Emily,
Good morning! I’m writing to ask you a question about Innova Pet Food. About four months, ago I switched to Halo for animal rights reasons. I had been interested in Innova (my neighbor gave me a bag of cat treats and my cat loves them), but I didn’t see them on Peta’s cruelty-free list. I looked at the Innova website and they had answers about the animal testing issue that I was not sure how to interpret or believe. I know you’re very busy, but, when you have a chance, I’d really appreciate any help making heads or tails of this. While I am interested in the food, I won’t buy it if it does support animal testing.
Thank you for your time,
Innova-questioner
Innova Animal Testing Description
Natura Pet Products believes strongly in the importance of nutritional testing to validate our products and to support the development of new, innovative and healthful diets. However, we have never been comfortable with the care and treatment of animals at most independent facilities. As a result, we realized that the only way to reconcile both issues was to build our own facility and manage the care and treatment of the test animals ourselves.
The Belfield Pet Food Research & Development Center is a humane, non-invasive testing facility which was built near our manufacturing plant in Nebraska. The Belfield Center sits on 8.5 acres. The building itself is 11,500 square feet under roof and is climate controlled year-round with 3 large HVAC units. There are 56 indoor runs with full access to outdoor runs and 2 x 3000 square foot dog exercise yards. There is a cat play room and Natura’s “Dog of the Week” room, which is a fully decorated home living room which is being utilized by a different canine resident each week. All residents of the Belfield Center have regular play time and frequent interaction with the staff. Toys of all kinds, cat scratching posts and cat furniture is available for all residents. Animals living at the Belfield Center come to us from a variety of sources, including rescue groups, breeders and private homes.
All animals in the facility are cared for humanely and it is important for our customers to know that all living and test spaces far exceed the minimum requirements set by the USDA. It is also important for everyone to know that all work done at the Belfield Center is non-invasive; the dog and cat residents serve us to eat pet food. Period. A practicing local veterinarian has been contracted to provide regular health care to all animals. The animals are cared for by a conscientious staff of 4 full time staff members, including one staff member with veterinary technician experience.
TESTING POLICIES
1. All testing will be non-invasive to the animals and consists only of palatability, stool quality, protocol feeding studies or other similarly designed studies for nutritional substantiation.
2. All animals will be cared for as if they were pets in our home, including interaction and socialization.
3. We will always far exceed minimum standards established by the Animal Welfare Act of the US, the US Department of Agriculture.
4. We will not conduct any study requiring or resulting in the euthanasia of cats or dogs.
5. We will ensure the humane treatment of cats and dogs that reside in the facility and provide for animal well-being, socialization and husbandry in a manner compatible with our own philosophy and conscience.
6. We will require that all residents have regular and timely veterinary check-ups. Any animal that shows signs of illness will be provided veterinary care immediately.
7. Resident animals will be adopted-out to private homes following their retirement from the Belfield Center. The adoption process will begin while the animals are still well within their productive and active years.
8. Natura will continue to keep an interest in our “retired” residents, and will support their feeding and health care for a period of time after adoption. Natura employees, dealers and customers will be given first priority to adopt these animals.
9. The Belfield Center has an advisory panel made up of pet care professionals, community representatives, and veterinary practitioners for the purpose of routine facility tours and oversight. Dr Wendell O. Belfield will serve on the Animal Care & Use Committee which meets at least semi-annually.
10. Extra care will be taken with all new animals upon their arrival at the Belfield Center to minimize the stress of their relocation and to encourage quick socialization with the other animals and Natura staff. Each animal at the Belfield Center will have a name, not a number.
Why they’re not on the Peta’s list
Natura will not be added to the PETA list. Although we respect the philosophies behind the PETA organization, we do not agree with some of the methods they employ. Please understand that companies that are not on the PETA list are not necessarily doing any testing on animals. They may simply have chosen, for any number of reasons, not to take part in the PETA survey.
Dear Innova-questioner,
I’m so sorry to take so long to get back to you! Thank you for your lovely email — I’m always glad to find another person who has switched to Halo for animal rights reasons! I’m very impressed.
So, personally — just for me — I don’t support Innova. I dislike animal testing in all shapes and forms (as you can tell!) and I do not support keeping animals in cages the way Innova does — I fully believe all “house” animals should live in homes with owners. I do not support keeping dogs and cats in non-home environments. It breaks my heart to think of those dogs and cats not living in a home with people. I think they eventually get “zoochosis” from it. I think it’s very nice that Innova doesn’t pour poisons in those dogs and cats eyes the way other worse petfood companies do, but it’s not enough for me.
My personal rule of thumb is to replace the word “dog/cat” with “child.” Do you think some children should be sacrificed on the altar of nutrition testing — which I strongly suspect is petfood companies trying out cheaper weird food additives instead of using actual food that has sustained dogs and cats for thousands of years — so that more children have “better” nutrition? Would you feel happy reading these two paragraphs?:
“Natura Pet Products believes strongly in the importance of nutritional testing to validate our products and to support the development of new, innovative and healthful diets. However, we have never been comfortable with the care and treatment ofchildren at most independent facilities. As a result, we realized that the only way to reconcile both issues was to build our own facility and manage the care and treatment of the test children ourselves.
The Belfield Pet Food Research & Development Center is a humane, non-invasive testing facility which was built near our manufacturing plant in Nebraska. The Belfield Center sits on 8.5 acres. The building itself is 11,500 square feet under roof and is climate controlled year-round with 3 large HVAC units. There are 56 indoor runs with full access to outdoor runs and 2 x 3000 square foot child exercise yards. There is a child play room and Natura’s “Child of the Week” room, which is a fully decorated home living room which is being utilized by a different child resident each week. All resident children of the Belfield Center have regular play time and frequent interaction with the staff. Toys of all kinds, cat scratching posts and cat furniture is available for all residents. Children living at the Belfield Center come to us from a variety of sources, including rescue groups, breeders and private homes.”
(I also find the “dog of the week” thing amusing. That’s very anthropomorphic of Innova. The best thing about dogs is they don’t care about being the “dog of the week” — they just want human care and attention. I’m also concerned they don’t say how long they keep the animals at the shelter — months? years? That would be sad.)
I also believe most pet foods are made from products that dogs and cats have been eating for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and that they don’t need animal testing. So I disagree with Innova about the importance of nutritional testing. If it were so important, why don’t the 14 petfood companies that don’t use animal-testing have problems? It’s a suspicious argument.
That being said, Innova is much better than those other horrible invasive and painful animal-testing companies like Iams, so it’s definitely the lesser of a bunch of evils. If your cats really like the treats, it’s not the end of the world to buy Innova products. Also, it’s all shades of grey really — many (most?) petfood companies, even if they do not perform invasive animal-testing or have in-house noninvasive animal testing, apparently like to give away their product to independent shelters and see how those animals do. (I’m a little confused by this actually — I haven’t been able to find anyone to give me a straight answer as to how involved that sort of testing is. I know many pet shelters rely on food donations, but don’t report on its effects to petfood companies. Iams, for example, gives away a lot of petfood to independent shelters with no strings attached — I’m sure Iams gets tax deductions for it, finds it a nice way to get rid of product lines that didn’t quite take off, and it’s all a profitable business ploy so that people take home pets who are already used to Iams foods and then, Iams hopes, those people keep buying Iams food.)
Also, the fact that Innova feels it’s too good for PETA’s lovely cruelty-free petfood list REALLY annoys me. I love PETA’s cruelty-free petfood list — it is a lifesaver.
Gosh, at this point I’d tell you about PETA’s cruelty-free list of petfoods, Newman’s Own, and Vegepet but it sounds like you’re already tremendously knowledgeable about that sort of thing! Again, thanks for writing in, it’s always nice to hear from people who really care about animal testing!
Regards,
Emily
(Since I know some of the readers will chime in here about how people should really consider animal-testing-free AND vegan petfoods as the ultimate cruelty-free petfoods, here is a list of the vegan petfoods listed on PETA’s animal-testing-free list. The most popular vegan/animal-testing-free petfood is Evolution, but there are others such as Bone Vivant, Boston Baked Bonz, Max & Ruffy’s, Natural Balance (has one vegan product line), Natural Life (has one vegan product line), Onesta Organics, PetGuard, V-dogfood, Vegepet, Want a Cookie (has one vegan product line), and Wow-Bow Distributors (has one vegan product line).
(Since I may receive further questioning on whether or not dogs and/or cats can eat vegan food, here are some answers. Can dogs go vegan with no ill-health effects? Yes. Cats – yes and no.)