A Pet Project for the Organically Inclined

May 5, 2008

For the holistic consumer seeking relief from depression, irritability or anxiety, Lisa deLima often suggests Bach Flower Essences. Food allergies? Try herbal supplements, kelp or brewer's yeast. For the customer with the sweet tooth, there's organic yogurt in the frozen food section.

Her own freezer is stocked with individual servings of ground turkey and other meats, so after a long day, "I can just go home, thaw it, plop it on a plate and not have to make anything. It's actually a godsend for somebody like me."

Her cats seem to like it, too.

Last week, DeLima's boss opened Mighty Healthy Pet in a College Park strip mall, joining a small but growing number of holistic and organic pet food stores in the region. A year ago, U.S. organic animal-food sales rose after hundreds of pets were sickened or killed by tainted pet food. Though sales eventually eased off, the industry thinking is that heightened awareness of what goes into pet food will bring new buyers.

"Our customers' experiences with their own dietary and lifestyle changes make them realize the same ideas are applicable to pets as well," said Alyssa deButts, regional wellness manager, who chooses the store's products. "Dogs and cats don't live as long, and so their bodies will show the effects of bad foods and ingredients in a few years. It accumulates faster."

Mighty Healthy Pet is the latest health-food store launched by Prince George's County resident Scott Nash. He started a mail order/delivery company 21 years ago from the garage of his mother's Beltsville home, selling human health foods and other products. Today, My Organic Market (known as MOM's) has five stores in Maryland and Virginia. When a space opened up in the strip mall where MOM's College Park store is located, Nash decided to test the market for a wider selection of organic pet food and supplies.

Mighty Healthy Pet sells edibles free of such ingredients as slaughterhouse discards, which can include feathers, beaks and entrails, or discarded oils from the grease traps of restaurants that are sprayed on pet food to make it more enticing to animals.

MOM's and now Mighty Healthy Pet store shelves are stocked with such products as Kitty Caviar (dried bonito fish flakes), raw venison dinners and a selection of cat litter made from wheat, pine, recycled paper, wood chips and peas.

Mighty Healthy Pet sells products with minimal packaging and shies away from petroleum-based products. It recycles 70 percent of its own waste and buys electricity from producers that use wind power.

All of which may be a little esoteric for such consumers as Ashley Lambert's Jack Russell terrier, Sassy, who loves the peanut-butter-and-banana yogurt cups.

"She starts to shake when she sees it coming out of the freezer," said Lambert, manager of the new pet store. "That's definitely one of her favorites."

-- Anita Huslin