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Hidden from Pet Owners – Vitamin Premix Recall

Did you know the vitamin premix supplier to Hill’s Pet food issued a recall? Neither did we.

Posted this week on the FDA Enforcement Report webpage is (bold added):

DSM Nutritional Products was notified by a customer (Hills Pet Nutrition) that they were doing a recall after a dog had become ill after consuming Hills Prescription Diet W/D canned dog food. DSM Nutritional Products supplied Hills Pet Nutrition the DSM vitamin premix: Brand name: 2217 Canned Canine PMX, Product Code: NP15268025, net weight: 25 Kg per package, package type: Woven polyethylene bag. Lot numbers 9100058130 and 9100058131, produced on 8 August 2018. Out of abundance of caution DSM Nutritional Products initiated a recall of DSM vitamin premix.

Product Quantity:
Lot 9100058130 was 1,500 Kg and lot 9100058131 was 1,000 Kg

Recall Initiation Date:
1/30/2019

The above means, that not only did Hill’s Pet Nutrition recall pet food on January 31, 2019 and again on March 20, 2019 – the actual supplier of the vitamin premix recalled about 5,500 pounds of pet food vitamins on January 30, 2019.

So many problems.

The FDA website has NO recall notice published for the DSM Vitamin Premix even though the Enforcement report clearly states the product was recalled. Hill’s Pet Nutrition would not release the name of their Vitamin Premix supplier, did FDA yield to the wishes of Hill’s and protect the identity of the supplier?

Why weren’t pet owners notified of this vitamin premix recall by FDA? Did FDA decide not to publicly release the recall because Hill’s received all of the recalled premix product and they were handling it?

No…that’s not quite right.

The Enforcement Report states that the premix supplier recalled on January 30, 2019. Hill’s first recall was one day after, Hill’s second recall was 49 days after the premix supplier recall. Because the vitamin premix supplier recalled on January 30, 2019 – this means that Hill’s Pet Nutrition was fully aware of the lot numbers of the recalled vitamin premix a full 49 days before their March 20, 2019 recall.

Pet food companies are required to trace every lot of every ingredient in every batch of pet food just for reasons like this; should a health risk/problem arise, the ingredient can be promptly traced to which batches of pet food it was used in.

Because we now know that DSM Vitamin Premix recalled two lot numbers on January 30, 2019 – we can safely assume that the Hill’s system of tracing every lot of every ingredient in every batch of pet food was a failure. How could Hill’s – the 3rd largest pet food manufacturer in the US with decades of manufacturing experience – fail to have a system in place to trace every ingredient in every batch of pet food?

Pets died because of that failure.

Had FDA promptly published the DSM Vitamin Premix recall notice on the Agency website, would public awareness that Hill’s received more than 5,500 pounds of an ingredient that constitutes less than 1% of each batch of pet food have caused Hill’s to have done a better job at tracing the pet food lots that contained the toxic levels of vitamin D preventing that 49 day delay between recalls?

Sadly, because FDA didn’t bother to tell us – we’ll never know.

Hill’s Pet Nutrition and FDA owes pet owners a full explanation. There is no excuse to keep pet owners in the dark about a recalled product. None.

Pet owners can send Hill’s Pet Nutrition questions by clicking here. Pet owners can send FDA questions via this email address: AskCVM@fda.hhs.gov.


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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13 Comments

13 Comments

  1. Cannoliamo

    June 20, 2019 at 10:38 am

    I would call FDA and ask them, but (unfortunately) I’m not a pet food lobbyist and don’t have access to that agency.

    • Susan Thixton

      June 20, 2019 at 10:47 am

      You can call them. The number is: 240-402-7002. But it will probably be a recording for you to leave a message.

  2. ~Pacific Sun~

    June 20, 2019 at 12:08 pm

    Also to the point, is to which other companies is/was DSM Nutritional Products supplying premix? Was/is Hills their only client? Are they still using them?

    And how does this timeline affect the lawsuit against Hills?

  3. Kelly Bone

    June 20, 2019 at 1:15 pm

    Thank you, Susan for this article. As you know, my dog Duncan died from eating this food. He died 2 weeks before the first recall. This is just infuriating. I will encourage my members of my Facebook Group called Saving Pets One Pet @ A Time to write Hills and the FDA. This is beyond disgusting.

  4. Dianne & Pets

    June 20, 2019 at 6:01 pm

    Didn’t the same report reveal that although Hill’s claims to test every batch of pre-mix, they could provide no proof to the FDA that they actually did this? Grounds for misleading the public?

  5. Janelle Peters Pitula

    June 21, 2019 at 6:33 am

    Truly criminal…

  6. Carol Groves

    June 21, 2019 at 1:41 pm

    After my dog had surgery to remove part of her pancreas for cancer the oncologist recommended this food when I couldn’t do chemo. This was end of February and he didn’t even know there was a recall! I’m so glad I changed her diet, no more dog food! It’s a shame the quality of most dog foods is so poor, and more and more dogs are getting cancer!

    • Cherry

      January 15, 2021 at 10:10 pm

      What do you feed her?

  7. Sue Dickson

    June 22, 2019 at 11:32 pm

    Wow! I just recently gave Hill’s props, for doing what I thought to be taking responsibility for this and taking care of the problem. I was feeding thirds food to my dog and she got sick. Our very diagnosed her with pancreatitis. She only ate this food for about 2 months and she just got so picky, I thought, that I started feeding her real chicken and rice. After a few months of her being sick of and on, she finally quit eating for 5 days and had diarrhea so bad, that In May 20, 2019, we had to say our final goodbyes. She went from a healthy 70ish lbs. to around 45lbs, in about 6 to 7 months time. I just received a letter from Hill’s last week, telling me they would reimburse my vet bill for having her tested, but no determination was made on het illness.

  8. Casey Bono

    July 12, 2019 at 2:28 pm

    yes to say that a determination had been made would be to admit guilt which they aren’t doing.

  9. Peter

    July 17, 2019 at 7:20 am

    Time, whether seconds, minutes, or days, can mean lives. The moment a company is made aware of these types of circumstance, their obligation to provide information begins… Hill’s has demonstrated where their priorities lie.

  10. Joanne

    July 20, 2019 at 9:01 am

    As a subscriber to “Pet food Industry News” magazine, I receive a weekly email news digest. Included in the most recent digest was the headline “DSM supplied vitamin D mix in recalled Hill’s dog food – On January 31, Hill’s Pet Nutrition voluntarily recalled 25 varieties of canned dog food products due to potentially elevated levels of vitamin D.”

    This is the link to the story, but for some reason the link results in a “Page Not Found” error on the petfoodindustry.com site. Concerned for the integrity of the site, I notified them of the broken link. I’m sure it will be up and running again soon (yes, you would be correct if you detected sarcasm in my tone…).

    https://www.petfoodindustry.com/articles/8340-dsm-supplied-vitamin-d-mix-in-recalled-hills-dog-food?utm_source=KnowledgeMarketing&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Petfood%20Industry%20News&utm_campaign=Petfood%20Industry%20News_Wed_7_17_19&eid=429160271&bid=2485564

    THANK YOU AGAIN SUSAN – YOUR WORK IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!

  11. Tina

    November 23, 2019 at 9:50 pm

    I have some information regarding the excess vitamin D that was put in dog premix packages for Hill’s. A rep at DSM named Hugh Welsh wrote this to me via email after I submitted a question via DSM’s online contact form & made a few calls to some of DSM’s US offices:

    “DSM made a Lot/Two Batches of premix for Hills Pet Nutrition on August 16, 2018 at our Fort Worth, Texas plant into which an operator mistakenly put too Vitamin D instead of Vitamin E. These two batches are the only batches that had too much Vitamin D and these batches were only shipped to Hills Pet Nutrition in Topeka, Kansas. No other DSM products or customers were in any way impacted by this one mistake. The Fort Worth plant’s Food Safety Plan has been updated and positive release controls such as daily inventory management have been put in place so that a mistake of this nature cannot happen again.”

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