# European brand making their debut in the USA



## Zilla (Oct 29, 2012)

So if this is true Im very interested to see it because I know how much higher their standards are. Wouldnt this be the first European company to be on the U.S. market? Word is their ND grain free line is coming. Not that I want kibble fed cats but hey its another option for other cat and dog owners now. Hear its going to be here late September.
Link: Farmina Cat Foods

Saw this on another forum from TruthAboutPetFood:



> New Pledge!
> 
> We have received a new Pledge to Quality and Origin - this is a pet food manufactured in Italy and will soon make its debut in the U.S. Welcome Farmina Pet Food to the Pledge!
> 
> ...


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## 3gatos (Nov 28, 2012)

Looks similar to fromm to me. All these kibbles are starting to blur together. I think this is the first euro company in the US, but with everyone wanting US made products, I can't see this being a good selling point in this market


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

Maybe the first kibble but there is already canned food from Europe.

Hydrolyzed animal protein? I'm not fond of anything that uses the generic "animal". I realize that the hydrolyzing process eliminates the possibility of allergic reaction. But why is this even needed?



Zilla said:


> So if this is true Im very interested to see it because I know how much higher their standards are.


Any food manufactured in the US and sold in Europe must meet the same standards, so I don't know what you're expecting to be different about it. Besides...most of the big brand grocery store foods are sold in Europe, often under another brand name...but it's still junk. So how high are their standards?


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## Zilla (Oct 29, 2012)

Yea but those junk brands are still reformulated different over there if you've ever looked.... I'm just excited to see how it does over here..... 


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## krazykiwi (Oct 21, 2012)

You don't have Royal Canin or Purina in the US? :shock:


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

Zilla said:


> Yea but those junk brands are still reformulated different over there if you've ever looked


Junk by any other name is still junk. Ingredients for Felix kibble by Purina sold in the UK. Notice how generic the labels are...no specific ingredients defined at all.

*Ingredients* 
_ Salmon, Tuna & Vegetables: _ Grain, meat and meat by-products, vegetable protein extracts, oils and fats, fish and fish by-prodcts (3.3%) vegetable by-products, glycerin, minerals, sugar, yeast, vegetables (crunchy kibble: 0.2% dried vegetables = 1% vegetables) *Additives: * _ Nutritional additives: _ 
_ Salmon, Tuna & Vegetables: _ Vitamin A (12,000 IU / kg), vitamin D3 [soft kibble contain 15% more than crunchy kibble] (1,000 IU/kg), vitamin E (85 IU/kg), iron (140mg/kg), copper (34 mg/kg), manganese (15mg/kg), zinc (170mg/kg), selenium (0.23 mg/kg), taurine (840 mg/kg).

With artificial colour and antioxidants


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## Zilla (Oct 29, 2012)

I was talking about like purina pro plan is different over there.... That's the only one I even looked at. Point is Farmina ND doesn't really look like any of the foods we have here and being European made its obviously high quality. That's all I was getting at..... 


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## lovetimesfour (Dec 1, 2010)

krazykiwi said:


> You don't have Royal Canin or Purina in the US? :shock:


We have both, and as doodlebug said, they are both junk.

Incidentally foods made for different markets may very well be made differently.

If the standards are higher in Europe, a brand will make one formula cheaper to sell in the USA and the more expensive formula to sell only in Europe. They save money this way.

Many (if not all) manufacturers do that, for everything. Even electric toothbrushes. (which is how I learned about the practice)


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

Zilla said:


> Point is Farmina ND doesn't really look like any of the foods we have here


I don't understand what you mean by this...what distinguishes this food as being different?


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## krazykiwi (Oct 21, 2012)

lovetimesfour said:


> We have both, and as doodlebug said, they are both junk.
> 
> Incidentally foods made for different markets may very well be made differently.


Well, they're both european brands is all, I was just quite mystified by the "first european brand".

In any case, being european is no guarantee of anything - half the countries in europe are not members of the EU (including Norway and Switzerland, home of Purina), and of those that are many are still grandathering in things like food production standards and food labelling rules (including the UK). France or Germany may be one thing, Romania or Latvia quite another, when it comes to sourcing food products, but they're all most definitely in Europe.


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## lovetimesfour (Dec 1, 2010)

Purina and Royal Canin are not European brands. Purina is a USA brand and I believe Royal Canin originates in Canada. 

Of course Purina is owned by Nestle now, but it wasn't always.


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## Zilla (Oct 29, 2012)

Here's another reason it's different... Name a food here that is over 70 percent animal ingredients that DOESN'T USE MEALS..... Well and the fact it's not made here makes it interesting. 


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## patchesmaid (Jun 24, 2013)

I was stationed in Europe 5 years a number of years ago. This same idea about everything made in Europe is higher quality than what is made here in the States was around then. When I was living in Europe I didn't see that to be true. Just like here in the States some things are high quality, some things not so much. This may turn out to be a high quality food but then again it may not be. It makes for good advertising and I certainly don't blame them for using that widely held belief here in the States.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

i'm not trying to rain on your parade zilla, :wink: 

I could be wrong because I've never bought any pet food from Europe or even thought about it, but are their standards really higher? my first thought would be that they aren't, simply because I have the impression that america has the biggest group of people that treats its pets like children. i'm sure that exists in other countries, but the market is smaller. I suppose if I were interested in a European cat food, I would try to find out their standards and more about their ingredient lists. with all the splitting, puffery and other things that go on here, I would completely not be surprised if European marketing is guilty of the same practices.

I believe certain products are better (chocolate from Belgium or Italy) but just like someone else said, shoddy merchandise can be from any country.


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## Zilla (Oct 29, 2012)

No rain  lol but arnt they not allowed to use any kind of meat meals?? I'd say that's a good thing. Especially with the point I just made. Which brand here in the US is over 70 percent animal but doesn't use meals?? I just realized that and I'd say that's a pretty big step up..... Other foods still might be junk over there also but in terms of this one I think it surpasses our standards. 


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

over 70% animal protein and no meal is good,* but *what qualifies as animal protein would possibly make it no better than a food with meal. I am always suspicious of food that starts to advertise "we use 50% more animal protein than other foods," just because of _where_ that protein can come from (and i'm not naming names lol).

is it a lot more expensive? because if it's high quality protein (no 4D animals, no roadkill, no rotten grocery store meat) it's going to drive the price up.


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## Zilla (Oct 29, 2012)

I don't know what the price is going to be like until its over here. I'd say its gonna be no less than the cost of Orijen though. 


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

Zilla said:


> Here's another reason it's different... Name a food here that is over 70 percent animal ingredients that DOESN'T USE MEALS..... Well and the fact it's not made here makes it interesting.


My assumption when I read the ingredient list was that dehydrated chicken meat was just a European way of saying meal. Since you highlighted it as a difference, I tried to confirm my assumption. I didn't find a European equivalent of AAFCO to see their definition of "dehydrated chicken meat". I did find an EU pet manufacturer who says the following in their FAQ:
*

What are the requirements that enable you to put “Dried Lamb Meat” and “Dried Chicken Meat” as opposed to Meal or Dried Protein?*

The “dried meat” definition used by other companies is covering all the normal animal meals, as there is no real definition of what should be a low-bone content (this can be seen also in the fact that more than one company claims "Chicken meal" in USA and "Dried chicken meat" overseas for the same product). There are chicken meals on the market with more than 30% of ash and chicken meals with less than 10% of ash; therefore this is just a marketing definition. The ash content of the chicken meat meals that ENOVA contains is varying from 8% to 15% with an average of about 12%. So if you consider that a living chicken contains about 11–13% of ash in the dry matter of the body, you will see that the meals we are using correspond to that “natural” content of bones and so for the meats, which would be about 2/3 (60–65%). To produce a chicken meat meal - as it is used in pet-food - you cannot use the pure meat, as this is not possible for the technology these products are manufactured with at the moment all over the world. Of course there is a real dry meat available, but this is destined entirely to human food industry (soups, sauces…) and is so expensive, that it is not possible to use it in pet food and, as far as we know, no one is using this; furthermore, the amounts available are too small for pet-food industry requirement. And it will not represent an advantage for the pets, as you would have to add to that meat the missing minerals in order to match the dog nutritional requirements; so you would have to create a mixture which, in the end, is the same than to use the normal meat meals! Our decision to use the same definitions used by other companies is just a way to highlight the quality of our meat ingredients, the absolute best available on the market.

http://www.enovapetfood.com/default.aspx?mid=18660


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## krazykiwi (Oct 21, 2012)

lovetimesfour said:


> Purina and Royal Canin are not European brands. Purina is a USA brand and I believe Royal Canin originates in Canada.
> 
> Of course Purina is owned by Nestle now, but it wasn't always.


Royal Canin is French, and still headquartered there as far as I know (in Gard, I consulted there on a contract in the late 90's, when it was still a wholly owned french company). But an american company bought it fairly recently.

Purina is marketed as being a Nestlé brand over here - junk or not, one of my cats is utterly obsessed with the meat bits in sauce sachets, and I eat junk now and then so I let her (but not too often!) The Nestlé logo on the box is nearly as big as the Purina one, as if they are making a point about it. But you're right, they bought it from an american company.

So either way, one of them is european now, and one of them used to be, however you look at it 

I looked at the Farmina brand in the original post, and see it's Italian. While Italian artisan food has an amazing reputation, I can't say that it's mass production does. 

That said, I looked up the food standards compliance for Italy in general, and see that Italy are one of the EU countries that has aligned national standards with the EU rules. For what that's worth.


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

krazykiwi said:


> That said, I looked up the food standards compliance for Italy in general, and see that Italy are one of the EU countries that has aligned national standards with the EU rules. For what that's worth.


If the food standards are anything like the RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances in electronic equipment) standard that the EU implemented a few years ago...then it doesn't mean much imo. I managed the team that was responsible for meeting RoHS at a former job and those standards were extremely vague and subject to much interpretation. Getting clarification would take months or even years and it was obvious that the people who created the standards were not well versed about the industry that they were writing standards for. While the EU seems to be on the cutting edge when it comes to writing standards, whether those standards are truly able to be implemented and the requirements met is another matter all together. In addition, with RoHS, their ability to enforce the standards was non existent.


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