Rachael Ray does just about everything—her pet food line is just one of her many business endeavors. But Nutrish Dog Food, Ray’s label, was just sued for $5 million by a New York man claiming that the chow actually contains noxious herbicide, as reported by the Dogington Post.
Plaintiff Markeith Parks filed the $5 million class-action lawsuit on Wednesday against Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, the manufacturers of Nutrish, and its line of Superior Premium Food for Dogs, positing that while Ray’s Nutrish “aggressively advertises” and promotes the products as “natural,” the “claims are false, deceptive, and misleading.”
Additionally, the court documents also read that Nutrish products instead “contain the unnatural chemical glyphosate, a potent biocide and endocrine disruptor, with detrimental health effects that are still becoming known.”
“The exact source of glyphosate in the products is known only to Rachael Ray Nutrish and its suppliers,” the documents cite. “However, crops such as peas, soy, corn, beets and alfalfa are sprayed with the chemical in order to dry them and produce an earlier, more uniform harvest—a practice with no health benefits, meant only to increase yield.”
However, the VP of pet food and nutrition at J.M. Smucker Co., which acquired Ainsworth Pet Food last year, isn’t convinced. In a statement to Fox News, Bobby Modi said the following: “We are in the process of reviewing the details of the claim but strongly stand behind the quality of our products, ingredients and sourcing practices. As animal lovers and humans, it goes without saying that we do not add pesticides to our products as an ingredient. We plan to aggressively fight these claims.”
Photo: James Barker on Unsplash
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