I've had concerns about Merrick, too. It does seem that there's a father/ son difference here. If the food didn't look and smell so good, I'd believe the worst. My cat will only eat the Ocean flavor, so I've realized it's the fishiness she likes. I don't want to feed her so much fish though, so I've found she will eat some home cooked chicken if I blend it with a bit of mackeral or sardine (packed in water with no salt. This might be an option for those who want to home cook, but their fussy cats won't eat home cooked--and get us out of the problem of trying to find a food to trust!

I just switched my cat to Innova dry, but not Evo: I was a little concerned about the 50% protein level, since she's been eating about 30%. On another forum it was mentioned that too abrupt a switch to such high protein could cause renal problems. It could be that people were feeding Evo dry and pure meat together. That would raise phosphorus pretty dramatically. The Innova I'm feeding is in an orangey package and is about 36% protein, but meat protein rather than the infamous RPC . My cat loves it.

Hi All--

I, too, am turned off by the Amway-ish sales pitch. But, my cat loved the sample pack, so I ordered a bag of LA. In the meantime, I emailed a question asking them the origination of their ingredients. OPF says on their website that they only use domestically grown grains. So I asked if LA used OPF's inventory of ingredients, or used outside suppliers. They responded with a ridiculous marketing form letter, ignoring my questions. I wrote again--more forthright this time. I pointed out that we want information, not merely company assurances. Haven't heard anything back yet.

It's really important when dealing with these companies to not settle for the answer that our ingredients are sourced from US suppliers. This simply means that the middleman is a US company: Wilbur-Ellis is a US supplier! We must ask for the country of origin of the ingredients if we want to be sure the meat/grains are raised/grown domestically. And from what I've learned on Itchmo's forums, GMO needs to be avoided because those grains have pesticides grown into them! And there's some pretty good evidence that the combination of GMO and melamine/cyanuric acid may be part of the problem.

So, I'll keep this bag, but will probably cancel my autoship in favor of Innova bought locally.