Four items about pet food politics

I. DOJ, FDA take raw pet food company to court.  This one comes from Phyllis Entis of eFoodAlert.  She writes: “I thought this might interest you. Last Friday, the DOJ filed a Complaint against Arrow Reliance Inc. (Darwin’s Natural Pet Products) and its owner, Gary Tashjian.”

The Complaint seeks to block Darwin’s from selling adulterated drugs; it argues that Darwin’s raw pet foods are adulterated because they:

• Bear or contains a poisonous or deleterious substance, such as Salmonella, which may render the food injurious to health. Contain Salmonella and/or STEC.
• FDA previously issued warning letters to Darwin’s about this problem.
• Continue to test positive for pathogens.
• Are introduced into interstate commerce.

What’s amazing about this is that the current administration’s Department of Justice is taking on pet food.  If only it would do that for our food too!

II.  Concentration in pet food [from Pet Food Industry]. Two companies, Mars Petcare and Nestlé Purina PetCare, together account for approximately 78% of the top 10’s nearly $66 billion in combined annual revenue.

III.Recalls in the pet space reveal common prevention blind spots [from Pet Food Industry].   Industry experts say most recalls trace back to overlooked process changes, thin supplier oversight and mock recall exercises that stop short of testing a company’s full response.  Read more

In the pet food, supplements and treats space, recalls tied to undeclared allergens, foreign material and Salmonella contamination have made headlines throughout 2026…Roger Hancock of Recall InfoLink said the numbers back up what he’s seen for years. Over the past two decades, more than 3,900 pet food and animal feed recalls have occurred, averaging around 15 a month, he said.

Why do these keep happening?  Companies are not careful enough about developing food safety plans and monitoring that they are working.

Companies often tend to collect a lot of information but don’t do anything with it…citing environmental test results, cleaning records and third-party audit findings as examples.

IV,  Three Illnesses Now Reported in the Oma’s Pride Raw Dog Food Salmonella Recall. People or Dogs? The Notice Does Not Say [From Bill Marler’s Blog].

FDA has re-posted the company announcement…Here is the reason for recall: FDA received a consumer complaint, then collected and analyzed a sample of the product, and it tested positive for Salmonella. And here is the illness information, in its entirety: “Three illnesses have been reported to date in association with the complaint.”

That is the whole disclosure. Three illnesses. The notice does not say whether they were people or dogs.

…The agency’s own Center for Veterinary Medicine screened more than a thousand pet food samples over two years and found raw pet food far more likely than any other kind to carry Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes — 38 of 196 raw samples positive for one or both. FDA’s advice ever since has been blunt: the single best way to avoid these infections is not to feed a raw diet.

…If someone in your house has been sick, or your dog has, call the doctor or the veterinarian and say the words “raw pet food” out loud…It is also, on this record, the only way anyone will ever learn whether those three illnesses walked on two legs or four.

Comment

I write frequently about pet food because it is part of the human food system.  If something is wrong with it, something is wrong with the system that produces our food too.  Food, no matter who or what it is for, should be produced safely.  It’s hard to do that with raw foods; they require extra-special efforts to prevent contamination with pathogens.

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