Swiss Retailer Backtracks on Bull's Penis Dog Snack

Swiss supermarket giant Migros has backtracked on a decision to stick a no-nonsense "bull's penis" label on a brand of dog chews, it said Tuesday.

While the dog snack is made from bull penises, it was previously tagged with a fig-leaf label identifying the product as "bull nerves".

Migros spokeswoman Martina Bosshard told Agence France Presse that the retailer faced negative feedback from customers when it switched to the franker, and more accurate, label.

Confirming a report in Swiss daily 20 minutes, Bosshard said Migros decided to go back to the less explicit labelling, despite the fact that "no one returned" products with the bull penises label.

The "Max" brand chews, which feature a cute beagle on the packet, are popular among dog owners in Switzerland.

The packets pitch the snacks as "100-percent natural" and a "treat to chew on with pleasure for a long time".

As with other products in multilingual Switzerland, all the wording on the packets is in German, French and Italian.

In what may have been a nod to different cultural norms between the three language regions, the chews' "beef nerves" name remained unchanged in German, which is spoken by a majority of Swiss.

The penis label, however, was used in French and Italian.

Bosshard said that the penis-branded packets would not be withdrawn, but that stocks would run out naturally by December, while all new chews would be produced under a "nerves" label.

"It's not the product that's changed, but just the packaging, at the end of the day," she said.