Over four years – August 12, 2018 through August 7, 2022 – $52,424,600,000.00 worth of dry, canned, and refrigerated/frozen pet food sold in the US. (We do not have data as to how many pounds of pet food was sold.)
During the same four-year time frame – 81,676,724 pounds of dry, canned and refrigerated/frozen pet foods were recalled.
We collected the pounds recalled data from the FDA Enforcement Reports webpages. We collected the sales data from four years of PetFoodProcessing.net State of the US Pet Food and Treat Industry posts from 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
With sales – over this 4-year time frame:
- Dry pet foods were 61% of all sales.
- Canned pet foods were 35% of all sales.
- Refrigerated/Frozen pet foods 3.6% of all sales.
With recalls – over this 4-year time frame:
- Dry pet foods were 84% of all recalls.
- Canned pet foods were 14% of all recalls
- Refrigerated/Frozen pet foods were 2.9% of all recalls.
During this 4-year time frame, recalls were issued for only 4 different causes (in order of highest to lowest pounds recalled): aflatoxin, excess vitamins/minerals, pathogenic bacteria, and foreign objects.
- Aflatoxin: 60,378,524 pounds
- Excess vitamins/minerals (mainly excess vitamin D): 12,277,322 pounds
- Pathogenic bacteria: 9,007,769 pounds
- Foreign objects: 23,109 pounds
Excess vitamin D recalls alone during this time frame were 11,835,487 pounds.
In years past when we’ve examined recall data, pathogenic bacteria has always been the leading cause of recalls. During this 4-year time frame we see something very different. The shift of leading cause could be due to less monitoring by authorities of the industry due to COVID limitations. Less monitoring of the industry during covid could have also led to years when one style of pet food had zero pounds recalled, such as…
- 805,607 pounds of dry pet foods were recalled during the 8/2018 – 8/2019 year.
- Zero pounds of dry pet foods were recalled during 8/2019 – 8/2020 year.
- 67,950,343 pounds of dry pet foods were recalled during the 8/2020 – 8/2021 year.
- Zero pounds of dry pet foods were recalled during the 8/2021 – 8/2022 year.
Canned pet foods experienced recalls in 3 of the 4-year time frames, refrigerated/frozen pet foods experienced recalls in all 4 years.
The 3 manufacturers with the most pounds recalled were:
- Midwestern Pet Food (dry foods, aflatoxin and pathogenic bacteria) – 64,811,419 pounds
- Hill’s Pet Food (canned foods – excess vitamin D) – 10,839,015 pounds
- Sunshine Mills (dry foods, aflatoxin and pathogenic bacteria) – 2,882,531 pounds
Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
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LS
February 23, 2023 at 5:05 pm
Midwestern Pet Foods should be shut down. It’s doubly sickening that they present themselves as making premium food and as ecologically sustainable. There is no substitute for real investigative journalism; you can’t trust the image the companies project. Thank you for the work you do.
T Allen
February 25, 2023 at 7:26 am
If raw human grade poultry, sold for people in grocery stores, was subject to the same testing as refrigerated/frozen pet food you would see the same percentage of recalls, if not more. The only reason it’s not done is because there are warnings everywhere to cook all meat and poultry thoroughly before eating and wash hands and surfaces after touching raw products. Thanks Susan, that’s a lot of recalls!