Read time: 3-5 mins

At LB, we spend a lot of time talking to companies about transparency, supply chains, governance and the importance of reporting what went wrong as well as what went right.

Last week, a dog food recall suddenly made all of that much less theoretical.

My dogs’ favourite brand of dog food has been linked to reports of dogs developing sudden bilateral dry eye. The brand is fresh, premium and the only thing my two senior rescue dogs will eat consistently without complaint. The reports of this serious condition – which can cause eye damage and sight loss – have been equal parts unsettling and inconvenient.

No causal link between the food and these cases has yet been established and the company is investigating, so it would be wrong to suggest that its food is responsible, but it is an uncomfortable, rapidly unfolding example of the challenges around corporate transparency and trust.

Communicating changes

Earlier this year, the brand introduced buckwheat as part of a recipe change. The company promoted the new formulation and explained the nutritional rationale online, but some customers, including me, did not feel the change had been clearly communicated, and subsequently, the founder acknowledged that the business had not done a good enough job of communicating the change.

For a product bought specifically on the basis of nutrition, this is important. Dog owners may be managing allergies, health conditions or, in my case, extremely fussy eaters, so customers expect to be told about material recipe changes directly so they can make an informed decision.

The company has since removed its website article about the recipe change, reportedly to avoid confusion while its investigation was under way. Again, there may be a reasonable explanation, but from a transparency perspective, updating or contextualising previous information might have been more reassuring to customers.

It is something we discuss regularly with annual reporting clients. Transparency is most valuable when the story becomes uncomfortable. Explaining what has changed, what you previously believed, what you now know and what remains unclear can build far more credibility than trying to present a perfectly polished version of events.

Supply chain due diligence suddenly feels very real

The investigation has also pushed supply chain assurance into the spotlight. Companies are increasingly expected to understand not simply their direct operations, but what is happening further down their value chains and how effectively risks are identified and monitored.

The company has said it is investigating whether buckwheat, and/or its potential contamination, could be connected to the reported cases.

Questions around ingredient sourcing, supplier assurance, testing, traceability and governance can sound rather dry in an annual report or ESG questionnaire, but feel significantly more tangible when the end of that supply chain is the food you have been putting into your dog’s bowl every day.

Reputation moves faster than corporate communications

The other striking part of the story has been watching it unfold online.

Facebook groups and Reddit threads have filled rapidly with customer experiences, theories and speculation. Private equity investment, ingredient costs and questions around board-level relationships with independent review websites have all been pulled into the discussion.

That doesn’t mean that every claim is accurate, but it does shine a light on the speed of reputational change. Customers can now construct and distribute their own version of a corporate story almost instantly, long before an investigation has established the facts.

Once trust weakens, everything becomes evidence. Previous marketing claims are revisited, commercial relationships are questioned and past minor decisions are interpreted through a much more sceptical lens.

If companies do not explain what is happening clearly and quickly, somebody else will.

Communicating before you know the answer

I hope that the company in question will be able to establish that its food was not responsible for the reported cases.

But while the investigation is ongoing, one thing is already clear. Trust is not only determined by whether something ultimately proves to have gone wrong, but by how openly a business communicates when it doesn’t yet know the answer.

For now, thousands of customers are finding something else to put in the bowl. Whether those customers can be won back after the expected six-week investigation period may prove the more difficult question.

It is a shame because, rightly or wrongly, our household attributes this food to our most senior dog’s impressive longevity, at almost 16 years old. (See my little girl, Azzie, in the picture above, gazing out of the LB office window in contemplation.) Perhaps it’s the end consumers, blissfully unaware of the drama, who may ultimately decide on the brand’s future. I, for one, have two hungry mouths to feed, and they would rather go on hunger strike than eat budget kibble (and yes, I’ve tried them all).

The story is also a reminder that good corporate reporting is about showing how a business responds when plans change, assumptions prove wrong or risks crystallise, with enough transparency for stakeholders to understand what happened, what has been learned and what happens next. Transparency is essential to building trust.

All this talk of dogs and trust has reminded me that this week our office is collecting donations for Dogs Trust Shoreham in aid of International Dog Day (which is on 26 August every year). There is currently no shortage of dog food conversation at Lyonsbennett, although I’ll stick to kibble donations for now.