As far as Iams and Science Diet - advertising.
They’ve succeeded at creating and selling a “brand”.

Any of these manufacturers that basically use a chemical cuisine model - even if they use ingredients slightly better than the worse - are putting out “fast food” for pets.
And not to place all the blame on them - that’s what people choose to buy. Which in most cases goes back to education… people just don’t know about nutrition.

A couple months back there was a great article in the San Francisco Chronicle about “real food for dogs”.
I would absolutely give that a read as it’s very educational and eye opening and contains a few links for other great resources.
Again, once folks have a better understanding they’re likely to make different choices. People just don’t know.
Here it is: Your Whole Pet

I would also spend some time on the Pet Connection Blog reading through dog and cat food topics. This is a site run by a group of folks one of whom is a vet.
Right now they seem to be source central for this tainted food disaster, but I had read a bunch of good posts a couple months ago about home made food vs store bought food.

They also have a fantastic list of brands NOT recalled. It includes info about ingredients and who the manufacturer is.
Get that here -> Pet Food list.
I would absolutely not buy any brand that gets ingredients from Menu Foods.

And again, the Pitcairns book is good and has some recipes for food.

With our dog, we make a batch at a time that lasts about 8 days.
We use organic oatmeal, blenderize a variety of veggies - typically from our garden, add in a few supplements and use raw organic turkey.
I portion out the batch into one meal containers and pile them in the freezer, defrosting them as needed.

It sounds like a lot of work. And it definitely is more work than using the store bought stuff. But I don’t think it’s as much work as it sounds.

Our kitties we just got a couple months ago from a rescue organization. There were getting Science Diet dry. We switched them over to a better dry food right away and that didn’t take long. Then we started giving them raw organic chicken and some dry food. And we were in the process of migrating them completely to homemade food when this tainted food episode erupted.

As with the food you choose for yourself and your family, it’s important to know what your getting. It’s also important to know what you actually need nutritionally. Dogs are different than humans and cats are different than dogs.

Since the recall I’ve been feeding my animals meat like chicken and steak and hamburger, along with pasta. Yesterday, I bought all new products and treats, mostly the CSFTDLS Dog and Cat Food and a few various brands of treats.