Total Recall: Pet Foods Pulled for Salmonella, Plastics

What is the hottest trend at this week's Global Pet Expo? It just might be recalled pet food products.

Global, the largest pet trade show in the U.S., is the traditional launching pad of new pet products into all channels of the pet trade: mass, supermarkets, pet specialty, distributors, etc.  Pet product makers time their product development cycles to ensure they can make a promotional splash in Orlando.

The last thing these companies want to deal with is a product recall, yet at least four companies representing at least 10 brands have recalled products due to possible Salmonella contamination this week alone since set-up day for the big trade show.

And Nature’s Variety recalled one batch of its Instinct pet food last Friday due to pieces of clear plastic being found in some bags.

Add to these the recalls and product withdrawals that occurred last month due to illegal antibiotic residues detected in Chinese chicken jerky pet treats marketed by Nestlé Purina and Del Monte, Hartz, and Publix and Cadet and you have a sizable trend.

I shudder to think how many more products may be recalled tomorrow (Friday) due to Salmonella concerns after the show ends and most national media has gone home for the weekend. Many companies opt to release bad news late on Fridays in an effort to go unnoticed, and I certainly understand the desire not to be the talk of the industry’s biggest show for all the wrong reasons. 

So the companies that recalled their pet food products thus far this week due to Salmonella concerns deserve credit for acting responsibly and decisively in withdrawing the potentially problematic products. And it bears remembering that most companies that issue voluntary recalls of their products are acting responsibly and demonstrating that the pet food safety system, while not perfect, works well. And I hope the companies involved in any recall study the failures and take steps to prevent future breakdowns.

The Honest Kitchen of San Diego did just that in what is a textbook example of how to issue a recall. Unlike most salmonella-related pet food recalls, meat was not the contaminated ingredient in this case. Dried parsley was…potentially.

Lucy Postins
(image available at TheHonest Kitchen.com)

“While our quality control tests did not find evidence of Salmonella in any of our finished products, we are accountable for everything we make, and are taking precautionary action to ensure the safety and integrity of our products,” said Lucy Postins, company founder and CEO.

The company issued a press release that clearly illustrated how to identify an affected product, a sincere letter from Postins on its website, and a full FAQ page to address the issue. Each of those resources outlined steps the company planned to take to minimize chances of this happening again. Those steps include steaming all dehydrated leafy greens used in its products as an additional process to eliminate potential pathogens, conducting additional tests on leafy greens when they arrive at the Honest Kitchen’s manufacturing facility, and severing its relationship with the supplier that provided the potentially contaminated parsley.

Parsley also played a role in another of this week’s recalls: Kaytee Products’ recall of 17 SKUs of bird treats and greens. http://www.kaytee.com/assets/021/41844.pdf  Kaytee had received potentially contaminated parsley flakes from Specialty Commodities Inc. None of the affected Kaytee products have yet tested positive for Salmonella, but the company pulled the product due to the potential issue. (The big concern with Salmonella in pet products is the potential of human illness from handling contaminated product.)

This week’s other recalls included Natur-Vet, which recalled NaturPet and Natur-Vet chicken jerky treats http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm340468.htm because its U.S. supplier (not Chinese) informed the company of possible Salmonella contamination at the processing plant. Again, none of the recalled products had tested positive for Salmonella.

This week’s final recall, and its biggest, was Kasel Associated Industries recall of all dog treats http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm340337.htm made at its Denver, Colo., facility over a five-month period from April 20, 2012, until September 19, 2012. This recall affected 48 SKUs across six brands: Petco, Boots & Barkley (Target brand),  Bixbi, Nature’s Deli, Colorado Naturals, and Best Bully Stick.

Items recalled include U.S.-sourced chicken jerky treats, pig ears and snouts, beef bully sticks and femur bones, pork jerky products, salmon jerky and lamb jerky. Kasel reports it has had no reports of pet or human illnesses associated with the recalled products.

Unfortunately, too many of these companies’ competitors are no doubt exploiting their misfortune, some even boasting that they’ve never had a product recall.  Certainly some of this week’s recalled brands had made similar claims. But I suspect that a pet food company that has never recalled any of their products for any reason may be very lucky or simply not adequately testing their products—probably both.