed?​


----------



## FourIsCompany (Apr 18, 2009)

Oooh! Good on you. I'll be curious about the reply.


----------



## Pai (Apr 23, 2008)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*



LadyD said:


> This is similar to what Canidae did. They changed their formulars to include ingredients that are cheaper and are of lesser quality. Canidae didn't warn customers about the change and there were a lot of sick dogs.


That kind of thing is completely indefensible. Any pet food company that does a 'ninja change' to their food without warning, after the '07 recall, shows they don't take seriously the concerns of pet owners. Screw them! 

Even if it's supposed to be a 'good change' LET PEOPLE KNOW. Gawd, is it really that hard?!


----------



## robotcrankit (Aug 21, 2008)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*



Pai said:


> That kind of thing is completely indefensible. Any pet food company that does a 'ninja change' to their food without warning, after the '07 recall, shows they don't take seriously the concerns of pet owners. Screw them!
> 
> Even if it's supposed to be a 'good change' LET PEOPLE KNOW. Gawd, is it really that hard?!


I totally agree. At the store I work at, we had a lot of pissed off customers returning Natural Balance saying that their dog started throwing up on it and/or wouldn't eat it. We emailed our NB representative, and she emailed us verbatim what was posted in the first post here. Now we have customers blaming us for not notifying them of the change of formula when we didn't even know about it until last week. It's pretty stupid that anyone that buys a bag of that stuff now, we have to warn their dog might start throwing up and have problem because Natural Balance doesn't even have enough product integrity to BOTHER TO PUT ANYTHING ON THE STUPID BAG THEMSELVES.

One of our customers that was getting angry about us not telling her the formula changed actually emailed Natural Balance herself once we told her that they didn't even tell us about it. They didn't even send her coupons to try out another flavor! Talk about bad PR. I'm done with this company!


----------



## 3212 (Feb 4, 2007)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

I'm pretty curious if this is the reason Bridgette has had explosive, liquid diarrhea (complete with dire need "to go" and blood!) for the past couple of days! Her fecal was negative so I was trying to rack my brain as to what she may have gotten into! I just bought a new bag of the NB duck formula! I'll have to let my vet/boss know that it may actually be from her food. Lame!!

ETA: She also seemed really against eating the food for a little while before the diarrhea! I guess I'll be switching to something else.


----------



## mitchb13 (Jul 8, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes DUCK Meal; No Longer From USA*

I'm no expert, but I'm willing to bet anything that Duck Protein is way cheaper than Duck Meal and is less nutritious. They blame it on my dogs having a sensitive stomach, but it's amazing how we switched them cold to another food and they were fine.

I'm sure if I were to ask about this, they would have a canned response to try to trick you into believing what they want you to believe.


----------



## Cheetah (May 25, 2006)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes DUCK Meal; No Longer From USA*

Duck meal is more dense in nutrients (more of it there) than fresh duck. Duck meal is simply the duck ground up with moisture removed so they can pack more of it into the kibble. So basically, in the new formula, there is far less duck and far more potato. You're getting less for your money.

I think this article explains it well. Scroll down to "Ingredient groups - what to look for and what to avoid" - very last bullet there:
http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=betterproducts


----------



## shets114 (Sep 10, 2008)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

Exactly like Cheetah said, pretty much what they said they are doing is taking duck meal out and putting less meat in. Cost savings is what it's all about...


----------



## boon4376 (May 18, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*



mitchb13 said:


> I'm done with this company. I bought their foods at a premium price because I thought they were legit. Now it seems they try to hide things from the consumer. I hope that other pet owners find this information useful.
> 
> -Mitch


Any company, no matter how "legit" or premium they appear, still have plenty of places to hide with the extremely flawed regulations of the AAFCO and pet food industry.


mitchb13 said:


> Again, this product like ALL of our other products are manufactured in the UNITED STATES.


Notice they say manufactured... They ingredients could have come from anywhere, but mixture is manufactured in the USA, they specifically stated they are only willing to not use foreign _duck meal_... 



mitchb13 said:


> 4. Is Duck Protein lower in price than Duck Meal for your company to acquire?


Duck meal is dehydrated already when it is added to the formula... Plain duck is about 70% water when it is added, and then dehydrated during the manufacturing process (but duck is weighed for the ingredient list before dehydration), thus if they replaced duck meal, with plain duck, there has been about a 70% reduction in actual duck in your dogs food.


----------



## tefobuch (Jun 7, 2009)

*Re: Natural Balance Changes Corn Meal; No Longer From USA*

Thanks so much for the heads-up on this, Mitch.

All this really gives me a thud in the pit of my stomach 

Although their second reply did seem to have more credibility ... there are, as you point out, still many unanswered questions that they need to explain in much more detail.

Ok, so they can't get their duck meal from USA, well hey, is there something wrong with Canada or other such responsible countries???

All I need to hear, tho, is that they once had "Made in USA" on their website and it has now been removed. That doesn't happen by magic. I don't like that, and if that's the case, I don't need to hear anything more from them to keep them off my rotation list (MHO).

Can I ask if you're 100% sure it was once on the site? Have you questioned them directly about that? I'd love to see their reply to that. GRRRRRR


----------



## doglover12345 (Jul 18, 2009)

My dogs also got very sick the following morning after feeding them the new and improved formula. I had been feeding them for 6 months on the old formula and it was really helping with allergies and they loved it. But after one meal of this new stuff, the following morning, my doberman was throwing up water and potatoes--lots of them. I suspect they replaced the duck protein with potatoes to make up for the loss. And neither one of the dogs were excited to eat it at first either--both turned up their noses at first.
Something is definitely not right here. I returned the bag to the pet store and they recommended a few other brands. I am trying Pinnacle duck and potato now. Will see what happens with that. They also recommended Wellness. I emailed Natural Balance--won't hold my breath for any apology.

Oh and no, they have never had sensitive stomachs and never had this kind of reaction to any food before.
Beware--don't buy it.!


----------



## FourIsCompany (Apr 18, 2009)

I'm so glad I switched to raw. I don't think any of these companies care about the welfare of dogs compared to the welfare of their bottom line. 

And if all they did was change the duck meal and potato meal, then why are dogs getting sick? That doesn't meak sense. Okay, they're getting less duck. They shouldn't be getting sick and vomiting over that. I wonder what else they changed...


----------



## erway (Jun 15, 2008)

I recently had the same problem with Rascal. I had been feeding him that food for months with no problem and then all of a sudden, he was having runny poops. I chalked it up to a virus or something. I bet that was it. Thanks for the info! It makes me wanna switch him too.


----------



## Hallie (Nov 9, 2008)

duck meal = more meat= better for your dog (obviously)
fresh duck'= meat with all of the moisture and water content=mostly water=not as much meat. 
Good thing I took Hallie off NB before the switch! Is the change only in the duck formula?


----------



## rottenlab (Jul 26, 2009)

Both my lab and rottweiler got sick from the new formula. My lab had bloody diarrhea and vomited several times, while my rottweiler had explosive diarrhea. This required a vet visit to exclude possible illness as I did not believe that the food they had been eating for four years would all of a sudden make them really sick. What a surprise when I heard that Natural Balance changed their formula without notifying anyone. After several calls to Natural Balance, nothing is being done by the company to resolve this issue and they stated that the stores were notified of the change. As with many other posters on this site they continued to give me the same run around blanket statement that they provided to everyone else. The reps told me that they placed stickers stating, "New and improved" on the bag. None of my bags had this label and "new and improved" to me does not include bloody diarrhea, vomiting, and a trip to the vet costing $269.00. None of the clerks or managers at two separate store were aware of the change as well. The truth is they implemented cost cutting measures and did not want to advertise this fact. Natural Balance has lost me as a customer and I am working on further resolution. If you have experienced the same or similar please post to keep everyone informed. I am not finished in my attempt to hold Natural Balance accountable for irresponsible business practices. They implemented change at the cost of their consumers in order to save money which is not acceptable tactics for a premium dog food provider.


----------



## doglover56 (Aug 5, 2009)

It never was made in the usa, kibbles and Can foods are co-pack in the states, some can foods and kibbles are imported from Canada, zoological formulas are made in the small 1500 feet production area in Pacoima, What they have is good marketing and large warehouse to store their imports from Canada and co-pack kibbles from the states, in lameness terms, the don’t manufacture any of their products .Except Zoological formulas..


----------



## Goldendog11 (Aug 29, 2009)

I'm sure glad I found this information about the change in the Duck and Potatoe Natural Balance Formula on this forum. My dog who has been successfully eating it for the past 6 years started throwing up right after we opened the new bag last week and also started having diarreah. I had even gone out and purchased another bag thinking it was a bad batch or something with my first bag. I hope the pet stores will be accomodating in letting me return this stuff. If not I suppose I'll have to take it up with Natural Balance. One of the first things I did was go to their website and I didn't see anything about changing their formula. We'll see how Petco and Pet Extreme (where I bought the two bags) handle my demand for a refund when I call them tomorrow....


----------



## wolfsnaps (Apr 27, 2007)

I have been taking them back. Only because I know about the change in ingredients from this site! I work at a pet store and have seen about 4 or 5 people comment about their dogs no longer liking the product.


----------



## luvntzus (Mar 16, 2007)

I've heard about this on other forums. It's such a widespread problem and I wonder how long Natural Balance is going to take the Ostrich approach to dealing with it.


----------



## msjinwi (Aug 30, 2009)

I lost my dog a few weeks ago and had been feeding Natural Balance Allergy Formula. My cousin lost her dog a week later, feeding the same food, same symptoms...lethargy, breathing raspy, then throwing up, finally not eating - we both made multiple vet visits and antibiotics and steroids did not work. Then I found a coworker's dog also passed - he fed a different food, but it was also bought at PetCo, not packaged in foil. I had already bought our next bag, which I returned today, but remember when I bought it, the store shelves were pretty bare of Natural Balance. Petco staff told me 2 different stories - one they didn't reorder accidentally, second said NB had a formula change. Needless to say, I will not buy food at PetCo or feed Natural Balance again. All 3 dogs displayed the same symptoms and response, all passed away. These were mature dogs (my cousin's was 8, mine was likely around 11 - he was a rescue so were not sure, and my co-workers 12, but had been at the vet w/ no issues less than a month prior) and these are people I know personally. I've contacted Petco and Natural Balance today after trying to put this together. I did have an autopsy on my dog as it was so unexplained and got back that he had pneumonia, an unidentified bacteria that was not responding to the antibiotics, kidney failure, and the decomposition was much more rapid than it should have been. He had all shots, all of his treats were made in our kitchen or the US and of high quality and none of my other dogs displayed anything. He was the only one eating NB... Any thoughts?


----------



## msjinwi (Aug 30, 2009)

I'm getting nothing out of the company except after the fact, this was part of their response:
A very small percentage of dogs with sensitive stomachs may experience a temporary digestive upset with the formulation change to the Potato & Duck Formula. For this limited number of dogs, we recommend feeding smaller, more frequent meals, combined with the old formula (if available) or a bland diet (ex: boiled chicken/rice), over a 5 to 7 day period to adjust to the new formula. 

Now how would I know that when the change was undisclosed? I'm filing a complaint with the better business bureau. If anyone is interested in also filing, here is the link:


http://www.la.bbb.org/ComplaintDetail.aspx?CompanyID=13133628


----------



## Goldendog11 (Aug 29, 2009)

Natural Balance made a huge mistake when they altered thier formula removing the duck meal and substituting fresh dehydrated fresh duck. The kibble in the new and supposedly improved formula is now nothing but mostly potatoe and my dog will not touch it (can't blame her) Considering that this particular NB brand is marketed towards dogs with allergies and sensitive stomachs I will venture that a lot more dogs than a 'small percentage' are not adjusting to this new formula as NB touts. After 7+ years of faithful patronage to NB Duck and Potatoe I have switched to Pinnacle's Duck and Potatoe, made with real duck meal. My dog loves it even more than the original NB Duck and Potatoe formula. I'm so glad that I heard about it on this forum. NB is losing market share in the very competitive dog food market due to blunders such as this.


----------



## torsh (Nov 16, 2009)

I originally had same problems w/ NB Duck & Potato back in July . . .dogs have eaten this for 6 yrs based on recommendation of Bichon Rescue. Cringed @ price, but thought the dogs health was worth it. Both were extremely ill (when they would eat the food). We figured out it was the food & my retailer replaced the bag w/ a different lot # (must have been the old formula). Problems started again when I bought another new bag in October . . . . can't believe they didn't notify their retailers of the formula change so that they could tell their customers.

We have switched to Nutri Source Chicken & Rice . . we happened to have a couple of sample bags that my husband got at a sportman's benefit. The dogs love it. My smallest bichon went from "eliminating" 2X per day to 5 for a couple of wks, but that has returned to normal. I got the same boiler plate answer from NB . . was not impressed. They have some accountability issues.


----------



## Goldendog11 (Aug 29, 2009)

We switched to Pinnacle's Duck and Potatoe formula and our bulldog loves it. The Pinnacle product is similar to Natural Balance's Duck and Potatoe before they changed the formula to fresh duck.


----------



## Jordan S (Nov 21, 2009)

so in other words less meat and more useless plant proteins. I would go to a different duck based formula. Theres pinnacle duck and theres also NV instinct duck and rabbit.


----------

