News

Musti ja Mirri, the leading pet speciality retailer in the Scandinavian countries, has acquired Zoo Support from Braganza AB. Zoo Support is the owner of the Arken Zoo and DjurMagazinet brands and the largest pet care retail franchise in Sweden, with 91 stores across the country. The plan going forward is to build further on the Arken Zoo brand in Sweden and initiate a gradual harmonisation of the assortment and offering as well as to combine the sales organisations. The acquisition gives the Musti ja Mirri Group 220 stores in Finland and Sweden and annual consumer sales amounting to approximately € 226 mio through franchise and corporate stores.

According to reports in the US media, two senators have asked the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to increase its oversight of pet food. The reason for this is the lawsuit accusing Nestle Purina's Beneful of harming and killing dogs, a claim which the company has rejected as baseless.Senators Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin have nevertheless sent a letter to the FDA asking it to investigate the claims as well as provide an update on how it is implementing previous laws that require contamination prevention measures in pet food. "To our knowledge, the FDA has not issued any investigations, warnings, consumer guidance, or product recalls to address these alarming issues."The letter cites legislation that Congress passed in 2007. The FDA Amendments Act of 2007 required various changes, such as improving regulations for pet food safety, strengthening labelling requirements, establishing an early warning system for contaminated products and setting ingredient and processing standards. "However, eight years later, most provisions of the pet food safety law have not been implemented and protections Congress enacted are not in place, amid allegations of contaminated Bene-ful dry kibble," according to the senators. 

The British pet product show PATS Sandown attracted a total of 1 859 visitors. This equates to a slight decline compared with last year, when just over 1 900 visitors to the show were recorded. The number of pet retailers attending the show increased by 2 per cent compared with 2014. There was also a larger presence from garden centres at the Sandown Park showpiece in Surrey (6 per cent higher than the previous year), reflecting the growing importance of the pet category…