Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Blue Buffalo Pays $32 Million to Avoid Bigger Fines


From St. Louis Business Journal comes this bit of news about the lying liars at Blue Buffalo:

Connecticut-based Blue Buffalo Pet Products Inc. has agreed to pay $32 million to settle a class action lawsuit with customers of the pet food company over advertising claims about natural ingredients in its products.

Blue Buffalo denied wrongdoing in a Thursday release. Chairman and founder Bill Bishop said in the release the company learned more than a year ago about the misconduct of a former ingredient supplier and a broker.

This is the largest class-action pet food settlement in history.

To be clear, Purina’s separate false advertising case against Blue Buffalo continues, and will almost certainly involve a very large sum as well. Blue Buffalo is trying to rope its suppliers into paying part of that expected fine, but since Blue Buffalo has been a repeat player in the "we have no idea what is actually in our dog food" excuse-game, it's unclear if that gambit will work.

As I noted back in November,

Whether it goes to court or the settlement table, Blue Buffalo is going to lose. It's been caught, and the facts are incontestable. Now the only question is the scope of the sanction and what happens at Blue Buffalo next.

1 comment:

channeledbymodem said...

I came across an investment blog post that rated BB a "buy" despite their problems because they were moving into the "prescription diet" business since pet food faddists refuse to feed their sick pets proven Hill's formulas that contain by-products. They thought they'd seen another way to spread their BS philosophy but I guess they didn't Google "Why do vets hate Blue Buffalo?" Maybe because apart from disparaging the foods most vets feed themselves and recommend, and lying about their manufacture, it makes many many dogs sick to their stomach (and probably not because it's "too rich" and the dog is "de-toxing.")

Oh, and they've also recently recalled cat treats for including propylene glycol, which the "True Blue Promise" specifically condemns although it is safe for dogs and banned by the FDA for cats. It also happens to be one of the ingredients in Beneful that the class action litigants swear killed their dogs.

They're a piece of work over there at BB.