Ralston Purina's Slogans & Taglines

Ralston Purina Company was founded in 1894 in St. Louis, Missouri, by William H. Danforth as the Robinson-Danforth Commission Company, a horse and mule feed business. The company adopted the name Ralston Purina in 1902, coining "Purina" from its slogan "Where purity is paramount" and introducing the iconic red-and-white checkerboard logo. Originally focused on animal feed marketed under the "Chow" brand—spanning Horse Chow, Dog Chow, and Cat Chow—the company expanded into human foods with Ralston cereals and Chex. Its pivotal shift to pet nutrition began in the 1950s with the invention of extruded kibble, making it the world's largest producer of dry pet foods by the 1980s. After divesting its animal feed and human food divisions in the 1980s and 1990s, Ralston Purina merged with Nestlé's Friskies division on December 12, 2001, to form Nestlé Purina PetCare. Its slogan evolution traced a path from the foundational "Where purity is paramount" to the practical "Chow" nomenclature that defined a century of animal nutrition.