"natural" claims proceed because reasonable consumers can know little about pet food

Goetz v. Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, LLC, 2025 WL 692426, No. 24-CV-04799 (JPO) (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 3, 2025)

Plaintiffs alleged violations of Sections 349 and 350 of the New York General Business Law and breach of warranty based on defendants’ allegedly false claims that their products were “natural” rather than synthetic. The court denied a motion to dismiss.

Defendants’ products use the label “natural food” in varying formats and sizes, alongside the phrase “with added vitamins, minerals & taurine.” Plaintiffs identified forty-seven products so labeled yet containing ingredients classified as synthetic by the FDA. The labels disclose “added vitamins, minerals & taurine,” but plaintiffs alleged that “an ordinary person would understand [this] claim to mean that the added vitamins, minerals and/or taurine are natural as well.”

The court applied the reasonable consumer standard, noting that determining reasonableness as a matter of law is appropriate only where a plaintiff’s claims are “patently implausible or unrealistic.” The requirement used by the Second Circuit that a “significant portion” of consumers be likely to be deceived “does not impose a particularly onerous burden on Plaintiffs.” The court quoted the Second Circuit’s 2008 affirmation that New York’s consumer protection laws are “meant to take into account the impact of allegedly deceptive statements on the ‘vast multitude which the statutes were enacted to safeguard—including the ignorant, the unthinking and the credulous who, in making purchases, do not stop to analyze but are governed by appearances and general impressions.’ ” City of New York v. Smokes-Spirits.com, Inc., 541 F.3d 425 (2d Cir. 2008), rev’d on other grounds sub nom. Hemi Grp., LLC v. City of New York, 559 U.S. 1 (2010) (quoting Guggenheimer v. Ginzburg, 43 N.Y.2d 268, 273 (1977). Reasonable consumers can be “less astute than average.”

“It is not unreasonable as a matter of law for a consumer to expect that a product labeled ‘natural’ to contain only natural, and not synthetic ingredients.” That was true even though product labels said only “natural” and not “100%,” “solely,” “exclusively,” or “only” “natural.”

Defendants also argued that plaintiffs failed to plead that the ingredients were actually synthetic.

But the complaint identified at least some “synthetic ingredients,” including glycerin, xanthan gum, and menadione sodium bisulfate complex. Although FDA definitions of “synthetic” are not binding, they were “persuasive evidence” of what a reasonable consumer might consider to be “synthetic” as opposed to “natural.” Cases involving ingredients with both natural and synthetic forms were inapposite. “[A]t least some of the ingredients in Defendants’ products are named in their synthetic forms—for example, ‘menadione sodium bisulfate complex’ rather than the more generic ‘vitamin K.’” True, some of the other ingredients can occur naturally, and it was not enough to allege that “citric acid” must be synthetic simply because “[m]ore than 90 percent of commercially produced citric acid … is manufactured through a processed derivative of black mold.” However, given the allegations of unequivocally synthetic ingredients, “it is not too far a leap to infer that, because Defendants are willing to use synthetic forms of some vitamins and minerals, they are more likely to use the synthetic forms of others, particularly in light of widespread commercial practice.”

Nor did the many possible meanings of “natural” defeat the claim. “[T]he mere fact that ‘the term’s use is confusing to consumers’ does not prevent it from being used deceptively.” Also, defendants didn’t offer a single definition of “natural” that their products did satisfy. “The one definition they provide— ‘occurring in conformity with the ordinary course of nature’—is at least plausibly violated by the inclusion of synthetic, lab-created vitamin and mineral analogues.” The court commented that “it is unclear what purpose including ‘natural’ on their packaging would serve if not to indicate a lack of unnatural ingredients or components.”

Nor was it unreasonable for any consumer to believe that pet food could truly be “natural,” despite defendants’ argument that packaged pet food has to be processed. “[I]t is not clear why pet food—like some shelf-stable human food—cannot be made without the addition of synthetic (as opposed to naturally occurring) vitamins. It is also far from clear that the ordinary reasonable consumer is intimately familiar with the nature of the pet food industry and its processing norms.”

Likewise, the court rejected defendants’ argument that any ambiguity could be cleared up by the ingredient panel. “The Court is unpersuaded that all reasonable consumers should know what ‘menadione sodium bisulfate complex’ (synthetic vitamin K) is, for example. This is especially true given that the naturally occurring forms of the same vitamins and minerals have similarly difficult-to-pronounce names, like ‘phylloquinone’ (one of two forms of naturally occurring vitamin K).” Moreover, even if the list of ingredients were intelligible to an ordinary shopper, “a reasonable consumer should not be expected to consult the Nutrition Facts panel on the side of the box to correct misleading information set forth in large bold type on the front of the box.”

The express warranty claim also survived, for the same reason. And the court declined to dismiss claims as to unpurchased goods, since the products that plaintiffs did buy were sufficiently similar to those SKUs. “All are types of wet and dry pet food that are labeled ‘natural,’ and each contains a mix of synthetic ingredients. That is enough.” Variations in the prominence of “natural” and its corresponding potential to mislead created fact issues for discovery.