Answer: 3 years. Has kibble pet food become completely safe or are regulatory authorities intentionally looking the other way?
There has been no kibble pet food recalls since October 2015 (Halo pet food, mold). There has been no Salmonella recall in kibble pet food since February 2015; there has been 21 raw pet food recalls for Salmonella since February 2015.
Has there been a miraculous change in all kibble pet foods over the past 3 years? Or is something else happening…?
Taken from recall press releases posted on the FDA website, below are all pet food recalls from 2010 through February 27, 2018. Each recall counted could have had multiple products or lots involved; below is JUST the number of recalls notices…
Comparing recalls just for Salmonella/Listeria…
When you look at the numbers close, you see something interesting happening. As kibble recalls for Salmonella/Listeria went down to zero…
Raw pet food recalls went up…
From 2010 through 2012, FDA performed a ‘survey’ testing of pet food. The agency reports that during this two year time frame they tested 120 samples of kibble pet foods and found zero positive for Salmonella. Strange that FDA found zero Salmonella positive kibble pet foods during this time frame…multiple kibble recalls happened during this time including more than 19 million pounds (kibble) recalled in 2012. Opposite of FDA findings for kibble, the agency reported that testing of 196 samples of raw pet food analyzed – “15 were positive for Salmonella and 32 were positive for L. monocytogenes.”
From late 2012 to mid 2014, FDA issued three warnings to pet food consumers about raw pet food; “Get the Facts! Raw Pet Food Diets can be Dangerous to You and Your Pet”, “Avoid the Dangers of Raw Pet Food”, and “Know the Risks of Feeding Raw Foods to Your Pets.”
Even though millions more pounds of kibble pet food (having the potential to sicken millions of humans and pets) have been recalled for the exact same bacteria – FDA warns consumers of with raw…FDA has never issued a warning about ‘the dangers of kibble pet food’.
Is FDA intentionally not testing kibble pet foods for Salmonella/Listeria to support their ‘Get the Facts!’, ‘Avoid the Dangers’, and ‘Know the Risks’ warnings? Or…has the entire kibble pet food industry found the magic wand to prevent Salmonella/Listeria contamination?
The legal requirements to ingredient quality has not changed since 2012, kibble manufacturing requirements have not changed since 2012. But recalls certainly have changed.
Something we never hear of anymore…aflatoxin pet food recalls. In 2011, there were 8 pet food recalls listed on the FDA website…
Six of the eight pet food recalls of 2011 were for aflatoxin contamination; deadly for the pets consuming those pet foods. One aflatoxin recall occurred in 2013. But miraculously – there have been no aflatoxin recalls since. Perhaps the entire kibble pet food industry found a second magic wand to prevent aflatoxin contaminated grains in pet food too.
Common sense tells us that something is amiss. Because requirements to quality of ingredients and manufacturing standards have not changed, common sense tells us that kibble pet foods are just as prone to Salmonella/Listeria and/or mycotoxins today as they were in 2012.
The reality…the kibble pet food industry isn’t the one who has the magic wand…FDA is who controls the magic. FDA’s ‘magic’ certainly benefits the kibble industry and certainly damages the raw pet food industry. But it’s consumers (and their pets) who pay the highest price for selective enforcement/testing.
Regulation of pet food, testing for Salmonella/Listeria/mycotoxins should be uniform across all pet food styles. No exceptions.
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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Casey
February 27, 2018 at 1:20 pm
Gosh, it’s almost as if they shape their results to suit the big manufacturers or something…
Pet Owner
February 27, 2018 at 1:52 pm
I’m not defending the issue, and would be as skeptical as yourself. But do you think their “defense” would be in terms of redeploying “manpower”? So now they’re just more focused in one direction rather than the other. Could it be, someone suggested that as long as feeding raw is only going to continue, then they’d better be even more vigilant? Listeria is pretty serious.
I do feed raw. But I remember recommending it to another person’s dog (distant relation to mine) and that dog got $500 worth of being very sick from eating raw food. I think back now, and it must’ve been a bad batch, several years ago.
Ms. B Dawson
March 15, 2018 at 12:51 pm
Well, here’s a surprise! This article, entitled “FDA’s fixation on raw pet food ratchets up again”, just hit my inbox from the WPA Newsfeed:
https://www.petfoodindustry.com/blogs/7-adventures-in-pet-food/post/7006-fdas-fixation-on-raw-pet-food-ratchets-up-again
It’s a mostly balanced article, although it quotes incomplete statements from FDA’s 2013 study making it sound as if all forms of pet food were tested instead of just raw. The result is the impression that dry food had no contamination issues.
The suspicious part of me wonders if maybe this article wasn’t an underhanded way to point out all the negative documents on FDA’s website. But still, for an industry trade rag to print anything vaguely supportive of the raw industry is out of the ordinary.