I own a pet supply store. This time last year, one of my manufacturers, Evanger's Dog & Cat Food Company in Wheeling, IL, forwarded an article written about them in The New York Times. It seems the Times got wind that Evanger's produces kosher food for pets. (I was unaware.) They reported that Holly Sher, who owns the company, said that in the week before Passover she receives dozens of calls from Jews, just learning of her kosher pet products, that want her to send cases of the food overnight. The cost of shipping alone to New York, where she has sent many of the orders, is $110, added to the cost of the food. Evanger's places an advertisement each year in the Chicago Rabbinical Society's Passover guide, a list of kosher groceries that is circulated nationally to more than 12,000 homes. The pet food is listed alongside gefilte fish and matzo meal. In Manhattan, The Pet Market's five locations have a 20% increase in the sale of Evanger's during the weeks before Passover. And at Holistic Pet Cuisine in Boca Raton, Florida Jewish retirees, who keep kosher, make it the #1 seller year round with sales of 1,800 cans a month. For those of us who don't know, the Torah is clear about ridding homes of grains, not just avoiding consuming them, during Passover week, and pet food often contains rice, barley and other grains. Those who keep kosher year round, meanwhile, believe that combining dairy and meat for any reason, even to feed to a pet, violates Jewish law. I quote the New York Times as saying:

Ms. Sher bought the company in 2002, and inquired about kosher certification a year later, after seeing a neighbor feeding her dog in the garage during Passover to keep nonkosher food out of her house. So Ms. Sher, who is Jewish, submitted an application to the Chicago Rabbinical Council, one of a handful of organizations across the country that certify foods as kosher. The rabbis required her to remove grains as well as meat-dairy combinations, inspected the plant, then gave her permission to say "Kosher for Passover" on labels for most of Evanger's dog food flavors and about a quarter of its cat food. A letter of certification spells out that the food is "acceptable for use by those who observe Jewish law (free from any forbidden mixtures)" but "not kosher for human consumption." The food is not made with kosher meat, which Ms. Sher said would be prohibitively expensive. Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, a council administrator, explained that the reference to human consumption is not because "we think anyone is going to eat the dog food, but we do worry about them throwing the dog dish in the dishwasher with kosher dishes." He said that while the Torah made clear that it was permissible to feed nonkosher meat to livestock or other animals, it prohibited deriving any benefit or pleasure, which one gets from nourishing a pet, from meat-dairy mixtures at any time or grains during Passover. Before the 2007 pet food recalls, which did not affect Evanger's, the company started an organic line. It used fresh rather than dehydrated vegetables and food only from United States sources, most within 40 miles of its plant. Evanger's trumpeted that fact in the wake of the recalls, which stemmed from tainted wheat gluten from China. Ms. Sher said sales increased 300 percent in the wake of the recalls and had remained steady, with annual revenue topping $10 million today. The kosher designation may have helped drive that growth, since non-Jews may associate it with superior quality, a notion popularized by the slogan for the hot-dog maker Hebrew National: "We answer to a higher authority." End of Times quote.

I started carrying Evanger's when Holly Sher's daughter Chelsea popped in my store with samples to share. You see she was attending Butler University at the time. Her Mom wanted her to personally take good care of us. I have since seen Holly at the trade shows. Before Rachel Ray endorsed her own brand of dog food she featured Evanger's on her television show. It is a quality product. The company has been in existence I believe since the 1930's. My store cat Sara loves the mackerel in gravy. The NY Times stated that Evanger's food is increasingly popular with Bark Mitzvahs, a cheeky canine rite of passage where, as documented in videos of the celebrations posted on YouTube, some guests utter a congratulatory "Muzzle Tov." Pets make you smile!