Update: Stacie Forman, one of the founders of Weruva, has written in to say that Weruva is going to be on PETA’s list of cruelty-free petfood as soon as PETA updates its site, and that all Weruva petfood is free-range sourced.  So Weruva is looking good!  I now recommend buying it.

Here’s my weekly advice column.  Please bear in mind I’m no expert, that these are just my thoughts, and and that I am in no way telling YOU what to think — I am just giving you the benefits of my hours of google-research on you so you can make your own decision  

Hello –

Only 4 weeks into my decision (or should i say awareness) of cruelty free living, I’ve been buying my pets pet food from a company called Weruva.  From what i can see Weruva is cruelty free. Do you have any thoughts about them?  My cats seem to thrive with the food but my reasearch is not yet as indepth as yours so your feed back would be much appreciated.  

Thanks,

Weruva fan

Hi Weruva-fan!

I’m so glad you’re four weeks into cruelty-free living! I took a quick look at Weruva and I have to say the quality of their product looks AMAZING — no by-products at all, and I like the fact that they seem very concerned with food safety, that every purchase of Weruva involves some money going to rescue homeless animals, and they don’t appear to be on PETA’s list of evil companies. However, I wouldn’t buy Weruva products for two reasons — first, they don’t use humanely-raised meats, and second, they are not listed on PETA’s list of good companies, and I’m a stickler for that. If I were to describe Weruva using a 100% scale, I would say Weruva is 25%-cruelty-free — they aren’t known for actively testing on animals, but then again, they aren’t on the definitely-doesn’t-test-on-animals-list, and they don’t use humanely raised meats (though I haven’t factored the whole safety thing into the cruelty-free rating — that really bumps them up in my personal estimation).

If you have the time, I think it would be GREAT if you could email Weruva and tell them your concerns — say you love their products, but you’d appreciate it if they’d consider signing up with PETA to be listed as not testing their products on animals, and you’d also appreciate it if they’d use humanely sourced meats as well. Here’s the link to the website a company can use to sign up with PETA:

http://www.caringconsumer.com/info_companies.asp

If Weruva did sign up with PETA, and used humanely sourced meats, I would wholeheartedly endorse them.  

I would place a bet that the Weruva people already don’t test on animals — they probably just haven’t gotten around to trying to certify that. Though I could be wrong — I’m not entirely sure if establishing something as “human food grade” involves animal testing or not. It might. The Weruva people seem really nice from their website — I suspect they might be interested in signing up with PETA, at least. They also sound like they’d be at least interested in humanely sourced meats — they look like animal nuts (yay!) — though humanely sourced meats may be too expensive for them, I don’t know, and it looks like a lot of their meat comes from Thailand, and I don’t know if they have free-range/humanely-raised certification in Thailand.

In the meantime, if your cats really like Weruva, I would stick with it. It’s heaps, heaps, heaps better than buying food from an evil company like Iams or Purina that is a known animal tester that most likely doesn’t have the safety standards Weruva does, and certainly doesn’t donate money to animal shelters.

I hope that was informative to you! Tell me what you decide to do. (I should also mention that I’m just telling you my thoughts — I am in no way telling you what to think )

Regards,

Categories : dear emily, pet food