Chestnut Vale Agway should not be in horse feed business as they clearly dont care whatsoever about horse health or integrity of horse feed. Susan Romero, owner of Chestnut Vale Feed Agway, nor any of her reps, never informed us about any of the several Purina recalls (Equine Senior and Country Acres 12% Pellets, we still have some of the affected bags in our posession-Shaumburg and Harrisburg plants), despite her contractural responsibilty to do so, and despite the fact we were long term customers in good standing (till we found out about recalls, and did not want to pay for bad feed, which ultimately we did pay for and then some-they are truly soundrels). My Appendix gelding got critically ill likely due to the aflatoxins in the Equine Senior and Country Acres Pellets they sold us, requiring 6 weeks of intensive care at UPenn New Bolton (he has LMND-nerve damage due to the afloatoxins affecting his nervous system). Teh recalled batches are the ones we still have in our loft. I incurred 15k worth of vet bills, and my
horse will never be the same, requiring vet treatment for this disease
the rest of his life. I found out from my vet about the Purina recalls
and Chestnut Vale Agway never informed us ever.in fact, during small
claims court proceedings, she denied (despite her website, and her
letterhead) even being a part of Agway. I dismissed the small claims proceedings on the fact that this required a larger forum (I plan on making a donation to Cornell Equine Research).
They have a contratual obligation with Purina to post all recalls and inform their customers. Purina does not know who buys their feed, they send it to the dealer, who sells it to their local customers. ChestnutVale Agway is irresponsible and deceitful and should not be allowed to have anything to do with animals. They never even appologized for not informing us about the recall or about my horse being sick. They never informed anyone about the purina horse feed recalls, in any way. She has changed her story multiple times. I tried to settle this with them directly, through small claims, offered them various ways of trying to make this right, but now I am going to sue them in a larger arena, and include Purina and Agway in the suit, so this does not happen to anyone else. They will have to be mandated to inform every customer in writing return receipt that there are recalls of their feed. Additionally FDA is interested to know that the voluntary recalls (when the FDA says they must recall a product and the company sends notice out before the FDA does-nothing voluntary about it really!) were not carried out to those buying and using the feed. There were several notices in the past year but unless you looked for them on purinas website (unless you have a problem you dont usually go to the website) you would never know about them. But because a smaller anount of people have horses than dogs it does not garner the attention of the mass media about each and every recall.
Deal with a reputable dealer who will take your trust as a customer seriously. Chestnut Vale Agway will do anything to avoid this issue, and try to put the blame on their customers, I wonder how many other horses got critically ill or worse due to her negligence.
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