Here is a link to Dr. Charles T. Gaskins’ report.

The document, “An Analysis of EPA Adverse Effect Data: July 1, 2006 – June 30, 2008”, claims in multiple areas to be an “independent statistical analysis”, however, Broken Hartz wishes to point out, Hartz’ decision to utilize Dr. Charles T. Gaskins for this “independent” analysis created a large conflict of interest.

Dr. Melinda Fernyhough, Hartz’ Manager of Scientific Affairs (and the originator of Hartz Mountain Corporation’s “Executive Summary of EPA Evaluation of Pet Spot-On Products”) earned her BS Degree in Animal Sciences, DVM and PhD from Washington State University. Dr. Charles T. Gaskins was a professor during the time of Dr. Fernyhough’s attendance.

One year after practicing in a small animal clinic, Dr. Fernyhough accepted the position of Manager of Scientific Affairs with Hartz. In this same year, Dr. Fernyhough was named to the Friends of Animal Sciences (FAS) Board of Directors. Dr. Charles T. Gaskins was chairman of this Washington State University organization one year prior and continued to be a member of FAS afterwards.

Out of the 28 Veterinary schools in the country, Washington State University is typically ranked slightly below average.

Here is the link to the grad-schools.usnews link referenced in the screenshot above.

With more prestigious schools available and the obvious conflict of interest, we find it questionable for Hartz to use Dr. Charles T. Gaskins or any Washington State University alumni for the purposes of obtaining an “independent statistical analysis.”

Furthermore; the report compiled by Dr. Charles T. Gaskins, although created for the purposes of addressing the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010, makes no attempt to match up with the products found in the EPA’s Public Advisory.

Dr. Gaskin’s report not only includes nineteen products that bear no relevance to the EPA’s Public Advisory, but it also mysteriously omits three of the products that are listed. Those three products, conveniently enough, are the Sergeant’s dog product (2517-94, mentioned in a previous post) that had no dog deaths in 2008, Summit Vetpharm, LLC’s cat product (mentioned in the same previous post) that had no deaths or major events in 2008 (83399-9) and Summit Vetpharm, LLC’s dog product (83399-6). This product had just two dog deaths and no major events in 2008; but we feel it was, more importantly, left out because it would make the omission of Summit Vetpharm, LLC’s cat product more noticeable.

Lastly, Dr. Gaskins saw fit to merge the Moderate and Minor events together, but these event distinctions exist because they are so different and to ignore the differences is poor practice.

Still more to come.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

As with the last post that mentioned these products, we at Broken Hartz wish to strongly caution readers about the above named products (Sergeant’s product 2517-94 and Summit Vetpharm LLC’s product 83399-9).

While these products had no reported deaths, the Sergeant’s product contains 45% Permethrin, a very dangerous pyrethroid responsible for many deaths cited in the EPA’s Public Advisory and it’s accompanying documents. Chemicals act quite predictably and logic suggests the only reason for disparity is any deaths went unreported or Sergeant’s simply chose to lie on its incident reports.

Additionally; Summit Vetpharm LLC, during the time of the EPA’s Public Advisory, was primarily held by Sumitomo Corporation the same company that owns Hartz. Sumitomo transferred it’s primary shares of Summit Vetpharm LLC a little while ago and in March of this year, they will hand over majority stock of Hartz to Unicharm, a large player in the Asian pet-care market. Sumitomo is also the manufacturer of Permethrin, the chemical referenced above.

More on Sumitomo later.

As usual, we will be referencing the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010 along with Hartz’ deplorable Executive Summary of EPA Evaluation of Pet Spot-On Products to prove this point.

Near the beginning of Hartz’ “Executive Summary” document, it claims:

(Hartz’ Executive Summary of EPA Evaluation of Pet Spot-On Products, Page 1, Paragraph 1, Sentence 3)

“Below is a copy of the EPA’s Summary of findings from the enhanced reporting, as well as the changes proposed by the EPA for the future.”

To be clear: no portion of Hartz’ “Executive Summary” document comes from the EPA, nor is the EPA ever directly cited in Hartz’ “Executive Summary”. All this deceitful information comes straight from Hartz Mountain Corporation.

In this “Executive Summary” document, originated by Dr. Melinda Fernyhough, Hartz deceptively claims the EPA made the following statement in their Public Advisory, published in March 2010:

(Hartz’ Executive Summary of EPA Evaluation of Pet Spot-On Products, Page 1, Bulleted Section 1, Bullet 2 [this portion is posed as coming from the EPA])

“For both dogs and cats, the main organ systems affected were the dermal, gastrointestinal, and nervous systems and, although most reports were classified as minor, all products had some reported deaths and major incidents.”

This is wholly inaccurate.

The EPA does not make a blanket statement about dogs and cats in this regard, and with good reason. In the case of dogs only, the EPA states:

(EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010, Page 4, Bulleted Section titled “General Findings for Dogs”, Bullet 1, Sentence 3)

“Although most incidents were classified minor, all products had some deaths and/or incidents classified as major…”

This has been poorly worded by the EPA, but we will clarify.

In the case of dogs, Sergeant’s product 2517-94 had zero reported dog deaths. There were six cat deaths, but this product is not sold for use on cats and therefore, those deaths are misuse and should not be counted against Sergeant’s product 2517-94.

In the case of cats, the EPA makes no comment about all products having some reported deaths and major incidents. The reason for this is Summit Vetpharm LLC’s product 83399-9. This product had zero reported deaths or major events.

Hartz doesn’t stop putting words in the EPA’s mouth there.

(Hartz’ Executive Summary of EPA Evaluation of Pet Spot-On Products, Page 1, Paragraph 2)

“(When reviewing the incident reports, as the EPA itself makes clear, these incident reports are not investigated or validated by the Agency for accuracy in any manner; they are taken at face value and no effort s [sic] made to screen out demonstrably false or otherwise inaccurate reports.)”

If Hartz wishes to draw attention to the fact the EPA is aware some of the reports it receives may be false, we feel compelled to share the EPA has fined Hartz in the past for cases of under-reporting and not reporting incidents. The previous link is for a fine from 2007. The EPA stated they did not receive a report from Hartz for the calendar year 2007 on or before March 1^st, 2008:

Hartz denied this, claiming they had sent the required information in time and provided the EPA with Federal Express tracking #799809068158 for a document delivered to the USEPA in Edison, New Jersey on February 26, 2008. The EPA decided to drop this fine solely for the purposes of settlement.

What we at Broken Hartz wish to point out is, in accordance with the EPA’s submission guidelines for any adverse domestic animal events, Hartz should have been submitting this information quarterly to the EPA with a grace period of 60 days. This means the majority of the information submitted to the EPA for 2007 was late, regardless of the above fine being dropped. Additionally, Federal Express is no longer able to track this number without being provided account information, so our Broken Hartz affiliate officially requested Hartz provide the proof-of-delivery document they gave to the EPA to prove compliance. We doubt Hartz would like our affiliate to scrutinize this document, so we aren’t holding our breath.

Also, Hartz’ summation regarding the EPA’s statement attaches far stronger wording than is actually used in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010:

(EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010, Page 4, Paragraph 3, Sentences 2 and 3)

“…some products may have more incidents than other products because more of that product is sold and because incident information is voluntarily submitted by pet owners, with varying levels of detailed information, and routine reporting is sometimes lacking. The incidents have not been verified and may have causes other than exposure to the pesticide.”

As for Hartz’ suggestion the incident reports were not investigated or validated by the Agency for accuracy in any manner; that is also fallacy. We support this assertion, citing this portion of the EPA Public Advisory:

(EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010, Page 9, Paragraph 5)

“Incidents which were not evaluated: Not all incident reports were included in the evaluations by the EPA. Incidents which were generally not included:

• Incidents with no EPA registration number
• Incidents from other countries
• Efficacy reports
• Incidents which were considered generally ambiguous
• Incidents which also involved use of other pesticides or drugs because effects may have been associated with the other product
• Incidents which involved multiple animals because it was difficult to tell which animal was affected and to what degree
• Multiple reports or contacts with the registrant for the same incident”

Out of the over 44,000 incident reports submitted to the EPA, only 28,319 were deemed suitable for inclusion in the report, meaning more than 1/3 of the incident reports received were screened out. Clearly, these reports were not taken at face value and many efforts were made to screen out inaccurate reports.

Watch out, Hartz. We doubt the EPA is going to be happy about this.

More to come.

P.S.

We at Broken Hartz wish to strongly caution readers about the above named products (Sergeant’s product 2517-94 and Summit Vetpharm LLC’s product 83399-9).

While these products had no reported deaths, the Sergeant’s product contains 45% Permethrin, a very dangerous pyrethroid responsible for many deaths cited in the EPA’s Public Advisory and it’s accompanying documents. Chemicals act quite predictably and logic suggests the only reason for disparity is any deaths went unreported or Sergeant’s simply chose to lie on its incident reports.

Lastly; Summit Vetpharm LLC, during the time of the EPA’s Public Advisory, was primarily held by Sumitomo Corporation the same company that owns Hartz. Sumitomo transferred it’s primary shares of Summit Vetpharm LLC a little while ago and in March of this year, they will hand over majority stock of Hartz to Unicharm, a large player in the Asian pet-care market. Sumitomo is also the manufacturer of Permethrin, the chemical referenced above.

More on Sumitomo later.

Here are two more interesting charts, representing legitimate interpretations of the incidents reviewed in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010.

The following chart shows, if your dog experiences an adverse reaction to any of the Spot-On dog products listed in the EPA Public Advisory Published in March 2010, what the likelihood is (based on percentage of reported events) of your dog experiencing Death or a Major, Moderate or Minor event. As you can see, in the case of an adverse event, your dog is 2.5 times more likely to die from a Hartz product than any of the other brands found in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010. Hartz also tops the list for Major events and Moderate events, clearly making it the most dangerous of these products.

Likelihood of Death, Major, Moderate or Minor Event if Your Dog Experiences an Incident With a Manufacturer’s Product Listed in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010:

This next chart shows, if your cat experiences an adverse reaction to any of the Spot-On cat products listed in the EPA Public Advisory Published in March 2010, what the likelihood is (based on percentage of reported events) of your cat experiencing Death or a Major, Moderate or Minor event. As you can see, in the case of an adverse event, your cat is 3 times more likely to die from a Hartz product than any of the other brands found in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010. Hartz also tops the list for Major events and comes in second for Moderate, clearly making it the most dangerous of these products.

Likelihood of Death, Major, Moderate or Minor Event if Your Cat Experiences an Incident With a Manufacturer’s Product Listed in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010:

These charts speak for themselves.

More to come.

We at Broken Hartz are not in the habit of posting twice a day, but our recent exposé seems to have finally caught the attention of Hartz.

Kudos to Rite Aid Senior Counsel, who managed to figure out how to send email attachments today after getting some help from our affiliate. Due to this, Hartz has officially gone into damage-control mode.

The first step was the Hartz Press Releases page. You may remember we posted about this at the launch of our current exposé.

At the time of that report, the EPA Flea & Tick Topical Advisory Update (the previous link functioned until today [2/21/12]) still took you to the phony article Hartz provided as “factual” information about their dangerous products.

We must confess, we at Broken Hartz always assumed Hartz would be forced to grudgingly post an actual EPA Advisory Update once being called out on this little faux pas, but thats not how Hartz rolls.

Today, Hartz went ahead and removed the “broken” EPA Advisory link from their Press Releases page and deleted the bogus EPA Advisory article we had uncovered, showing once again what they are truly committed to: lies.

Well, the link may be gone, but the screen shot isn’t.

Thank you, Hartz. You make this so easy.

More to come.

UPDATE: WE KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING, HARTZ.

At 10:09EST on 2/22/12, a Broken Hartz affiliate managed to unearth the Hartz.com phony EPA article yet again. Note the time-stamp in the bottom-right of the image.

Within 20 minutes, the discovery was deleted by Hartz. Again, note the time-stamp.

In true Hartz fashion, they still didn’t manage to clean up the whole mess. The Press Releases page for this particular version of the Hartz.com website still works (for now, anyway).

A still functional version of the Hartz.com Press Releases page, with both the "Hartz Recalls Naturals Beef Treats" and "EPA Flea & Tick Topical Advisory Update" visible.

As you may have guessed, it is no coincidence that Hartz noticed this error so quickly after the Broken Hartz affiliate had uncovered it. Clearly, Hartz has become very interested in the comings and goings of Broken Hartz affiliates on their websites.

Yesterday (2/20/12), Rite Aid responded with a clear desire to continue its unethical business partnership with Hartz Mountain Corporation. Given Rite Aid’s unique history with Hartz, this decision comes as no surprise.

Rite Aid Corporation is widely-accepted as one of the most corrupt corporations in the country. The Company seems to have an endless file of lawsuits and general grievances from the public as well as its employees. They have been known to sell expired condoms, baby formula and infant medications. Given their lack of concern for human life, it’s no wonder this unscrupulous corporation exhibits no regard for animal safety. This is very concerning to our affiliate because there is good reason to suspect Rite Aid sold an anomalous version of the Hartz product purchased.

In the April 18, 2000 issue of Fortune Magazine, the Rite Aid board of directors was named one of the six worst in the United States and do you know who happened to be on that board? Mr. Leonard Stern.

In case our readers are unaware, Leonard Stern’s father founded Hartz Mountain Corporation. Leonard took over the business in 1959 and was the head of Hartz until 2000. Leonard Stern was also on the Rite Aid Board of Directors from the mid-nineties to 2001.

Mr. Stern was fiercely engaged in his role as a board member of Rite Aid when the drugstore chain was involved in shady accounting practices, including overstating net income by $1 billion over two years. Mr. Stern was also named in a class action in which investors claimed that he and other directors had breached their fiduciary duty to shareholders. The company settled in 2000.

In 1999, Kevin Mann (the son of Rite Aid’s original founder and former Executive Vice President) alleged Leonard Stern used his influence to increase shelf space in Rite Aid stores for Hartz’ pet products at the expense of competitors. Rite Aid Corporation settled that suit in 1999 for $11 million. Companies don’t just settle for $11 million and we at Broken Hartz take this as a clear admission of guilt.

Mr. Stern maintained his position on Rite Aid’s board until resigning of his own accord in late 2001. Current members of Rite Aid’s board served with Leonard Stern and we have no doubt Rite Aid and Hartz are still close partners. This is backed up by our own investigation of all local Rite Aids in our area. None of these stores carry any pesticide products other than Hartz. In fact, these locations typically carried half-an-aisle of Hartz products.

Our affiliate had become aware of this interesting relationship between Hartz and Rite Aid during correspondence with the Company, but chose to keep silent about this detail and see how Rite Aid behaved when presented with irrefutable evidence of their beloved manufacturer’s unscrupulous behavior.

To say Rite Aid’s Senior Counsel completely underestimated our affiliate and botched this particular case wherever possible would be an understatement. He and Rite Aid’s board dismissed our affiliate and tried to excuse themselves from the matter, unconscionably denying their own Code of Ethics document, neglecting to review the solid information provided by the affiliate and making the ultimate mistake of sharing Hartz’ “Executive Summary of EPA Evaluation of Pet Spot-On Products”, no doubt imagining the 6 1/2-page document would overwhelm our affiliate.

When presented with our affiliate’s 35-page rebuttal to Hartz’ “Summary” document, Rite Aid’s Senior Counsel decided reading the document would be too much work. Instead, he chose to shoot off a reckless, poorly-constructed response (consisting of five sentences and two typos) in such a short time from opening the email he could not possibly have bothered to read the information provided and make any attempt to assess the validity of the affiliate’s argument. If he had, he surely would not have dared to respond in the manner he did.

A quick, ten minute internet search is all it took to unearth the links, concerning Rite Aid, found below. You’ll find cases of racial and religious discrimination, consumer fraud,  disability discrimination, improper treatment of workers, unpaid overtime and even Rite Aid’s attempt to bully a terminally-ill, 77 year old Korean War Veteran over some forgotten sardines.

• The Rite Aid Sucks Blog
• Some Less-Than-Stellar Reviews of Rite Aid
• Rite Aid and NYPD Embarrass and Arrest Innocent Woman
• War Vet Sued by Rite Aid Over Misunderstanding
• Rite Aid Religious Discrimination Suit (for whatever reason, you may need to click this link more than once)
• Rite Aid Disability Discrimination Suit
• Consumer Fraud One
• Rite Aid Tries to Avoid Paying Overtime
• Consumer Fraud Two
• Rite Aid Employee Awarded More Than $8 Million for Wrongful Termination
• Rite Aid Fails to Protect Patient Info
• Rite Aid Racial Discrimination (for whatever reason, you may need to click this link more than once)

This list could go on and on, but we at Broken Hartz think the point has been made. Sorry, Rite Aid Senior Counsel. It seems like you really screwed up this one.

Maybe you should stick to riding your ATV.

We may get into Rite Aid more in the future, and will also be updating previous posts to mention Rite Aid specifically, but we’ll get back to Hartz in our next post.

Now we’re ready to tackle a brazen lie Hartz makes in their infamous Executive Summary and Answers to Questions. Page 5, Paragraph 1, Sentence 3:

“Frontline® and Advantage® are NOT prescription products nor are they registered with the FDA.”

This is inaccurate, but first additional information and clarification is necessary.

Prior to our Broken Hartz affiliates’ email to the distributor involved in this case Rite Aid Corporation, on 1/21/12, they had found some resources citing Frontline as being FDA approved. We are unable to substantiate Frontline’s FDA status. Since the product recommended by the Broken Hartz affiliates’ Vet was Advantage, we see no harm in removing Frontline from the equation.

Moving on, we have seen this argument from Hartz before. They try to confuse the public, using the fact not all Advantage products are FDA approved. We will not bother listing every product in the Advantage family that has received the distinction of being FDA approved to point out the false nature of Hartz’ statement, but it’s appropriate to list:

ADVANTAGE MULTI for Cats: NADA 141-254 (Active Ingredients: imidacloprid and moxidectin)
– Approval Document

ADVANTAGE MULTI for Dogs: NADA 141-251 (Active Ingredients: imidacloprid and moxidectin)
– Approval Document

This is a screen capture from the FDA’s PowerPoint titled “What You Need to Know: Approved vs. Unapproved Animal Drugs”.

Actually, Advantage isn’t the only flea control product line to have FDA approved products. Here are some more examples of FDA approved flea control products:

Sentinel Flavor Tabs and Capstar Flea Management System: NADA 141-204 (Active ingredients: nitepyram, lufenuron and milbemycin oxime)

Pro-Spot Solution: NADA 132-789 (Active Ingredient: Fenthion)

Program Suspension: NADA 141-026 (Active Ingredient: Lufenron)

Revolution: NADA 141-152 (Active Ingredient:Selamectin)

These FDA approved products are indicated for the treatment of flea infestations and are administered in an identical procedure to Hartz spot-on products.

As it turns out, Hartz was being modest! They refrained from mentioning they have a flea control product on the FDA website, too:

Hartz Flea Control Capsules AKA Zodiac Fleatrol Caps: NADA 141-162 (Active Ingredient:S-methoprene)

Additionally, the Hartz product has a distinction on its page that none of the others do:

“This product Voluntarily Withdrawn By Sponsor”

We guess there was a problem. It’s odd, because as an (s-)methoprene only product, this wouldn’t make sense unless, of course, there’s something questionable in the “secret sauce”.

These products and more can be found by searching the Animal Drugs portion of the FDA’s website.

Additionally, Hartz seems to be confused about the finer points of FDA terminology. “Registered with the FDA” does not mean the same thing as “Approved by the FDA”. Many products are “registered” with the FDA, while not all receive approval.

Again, the above linked products, with one notable exception, are approved by the FDA. Furthermore, these products have been FDA approved for years.

More information from the FDA regarding vital differences between FDA-Approved and Unapproved Animal Drugs can be found here.

Please Note: No members of Broken Hartz are veterinarians. Please talk to your Vet before using any product on your animal(s).

More to come.

Within this document, Hartz claims (on four separate occasions) the information used to create the charts found in their “Executive Summary” to represent all adverse reactions reported to the EPA in 2008.

This is false.

The report responsible for Figures 3 and 1 in Hartz’ “Executive Summary”, was created by Dr. Charles T. Gaskins (more on him in another post), using information from Hartz, gathered from the EPA (using FOIA), spanning July 1, 2006 – June 30, 2008. Dr. Gaskins’ “independent statistical analysis” can be found here. (If this or any other links are broken, please comment and let us know.)

Continuing, the EPA is quite clear in pointing out it would be inappropriate to try and extrapolate absolute numbers of incidents among the different spot-on products in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010:

(EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010, Page 4, Paragraph 3)

“A comparison of the absolute numbers of incidents among the different spot-on products in this report is not appropriate. This is because some products may have more incidents than other products because more of that product is sold and because incident information is voluntarily submitted by pet owners, with varying levels of detailed information, and routine reporting is sometimes lacking. The incidents have not been verified and may have causes other than exposure to the pesticide.”

This same caution is given, with greater emphasis and detail, on page 12 of the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010 as well as other places. Despite this caution, Hartz has seen fit to make a comparison of the absolute numbers of incidents among the different spot-on products in attempt to show themselves as being the safest, even though a true analysis of these reports proves Hartz to be the worst by far.

Additionally, in this document, Hartz continually tries to focus attention on (s)-Methoprene.

Broken Hartz is not interested with (s)-Methoprene, although we’re sure Hartz wishes we were. Rather, we are interested in the inert, unlisted ingredients. So is the EPA:

(EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010, Page 16, Paragraph 2, Sentences 1-3)

“Incidents were reported for all products, including two products containing s-methoprene as the sole active ingredient. Companion animal safety studies were not required for these products because s-methoprene, which is an insect growth regulator, is of low toxicity to mammals. There are concerns for the potential toxicity of a formulant ingredient being responsible for toxicity of these products in cats.”

While a comparison of the absolute numbers of incidents among the different spot-on products in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010 is not appropriate, we have found legitimate methods for interpreting the data compiled by the EPA.

We accessed and analyzed the individual reports for every product listed in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010.

The EPA’s “DATA EVALUATION RECORD FOR ENHANCED SPOT-ON REPORTING CAT PRODUCT”, concerning EPA registration numbers 2724-504 (Wellmark), 2724-504-270 (Farnam) and 2724-504-2596 (Hartz) reveals some intriguing information in support of an inert ingredient problem in the Hartz product. These three products are identical in terms of active ingredients, varying only in the contents of these products’ inert ingredients.

This chart reflects adverse events that resulted in deaths and major incidents from dermal exposures only (i.e. proper use).

This next chart is another valid way to use the data gathered by the EPA through their review of pet spot-on incidents.

All products associated with only one chemical class were included in this chart. Since manufacturer specifics have been removed, sales data becomes irrelevant. The data included accurately represents all deaths, resulting from proper use; that can be uniquely attributed to a specific chemical class.

The previous chart is important because it shows Insect Growth Regulators [(s)-methoprene and pyriproxyfen] to be the primary culprits for death from products with only one active ingredient even though insect growth regulators are widely accepted to be non-toxic to mammalian species. Again, this suggests the real problem is with the inert, proprietary ingredients found in these products.

Although this is not the case for the other Hartz products in the EPA Public Advisory published in March 2010, the (s)-Methoprene product (2596-147) was exempt from having to conduct Companion Animal Safety studies, even though previous Companion Animal Safety studies for these products were deemed unacceptable by the EPA.

We’ll have more fun with charts in a future post. Stay tuned.

The seven page document is filled with bold lies and makes for very interesting reading, to say the least. We plan to share more of this document in future posts but, today, we will address this particular section:

 “Unfortunatley [sic], there is a lot of misinformation on the internet about flea and tick products. Hartz is working constantly to offer factual information about flea and tick products, including a [sic] education tab on our Facebook page that will link you directly to the EPA website for accurate, independent information.”

We agree with Hartz. There is a lot of “misinformation on the internet”, however, we feel the source of misinformation comes from them, not the public.

Hartz has no interest in providing factual information, which brings us to Hartz.com’s Press Releases page:

At the start of our investigation, a couple of weeks ago, this page featured links to twelve different press releases. We clicked through every press release link and found three of the twelve links did not work.

One broken link was to an article called “Nature’s Collection Fundraiser” and the other two non-functioning links were, conveniently enough, “Hartz recalls Naturals® beef treats” and “EPA Flea & Tick Topical Advisory Update”.

Here is the complete list of Press Release links as well as screenshots for reference. You’ll notice the “Nature’s Collection Fundraiser” link works although, until today (2/18/12) and evidenced by our screenshot, this was not the case:

Before going into the next portion, we at Broken Hartz wish to mention we have more than twenty-five years combined experience in web design.

Upon discovering these “broken links”, we decided to research the cause of the malfunctions. To do this, we analyzed the source data for the Hartz.com Press Releases page. You may need to click on the image below to zoom in and get a better look:

The picture above shows the “links” portion of the markup from Hartz’ Press Releases page. These links are used to direct users to the appropriate press release when clicked. A quick review of the links portion of the page showed the three broken links had no defects in the way they had been written. This is further proven by the fact the above “Nature’s Collection Fundraiser” link now works, even though its coding has not changed from the time of our investigation. The point is: there is nothing wrong with these links. They are intentionally broken and Broken Hartz can prove it.

We suspected the “Nature’s Collection Fundraiser” link “error” was planted so it would not be as blatantly obvious that Hartz was hiding the more unsavory press releases from the public’s eye, so we started there. We put our knowledge of how the internet works to use and were able to find a version of the missing “Nature’s Collection Fundraiser” press release on an alternate version of the Hartz.com website:

Now that we had found this press release, it was time to move on to the others. We tried many different ways to locate the missing “Hartz recalls Naturals® beef treats” but were unsuccessful. That wasn’t the case when it came to the “EPA Flea & Tick Topical Advisory Update” press release, however:

Here is a zoomed in view of this very interesting press release:

Hartz considers consumers to be "dummies". This must be why they thought "dummy text" would be appropriate for this press release.

The discovery of this bogus article speaks volumes. Hartz clearly has no intention of offering factual information about flea and tick products.

Actually, since compiling this information, we have been checking Hartz’ Press Releases page to see if this truly was intentional or an honest mistake. Today (February 18, 2012), more than two weeks from us noticing these “errors”, Hartz has finally paid some attention to its Press Releases page.

They did not add a new release. They fixed the “Nature’s Collection Fundraiser” link, but did not bother to fix the “EPA Flea & Tick Topical Advisory” link and saw fit to remove the “Hartz recalls Naturals® beef treats” link all together, further proving their commitment to denial.

Much more to come.

The suit was filed five months after one of the listed plaintiffs, Mr. David Wilgus, stated in a comment posted on HartzVictims.org he was forced to euthanize his 6-year-old Husky, two days after applying Hartz flea and tick drops to his dog. He and his partner also acquired an $800.00 veterinary bill.

Understandably outraged by the loss of his beloved pet and Wal-Mart’s failure to take any responsibility by upholding their satisfaction guarantee, Wilgus wrote on the back of his car windshield “Hartz and Wal-Mart Killed My Dog”.

We couldn’t agree more. We highly doubt this was Wal-Mart’s first time hearing complaints about Hartz and for Wal-Mart to dismiss this matter is negligent and unconscionable.

Broken Hartz wishes Mr. Wilgus and his partner the best. We offer any assistance we can provide in this matter.

We also thank them for taking the very important step of holding the distributor accountable. All too often these culpable middle-men skirt responsibility while raking in the profits.

The car windshield message is fantastic, but we thought Mr. Wilgus and our constituents may also want to print and distribute this flyer. We realize his pet was a dog, but we had already created the graphic for a different incident and think the kitten gets the point across regardless.

Would you like us to personalize a protest flyer for you? We’d love to! Send us the details of your case and include the distributor, product name and EPA registration number, if possible. Let’s take these products off the shelves together.

Email us at brokenhartzpets@gmail.com.

Hartz Mountain Corporation is currently seeking a new Manager of Scientific Affairs/Resident Veterinarian/PR Spokesperson. This position has been noticeably held by Dr. Melinda Fernyhough. It is unclear as to whether the good doctor is staying with the corporation, striking out on her own or if she’s been let go for failure to deceive the public as Hartz had hoped.

We here at Broken Hartz think our readers would be great for the job! Think you don’t have enough experience? That didn’t stop Dr. Melinda!

Those who wish to apply for this job, may apply here.