July 11, 2000 This is an open letter to everyone on the FML and may be copied and downloaded to other ferret owners and enthusiasts without changes. Recently, we at Performance Foods, Inc., encountered a problem with the quality control of our products. We immediately pulled all questionable product from our distribution chain as we did not feel this product met our rigid standards. We also needed to research the problem to identify what had happened as we had never encountered this before. To isolate the problem we needed to check every supplier, plant production techniques, make extensive lab analyses and many other smaller details. While we were unhappy about not having product available to you, our customer, and to your pet ferrets, we were not willing to jeopardize our quality standards just to place product on the shelf. Our commitment has always been the most nutritionally complete and balanced ferret food available to you, with no exceptions! We now have identified the problemand have corrected it to meet our stringent company standards. Dr. Willard will be at the plant for the next production run. We have orders from our distributors, which will be filled as soon as new product is manufactured. We anticipate that you should see both Totally Ferret(r) products in your retail outlet by the last week of July. While we know this was inconvenient to you and you cannot stop feeding your ferrets, we also know you appreciate the extra steps we have taken to protect your fuzzies. We respectfully apologize for the inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your personal concern to both our situation and to us. It helped us more than you will ever know. May we again extend our gratitude to the best pet owners in the world---ferret people! Sincerely, Dr. Tom and Patricia Willard and our entire Staff, makers of Totally Ferret=AE /pbk [Posted in FML issue 3113]