Meryl's Notes Blog

I didn’t know about the Diamond Pet Food recall and I subscribe to enough things to know about it until I heard about it from the Publicity Hound. Apparently, Diamond Pet Foods has recalled 19 brands of dog and cat food because they have aflatoxin, a toxic chemical.

The company has taken action to address this. When you go to its home page, it redirects you straight to the recall page. So that’s one point for the company because it doesn’t bury the information and makes it obvious. Any company that tries that is going to get trampled on.

Back to the recall page. It’s simple and easy to read and understand. If you’re affected, the link to get help is also visible. The Q&A clearly answers the important questions of what to do if you have the food, if the pet ate it, and so on. One thing that’s glaringly missing is no mention of reimbursement for the vet’s bill. If a pet ingested the food, the company advises going to the vet and running a liver profile. The company has posted a toll free number with the hours as well as long form should owners wish to contact the company.

Don’t know if contacting the company will lead to it offering to pay medical bills, but it should be on there somewhere. Also, some pets have died and again, there’s no mention of how the company is helping those families whose pet died.

B.L. Ochman believes the company’s actions have made things worse instead of better. We agree on the “pay the bills” part, but the company has not said it won’t pay the bills. However, it should’ve been clarified by now. The last update as of today is December 30 (according to the site) — 11 days ago. Is that inexcusable? It depends.

Has any new info come up since then? Has the Q&A page been updated, but the date not updated to reflect this (since the Q&A is not on the home page)?

Crisis management is still a new area from an online perspective. While the company may have plans to pay affected families, it may not realize it has not quickly addressed this.

Ochman has all the relevant links to the story, but here they are:

• MSNBC report

• Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine News on the story

• FDA announcement

• BusinessWeek

• Yahoo News Search

Technorati