Zignature Settlement Agreement Includes Required Compliance of Regulations

In early 2021 a lawsuit was filed against Zignature Pet Food claiming the pet food brand included grains in ‘Grain Free’ varieties and chicken in ‘Chicken Free’ varieties. With Zignature parent company Pets Global denying any wrongdoing, a settlement has been reached.

The settlement agreement of this lawsuit does little to reimburse pet owners for purchasing potentially mislabeled pet food, offering Class Members with proof of purchase “up to ten dollars ($10.00) for each purchase” with a maximum of one hundred dollars – and for consumers with no proof of purchase “five dollars ($5.00)” maximum.

But the settlement does something else…that actually Zignature and FDA should have been doing all along.

“Injunctive Relief: Pets Global agrees to revise Product labels and marketing references so that any Product label that makes a ‘chicken free’ and ‘grain free’ claim no longer contains those representations.”

And…

“Auditing of Suppliers: Pets Global agreed to audit all of the manufacturing plants of suppliers for a period of 5 years following the Court’s Final Approval Order. The audits of Pets Global’s suppliers will happen at least once a year and include the following: the visual inspection of all manufacturing machines that process, store, or otherwise come into contact with the petfood manufactured within said facility and purchased by Pets Global, an audit of the manufacturer’s manufacturing process and sourcing records, to confirm the accuracy of the ingredients being used in Pets Global’s products, and ensuring that all of the manufacturing processes used by the manufacturing plant adhere to quality control standards.”

In other words, the settlement agreement forces Pets Global/Zignature to do what pet food regulations already require them to do.

The FDA website page titled “Pet Food” states (bold added):

“The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) requires that all animal foods, like human foods, be safe to eat, produced under sanitary conditions, contain no harmful substances, and be truthfully labeled.”

A ‘truthfully labeled’ grain free pet food would not include grain, a ‘truthfully labeled’ chicken free pet food would not include chicken. If pet food brands were in compliance with regulations, there would be no false/misleading label claims and they would perform their own audits on a regular basis. But…

The pet food industry is fully aware that FDA and State feed authorities don’t ever audit manufacturers or DNA test pet food products to assure companies are in compliance of laws (and many other laws). In fact, some pet food manufacturers have ‘handling’ FDA inspections down to (secret) company policy. Below are copies of internal documents provided by a pet food manufacturing employee, the inspection policy of the company he works for. The pet food manufacturer and/or any brand identifying information has been redacted to protect the employee.

Notice in the above, the title of the document is “FDA Inspections Regulations“. Appearing to make employees believe these internal policies are law – when they are not. Also in this page, the pet food manufacturer tells employees to not allow the regulatory authority to sign a visitor’s log – preventing any official record of FDA at the plant. And the pet food manufacturer refuses to allow regulatory to take pictures or record anything in the plant.

On this page the manufacturer provides instructions to what employees are supposed to “Do” during the inspection. This pet food instructs its employees to allow “access to paperwork” but any copies of documents would be delayed until after consulting “corporate”. And the last bullet point under “Allow samples to be taken” states “Try to guide inspector to take from lot we have in our complete control”. I was told that this manufacturer has a verified “clean” supply of each ingredient in their pet food, that clean ingredient is what employees are told to direct regulatory to for samples.

And on the above page, the document describes what employees are NOT supposed to do – this pet food manufacturer makes it clear employees are not to offer any information to regulatory – including providing FDA information on consumer complaints.

Note: In an effort to help educate the FDA to the tricks of some manufacturers, these documents were provided to Agency. To our knowledge, the FDA did not take any action.

At least we have lawyers.

Pet owners might not have a large selection of ethical, law abiding pet food manufacturers, and we might not have a regulatory system that bothers to do proper pet food investigations to better protect our pets – but we do have lawyers that are filing suits which result in enforcement of law.

Two examples of previous pet food lawsuit settlements that also included compliance requirements were Evanger’s Pet Food and Champion Pet Food.

To those attorneys that are helping our pets – thank you.

For more information on the Zignature settlement, Click Here.

Wishing you and your pet the best –

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
TruthaboutPetFood.com
Association for Truth in Pet Food

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