Am I Losing the Kibble Lottery?

UPDATE:  After posting this, I contacted Blue about the problem, explained that although I didn't have the bag because I had emptied the food into a bin and thrown the bag away, I did have photos and plenty of food to send them if they were interested.  I received a response asking for the codes off the bag.  I reiterated the above and haven't heard anything further.  Except today they sent me an announcement about a pet photo contest.  Tuh.

ORIGINAL POST:

I have not been a regular kibble buyer in recent years since I feed a homemade diet - either wholly or partially. So it makes me feel particularly unlucky to have bought two different brands of food recently that contain what appears to be grain chaff sticking out the kibble. Last month, it was California Natural Herring and Sweet Potato. I returned a sample of the food to the vendor and that sample was determined by Natura (manufacturer of California Natural) to contain barley chaff.

This month, it's Blue Puppy Food - Chicken and Rice. I have not yet contacted the manufacturer about the bits sticking out the kibble but they do look similar to the grain chaff I observed in the California Natural.


What bothers me is this: when a grain ingredient is listed on a dog food label, such as barley or oats, the image that comes to my mind is the part of the grain that a human would eat for breakfast - not the entire grain, including the chaff. If (at least some) pet food companies are using the entire grain (stems, stalks, what-have-you), they should make that clear to consumers. For one thing, the advertising leads us to believe the ingredients are real food, like what we might prepare ourselves at home. For another, some parts of the grain are going to be indigestible - just filler basically - and I'd like to know if I'm paying for filler. And lastly, the chaff clearly does not grind down into dust which is why I find the bits sticking out the kibble. When I imagine these pokey bits moving through the intestines of my 10 pound Chihuahua mix - eek.

So am I just unlucky or is having chaff sticking out the kibble the current trend?