• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, March 17, 2009 11:30 AM

Tyson Foods is expected to announce today that it is investing millions of dollars for a minority stake in Freshpet, a Secaucus, N.J., company that is rolling out refrigerated dog food to stores such as Kroger, Supervalu and PetSmart, Scott Kilman reports.

Freshpet's executives -- a collection of former Meow Mix managers -- are trying to make dog food look, smell and taste as much like human food as possible. "Everyone talks about the humanization of pets," says Scott Morris, Freshpet marketing vp. "But pet food looks the same as it did 30 years ago."

Jeff Webster, a Tyson group vp, says he expects refrigerated pet food to grow into a $500 million sales category within five years. Freshpet, which started operations in 2006, generated less than $100 million in 2008 revenue.

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