Crisis Over Pet Food Extracting Healthy Cost

A poll of 1,000 American adults, conducted by GfK Custom Research North America after the food recall began, found that 66 percent of pet owners sometimes buy premium brands and 40 percent do so regularly. Of the 1 in 6 whose brands were recalled, the survey found, nearly half said they did not plan to return to their old brand, even after the crisis has passed.

Krista Heinz hopes to hook some of those newly uncommitted customers. Five years ago, she opened Doggie Style Bakery on 18th Street Northwest. She stocks her shelves with dog food from smaller companies that buy U.S. ingredients and sells an organic brand called Karma that costs almost $3 a pound, compared with less than $1 a pound for standard pet food. She also makes treats with ingredients bought from the same places where restaurants buy their food. So even a human can eat the $4 black-and-white crunchy bone-shaped treat with a carob and yogurt glaze, or the $1 bon bons with carob and yogurt toppings, or the half-sheet of doggie cake for $50.

Some local pet owners are poised to bypass the commercial market altogether.

At the Kalorama Recreation Center and Park in Northwest Washington, Karin Wiedemann said she no longer trusts the Purina dried dog food she bought for years for her 5 1/2 -year-old Rotweiler-German shepherd mix, Bella. But she does not want to switch to the expensive organic brands because she doesn't think they're any better.

"It's made me so wary and skeptical of all dog food," Wiedemann said of the recalls. "It's all mass produced. It makes me think, 'Where are all the ingredients coming from for the organic food?'"

So instead, she is considering making Bella's food from scratch, a huge commitment for someone who rarely cooks for herself. She has searched the Internet for recipes. All it takes is some raw meat, raw eggs, egg shells, carrots, garlic and a food processor, she said. "I can have more control over it and know more about what she's eating and where it's coming from."

Carl Tobias, an expert in product liability at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia, said that given how slow Congress and regulators can be to act, consumers and companies have little choice but to become more demanding about the sources and integrity of the products they buy.

He said he is impressed with evolving efforts by large companies such as Wal-Mart to impose stringent contractual standards on their trading partners, demanding legal accountability for fraud or deception. By contrast, Tobias said, litigation always comes too late -- and for consumers, offers too little.

"In most jurisdictions," Tobias said, "pets are considered 'personal property' and you only get the value of the pet on the market."

Correspondent Ariana Eunjung Cha in Shanghai contributed to this report.