Purina is also taking a closer look at the dog’s illness. Stuart said Purina had contacted the vets Arlo had been taken to for their assessment, the timeframe for which would be “dependent on the vet and their review”.
But she said the discovery of maggots is unlikely to be a sign of widespread insect infestation in its factory, especially as no other customers had made similar complaints about products from that batch and there had been no sign of unusual activity on Purina’s pest surveillance records.
She pointed out some insects can enter packs through the seam after manufacturing or even bore holes through the plastic, which could explain what had happened in this case.
“This means they can enter the product at any point from our factory, through transport, distribution centres, stores or in people’s homes. These insects can also be found in foods like flour, cereals and nuts.”
Purina says it has pest surveillance, monitoring and control programmes at each of its factories, and keeps records on its surveillance, ingredient testing and on every batch of product.
“We have procedures in place in all our factories to keep our products safe and high-quality,” Stuart said.
Responding to the man’s annoyance over the rigmarole of making contact with Purina, Stuart said there had been an outage with its 0800 number but admitted that wasn’t good enough.
“We’re sorry his initial attempt to contact with us didn’t meet his expectations, or ours,” she said. “We were unaware that our 0800 number had an outage. We’re grateful to him for raising this, as we have now been able to rectify this.”
Stuart says Purina takes product complaints “very seriously” and will work to investigate them thoroughly.