Aug 27, 2026 · 14 min · 8 segments
What’s really going on with Farmina pet food? I spoke directly with Farmina’s lead veterinarian to get answers about the recent questions and controversy surrounding the brand.
Amber ReaHost
What happened was last year they decided that they needed to open a plant of Farmina here in the United States because Italy could not keep up with the demand, okay? So Italy's a really tiny company.
The company grew, and they just outgrew their capacity to produce the food that they needed in Italy, and so they decided to open a plant here in the United States.
They appreciated that, um, customers really, you know, were pleased with or felt drawn to the, the pull of a product being, um, created and produced in Italy, but it just wasn't sustainable, um, to continue with all the food being made, um, in that, you know, in that particular plant.
Because they were opening a new plant and things were gonna have to be adjusted, they decided it was the time to go ahead and make some changes that were already in the works.
But it just made sense that when they're opening a new plant, rather than open a new plant and get things going and then make changes, um, they were just gonna go ahead and do the update at the same time as the plant's opening.
Um, what were these updates and why did they decide to change formulas and things like that? Well, periodically these things happen.
They take customer feedback, and they decide that they need to update formulas, improve them.
And so, um, he outlined for me that there were three changes that were made, um, for three-- or the changes that were made were made for three specific reasons.
The second was they wanted to improve upon digestibility, although he felt that those two things didn't really need too much updating.
He thought they were doing really good at them, um, already because their food is already, um, registering at eighty-eight percent digestibility, which is the highest that the test can read, so it could actually be more than eighty-eight percent.
Um, but in the quest to constantly be improving, they wanted to go ahead and try to improve upon those things.
Um, and so that was that a lot of owners were complaining that the dry kibble was too crumbly, and in the bottom of the bags there were a lot of broken kibbles that I guess just weren't able to be fed, and so there was a lot of waste there.
What happened was last year they decided that they needed to open a plant of Farmina here in the United States because Italy could not keep up with the demand, okay? So Italy's a really tiny company.
The company grew, and they just outgrew their capacity to produce the food that they needed in Italy, and so they decided to open a plant here in the United States.
They appreciated that, um, customers really, you know, were pleased with or felt drawn to the, the pull of a product being, um, created and produced in Italy, but it just wasn't sustainable, um, to continue with all the food being made, um, in that, you know, in that particular plant.
Because they were opening a new plant and things were gonna have to be adjusted, they decided it was the time to go ahead and make some changes that were already in the works.
But it just made sense that when they're opening a new plant, rather than open a new plant and get things going and then make changes, um, they were just gonna go ahead and do the update at the same time as the plant's opening.
Um, what were these updates and why did they decide to change formulas and things like that? Well, periodically these things happen.
They take customer feedback, and they decide that they need to update formulas, improve them.
And so, um, he outlined for me that there were three changes that were made, um, for three-- or the changes that were made were made for three specific reasons.
The second was they wanted to improve upon digestibility, although he felt that those two things didn't really need too much updating.
He thought they were doing really good at them, um, already because their food is already, um, registering at eighty-eight percent digestibility, which is the highest that the test can read, so it could actually be more than eighty-eight percent.
Um, but in the quest to constantly be improving, they wanted to go ahead and try to improve upon those things.
Um, and so that was that a lot of owners were complaining that the dry kibble was too crumbly, and in the bottom of the bags there were a lot of broken kibbles that I guess just weren't able to be fed, and so there was a lot of waste there.
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