Pathogenic bacteria is #1 cause of recalls. The #2 cause is going to surprise you (not in a good way).
Since 2012, more than 400,621,516 lbs of pet food has been recalled. The leading cause of these pet food recalls was pathogenic bacteria (Salmonella, Listeria, E.coli), resulting in 154,064,611 lbs of pet food recalled.
When a pet food is recalled, a press release of that recall is posted on the FDA website alerting the public. As example, below is a screen shot image of a recall notice from 2012 from Diamond Pet Food.
The recall notice includes the cause of the recall, lists the various brand names involved and in this case discloses that all ‘best-before’ dates from December 9, 2012 to April 7, 2013 are being recalled.
While recall notices give information about the recalled pet food, other pages on the FDA website – Enforcement Reports – tell us how many pounds of pet food were recalled.
Below is the Enforcement Report for just one of the pet foods involved in the above recall – Taste of the Wild pet food:
Notice under “Product Details, Product Quantity” – this report states approximately “10,275,000 lbs” of pet food were recalled. One recall, one brand – more than ten million pounds of pet food.
Totaling all of the Enforcement Reports that provided ‘Product Quantity’ information on the FDA website (2012 to 2019), the breakdown of pet food recalls looks like this (“Other” includes Freeze-Dried, cooked sold frozen, and toppers):
Kibble and treats made up about 80% of the total pounds of products recalled.
The top four causes of recalls based on pounds – Salmonella/Listeria/E.coli, Elevated Vitamin D, Unapproved antibiotics, and Pentobarbital – breaks down like this:
About 40% of the total pounds of pet foods recalled since 2012 were for Salmonella, Listeria and/or E.coli. No great surprise there.
More than 1 million pounds of pet foods were recalled for excess Vitamin D (there is no Enforcement Report as of the publishing of this post for the Hill’s excess Vitamin D recall of January 2019). Pet treats take the entire recall category of unapproved antibiotics with more than 2.5 million pounds recalled.
The biggest shock was the #2 category of pet foods recalled per pound; pentobarbital. In 2017 and 2018 alone, more than 91 million pounds of pet food were recalled because they contained the euthanizing drug pentobarbital. All 30 million pounds of pentobarbital recalled pet food was canned pet food, totaling more than 89 million cans of pet food.
Recalls for Salmonella, Listeria and/or E.coli
Breaking down the 154 million pounds of pet foods recalled for Salmonella, Listeria and/or E.coli – more kibble pet food has been recalled by a dramatic difference:
And this dramatic difference in pounds is even more surprising when you take into consideration there has not been a kibble pet food recalled for pathogenic bacteria since 2014. Below is a year-to-year line graph for pounds of kibble pet foods recalled for Salmonella, Listeria or E.coli from 2012 to 2019 (note this line graph is in hundreds of millions):
And below is another year-to-year line graph going in the opposite direction as kibble pet foods; below is raw pet food pounds recalled for Salmonella, Listeria or E.coli from 2012 to 2019. As kibble bacteria recalls went to zero, raw bacteria recalls skyrocketed (however, note this line graph tops out at 1.3 million):
Even though kibble Salmonella recalls completely stopped in 2014, and raw Salmonella recalls began to skyrocket, when you look at the total pounds recalled of the two styles of pet food side by side (blue line kibble, red line raw)…
…pounds of recalled raw pet food is barely measurable compared to kibble.
A total of 125 million pounds of kibble pet foods were recalled in 2013 for Salmonella, Listeria, and/or E.coli as compared to a total of 1.3 million pounds of raw pet food recalled in 2018.
From 125 million pounds to zero just two years later, how did the kibble industry achieve this? Do they have magical bacterial control or does this prove that regulatory authorities haven’t tested kibble pet food since 2014?
The Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, the AVMA, and on and on warn pet owners of the pathogenic bacteria dangers of raw pet food. Are they all simply choosing to ignore 125 million pounds of recalled kibble pet food?
A few more comparisons.
Not including the 2019 Hill’s excess Vitamin D recall (that Enforcement Report has not been published), Vitamin and or Mineral excess or insufficient recalls broke down like this (per pound):
And pounds of pet food recalled due to the product containing a foreign object (recalls 2012 – 2019) looks like this:
Back to pentobarbital.
How many euthanized animals does it take to recall 91 million pounds of pet food? It’s horrific to consider. Where are these euthanized animals coming from? What species are they?
The majority of the pounds of recalled pet food were from pentobarbital contaminated rendered fat. Euthanized animals are ground, rendered (cooked), and the fat is removed from the solid material. Where did the pentobarbital contaminated solid material go? Why were those products not recalled just as the pentobarbital contaminated fat pet food products were?
And…that 91 million pounds of pentobarbital recalled pet food doesn’t include one confirmed recipient of the poisoned fat – Champion Pet Food. Through Freedom of Information Act request we know that Champion Pet Food received the same pentobarbital contaminated fat that led to the majority of the 91 million pounds of recalled pet food. But…Champion Pet Food was not required to recall.
How many more pounds of pet food would have been added to the total if Champion had recalled?
Worse yet to consider, how many more millions of pounds of pentobarbital contaminated pet foods are ‘out there’ because FDA openly allows “animals that have died otherwise than by slaughter” into pet food?
All of the data provided above was based only on Class I recalls, there are many more Class II pet food recalls on the FDA website. To search the Enforcement Reports yourself, Click Here.
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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MARTHA A HURD-CALL
May 14, 2019 at 3:03 pm
Thank you for all you do.
SparkyGump
May 14, 2019 at 3:08 pm
Well, let me see…..2000 horses are killed every year on racetracks and horses are very large animals with lots of meat on them….you don’t think someone would figure a way to monetize all that flesh now would you?
~Pet Owner~
May 14, 2019 at 3:31 pm
Wow. This article required a lot of research and compilation! Thank you so much! Nobody can expose the FDA the way you go can!
Have stopped kibble altogether. I just couldn’t image eating a dry “breakfast bar” equivalent every day of my life!
reader
May 14, 2019 at 4:08 pm
This should be reason enough to understand that pets are recycled into pet food from animal shelter killing centers from across the nation. Rendering companies pick up all the killed pets at all the killing centers and the pets are recycled into pet food for a free protein to help make pet food even more profitable.
How hard is it to figure out where the Pentobarbital is coming from?
All the dead dogs and dead cats ground up into the pet food.
The fd a and the pet food industry are NOT required to put dead dogs and dead cats on the ingredient list, or pics of killed dogs and killed cats all over the kibble bags and canned food as that would be a hard sell to pet consumers
This fact has been known for years, just read the books Pet Food Pets Die For from pet food researcher Ann Martin.
And this pets recycled into pet foods are mentioned in random articles and books for many years.
Recycled Pets into pet food is a known and truthful fact.
Yes it is an unpleasant Truth, an inconvenient Truth. but all the same, it is a Truth.
Now finally, more are learning what is really in pet food.
What to do.
Change what you feed your pet. Stop buying pet food from the Big Pet Food Industry.
Also, dead animal fluids, dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, sheep… are added to all vaccines, both human and pet vaccines contain high levels of animal dna, pulled from the brain fluid and spinal fluid, the most dangerous to use as that is where many pathogens, spongiform mad cow disease bacterial virus, etc hide in these fluids.
Many read the misleading ingredient list on their foods, and there are many food ingredients that are added to both human and pet foods, that the f d a does not add to the ingredient list to mislead consumers. This is even worse in the vaccine industry. Learn more at vitalanimal by dr will falconer, dr todd cooney, greenmedinfo, mercola, drsircus, whatreallyhappened, veteranstoday stopmandatoryvaccination larry cook, vaxxed, etc etc….
Real vegetarians who lead a non violent lifestyle, do not vaccinate, because the abuse and pain to the live animals with no pain relief, have fluids forced out of their brain and spinal column, complete with all the pathogens, bacteria and viruses to be inserted into vaccines, until they die.
There are nosodes, the natural vaccine alternative that has been used with great success to save both animals and humans around the world from disease. But nosodes are natural so they cannot be patented, so no profits, so that is why nosodes are not allowed to be promoted, after the 1910 Flexnor Report to make sure the rothchilds, carnegies and rockefellers to earn exorbitant profits from allopathic patented toxic medicine and vaccines.
Learn more by reading about true his story, which is not taught in the education industry, as informed consumers will not buy if they learn the real his story. Once you start learning, you will understand why all this is forced on the commoners. The wealthy powerful elite do not vaccinate their children, pets or themselves. They all still use homeopathic, holistic and naturopathic doctors and remedies in secret to maintain health for their own families, but many are investors in the vaccine industry, cancer industry, education industry, big food industry etc. so they profit off of the uninformed middle class, lower class and commoners who follow mainstream media and are very misinformed. This is why many of the wealthy live longer healthier lives without chronic illness, while the commoners are living shorter and shorter lives consumed with chronic illness
Thanks Susan for sharing your informative newsletters, hoping more will become informed, and at least find health for their pets, as pets deserve the very best health, and in the USA, the pets all have chronic illness at young ages, and high vet bills so the Veterinary industry is laughing all the way to the bank.
Kirsty
May 27, 2019 at 9:25 am
Amazing reply. Thank you x
T Allen
May 14, 2019 at 5:21 pm
Thank you again Susan! What is it going to take to get this to go viral? Still waiting for some law group to go after these manufactures. It’s not like there isn’t a lot of money to made from all these big companies. You’ve done a lot of the basic work for them. How many more animals and people have to be sickened before people wake up and do something?
~Pet Owner~
May 14, 2019 at 5:47 pm
So called “inconvenient truth” kind of comments need to be balanced, or people reading this site are going to think we’re too radical to be taken seriously. So a moment to clarify a few things. (One) pets eating and living in healthy ways, have a higher quality of life. (Two) avoiding toxic and risky ingredients in commercial PF is necessary for the above. (Three) taking advantage of opportunities for living a higher standard of living, is expensive, which could also be offset by lower Vet expenses..
PET FOOD
Perhaps in some countries, but not this one, not *ALL* Rescue Shelters are “killing centers.” A lot of very dedicated volunteers work very hard to prevent that assumption. Therefore it would be difficult for *ALL* of them to literally be shipping off animal carcasses to end up as “free protein.”
Not easy to figure out where the Pentobarbital is coming from BECAUSE dead livestock dying other than by slaughter is going into PF. Not easy to figure it out, because certain businesses use the FDA’s Compliance Policies to their advantage, others do not. In this country, within the last 5 years a consumer funded (mean us) paid for a research project to evaluate a sampling of PF. The testing was negative regarding the presence of dog and cat DNA.
If *ALL* the dead dogs and dead cats *everywhere* were ground up into PF, then just somebody might notice. A pretty big secret to be keeping. The reveal would probably put a damper on PF sales and mess with a company’s public image.
The FDA (not the fd a) are NOT required to put ANY ingredient on their label if it is not being used. There seems to be a push on “Pet Food Pets Die For” in print for awhile now, including other documentaries on the subject.
VACCINATIONS:
Wondering what the difference would be to the population if there was absolutely no vaccinations taking place, ever. Versus the kind of a relatively safe population where those who disbelieve in vaccinations, can still live safely among the majority of people who do vaccinate? Some diseases have been eradicated due to vaccinations. Not pleasant how they’re made, but another reality of life. Just for reference, might want to take a read on the current measles controversy.
Real vegetarians (instead of fake ones) certainly live their beliefs, and reduce animal cruelty, as would those who also oppose medical research done on animals. Certainly both are idealistic goals to aspire to. However the effort of reducing illnesses through prevention and treatment methods, often requires difficult compromises.
Both holistic and western medical practices have value. But neither is inexpensive. And can only be effective through controlled (and comparative) studies. For amateurs applying holistic remedies also requires training and accurate judgement regarding specific situations and interactions.
Capitalism is the description for profiting off of ANY consumer no matter their status.
Mary Sue
May 15, 2019 at 12:59 am
This is in response to “reader” who says “Rendering companies pick up all the killed pets at all the killing centers and the pets are recycled into pet food for a free protein to help make pet food even more profitable.” This is not entirely true. Dead dogs and cats from shelters often go directly to an incinerator specifically for dead animals. I worked for a shelter in a large metropolitan county for 10 years and we took them ourselves to be incinerated. None went to a rendering company. I imagine that some others do the same, though I only had experience at one shelter so I can’t say for sure. Laws about disposal of dead animals vary by state. I know that veterinarians around here have their dead animals picked up by companies that cremate them either individually or in a group, bury the group cremated ones and return the individually cremated ones to their owners. There were studies done on pet foods that showed barbiturates in some of the pet foods tested, but no cat or dog DNA. So the barbiturates were likely from farm animals who were euthanized. The studies were done because veterinarians were wondering why dogs and cats were becoming less affective by barbiturates used for anesthesia and someone came up with the idea that it was because the were eating it in pet food. However it got there, it is unconscionable. The last study I know about was in 2000, but there might have been others since.
Jan Gray
June 1, 2019 at 8:24 pm
I have had two horses euthanized, and both were picked up by what is referred to as “dead stock” as I have no way to bury them on my property. I then find out the company I paid to take them away was actually called “Atwood Pet Food”. Neither time was I asked if my horses had been euthanized, or had died of natural causes. That made me sick
Jill
May 15, 2019 at 11:18 am
I want to know what happens to all the recalled pet food?