Mars is a company known for the confectionery items that it manufactures, such as Mars bars, Milky Way bars, M&M’s, Skittles, Snickers, Twix, and Bounty chocolate bars.
It also produces non-confectionery snacks, such as Ben’s Original, and pasta sauce brand Dolmio, as well as pet foods, such as Pedigree, Whiskas and Royal Canin brands.
Mars is ranked by Forbes as the fourth-largest privately held company in the United States.
In 2018, Mars Petcare bought out the Linnaeus Group of Veterinary practices which now puts it as one of the largest group of corporate owned vet practices in the UK.
Which vet practices does Mars Petcare now own?
We have all the top specialist practices in the UK now owned and managed by the same company that brought us Mars, Snickers, Whiskas, Royal Canin and Pedigree.
Which practices are they?
Linnaeus operates 59 primary care practices and 17 referral hospitals across the UK and Ireland, and in 2023, it invested almost £40 million in three of its multi-disciplinary hospital sites.
With the CMA investigation launching in 2024, Mars Petcare have had to contend with making many specilaist vets in the UK redundant as shown by this article.
In June 2024, they announced that they had invested nearly $138M/€126M in a 111,000-square-metre facility in the Tianjin plant, located 150 km from Beijing. It will supply Mars’ pet portfolio nationwide to enhance domestic and global product demand.
This means that all the Royal Canin supplied to the UK will most likely be flown from China and that local intensive chinese factories that are known to have the worst welfare issues in the world, will be incorporated into these Royal Canin dog and cat food products.
Understandably, Mars Petcare would have funded the Prof Alex German Royal Canin University of Liverpool study which tried to undermine Prof Knight’s studies on vegan dog food diets as shown in this article.
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Cultivated Chicken Dog Food in Pets At Home!
Cell-based meat and vegan ingredients represent the future of pet food. These are the only ingredients that are good for pets, ‘food’ animals and the planet.
Using microbial protein for the very first time in dog treats!
This first-of-its-kind protein is derived from bacteria that have been consumed by humans for centuries in foods such as kimchi, kefir, and sauerkraut
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Plant-based vs Insect-based dog food
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The Great Protein Debate – Beef or Beans?
Dr Sue Paterson, RCVS President and Senior Vice President of the European Society of Veterinary Dermatologists interviews Dr Arielle Griffiths about Sustainable Pet Foods
University of Liverpool Vegan Dog Food Study
Prof Alex German holds the position of Royal Canin Professor of Small Animal Medicine at the University of Liverpool
The longest, most comprehensive peer-reviewed study so far!
Domestic dogs maintain positive clinical, nutritional, and haematological health outcomes when fed a commercial plant-based diet for a year. Peer reviewed and published in PLOS ONE
Reasons Why Dog Owners Stop Feeding Raw Meat-Based Diets
The latest paper from April 2024 makes an astounding 85 papers against the use of raw feeding in our dogs
UK’s first meat cultivated cat food to launch!
The world’s first cans of cat food made with cultivated chicken to be sold in 2024 at Pets At Home!
