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Another Blasted Dog Food Recall


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I have been feeding TOTW Wetlands purchased in Maryland; checked my bag lot numbers and it is part of this recall. So, I just thought I'd pass on the information. Here is a link to the MFG's recall web page:

http://diamondpetrecall.com/

 

Brands named in this recall now include:

  • Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul
  • Country Value
  • Diamond
  • Diamond Naturals
  • Premium Edge
  • Professional
  • 4Health
  • Taste of the Wild
  • Kirkland Signature

 

Distributed in These Locations:

 

The recalled products were manufactured by Diamond Pet Foods in Gaston, S.C., and were distributed in the following states and Canada:

  • Alabama
  • Connecticut
  • Delaware
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Indiana
  • Kentucky
  • Massachusetts
  • Maryland
  • Michigan
  • Mississippi
  • New Hampshire
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • North Carolina
  • Ohio
  • Pennsylvania
  • South Carolina
  • Tennessee
  • Vermont
  • Virginia
  • Canada

However, further geographical distribution through other pet food channels may have occurred.

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And... that's my bag this time! Sheesh. I've already fed Buddy like 1/4 of the bag, and I'm pretty sure it's not contaminated with Salmonella. Seems like a lot of work to go buy another bag and wait 6 weeks for a refund check. ::Sigh::

 

Mary

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oh great. i just bought a bag, but i put it in a sealable can and throw away the bag the food comes in. guess i can go back to the store and check other lot numbers. i'm in WV which is not on the list right now. any other suggestions? hate just to throw away the food.

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darn it, baby dog eats NB now do to her allergies..its the only thing she can eat without reacting(it was a switch FROM raw, so no, she is not OK with the foods in raw form) her formula is not on the list so far, thankfully, but I am in the affected area and I dont have the bag anymore, which I just bought last weekend :blink:

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I found out about the recall earlier this week. I switched over to TOTW when Jazz got sick two years ago. I wanted to feed Orijen but it is not readily available where I live. So, TOTW was the next best. However, I just bought a bag of GO!! which is a grain free kibble manufactured in Canada. I was told only the large bags of TOTW were recalled so I bought the smallest bag I could to start the transition. So far, so good. They like it and I haven't seen any evidence of dietary distress.

I guess this is what happens with 'big business' like dog food. One manufacturing plant for multiple brands. It's hard to stay educated and on top of it!

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oh great. i just bought a bag, but i put it in a sealable can and throw away the bag the food comes in. guess i can go back to the store and check other lot numbers. i'm in WV which is not on the list right now. any other suggestions? hate just to throw away the food.

If you bought it at Woof's, I expect they would take it back and give you a refund. I've never had an issue there.

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I guess this is what happens with 'big business' like dog food. One manufacturing plant for multiple brands. It's hard to stay educated and on top of it!

 

I agree. So now we have to worry about type of ingredients, source of ingredients AND the specific plant where manufactured? This is getting too complicated.

 

I usually rotate between TOTW, Blue Buffalo, Wellness and Canidae - and I throw my bags out once I transfer the kibble to a plastic container. So I don't know what I am feeding my dogs currently, but since there is probably less than 1/4 of the bag left, I will finish feeding it as I have seen no issues with my dogs.

 

But now I have to actually think about which brand I buy for the next bag. I felt comfortable in my routine of mindlessly picking up what I thought were good dog foods.

 

BTW, the Wellness product that is being recalled is Large Breed Puppy food, 15 lb and 30 lb bags and 5 oz samples, manufactured between Jan 9 and Jan 13, 2012. I am on their email list and just received the recall notice. They have no reported problems with the recalled batch, but they are being cautious since it was manufactured in the common plant at the time of the contamination.

 

Jovi

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I just got back from returning half a bag of TOTW from the pet store where I'd purchased it; it had a serial number that put it among those recalled. (They gave me a full refund with nary a word of complaint).

 

I looked to see whether they had other bags of TOTW that hadn't been recalled. I did find a bag with a "safe" serial number. I also found bags of the same flavor and size whose serial numbers were among those recalled. (I pointed those out to the pet store employees). I also found bags in smaller sizes with serial numbers that had been recalled.

 

I heard on the radio today that at least 20 people had developed salmonella from exposure to contaminated dog food (the reason behind this recall). I also heard that the manufacturer had been responsible for the deaths of a number of dogs some four years ago from aflatoxin poisoning. At the pet store they insisted that dogs didn't get salmonella, so it was more a matter of making sure people didn't get sick, not dogs. I have no idea whether this is true. Not sure I want to conduct the experiment as we're having a bunch of people over to watch the Derby and have dinner tonight. (Let's see, let's allow two to handle dog food before eating without washing their hands, two can wash their hands after handling dog food before eating; two can allow the dog to lick them, and two can stay vigilantly away from everything so as to serve as "controls").

 

Before the present recall I hadn't been aware that the same company manufactured all these foods. It sure isn't easy to tell this from the bags; two weeks ago I was buying some TOTW for the cat, and (having heard of the Diamond recall) I pored over the bag with a fine-toothed comb to see if it had any connection to Diamond.

 

Guess I'm now going to start to look for a new brand. I was glad I was able to find some "safe" TOTW because (a) my dog has done well on it; (B) I don't like changing dog foods abruptly, prefer to phase in the new food.

 

The pet store was trying to encourage me to try an EU brand, but it had a higher protein content (30%) than I like.

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My dog was one that died from the aflatoxin. I was feeding chicken soup (no corn..which is where it is found) called the company and they assured me that because chicken soup had no corn I was safe..I even asked if the kibble were processed through the same hoppers and they said no. Found out it wasn't true...

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FWIW, aflatoxin can be found in *grains,* period. It may be more commonly found in corn, but no grain is truly immune. Plants stressed by drought and kept in areas of high humidity (are the grains being sourced from the south?) make conditions favorable for aflatoxins. Alflatoxin is pretty common in peanut butter, but the levels are below those of concern per the safety regulators.

 

And raw feeders aren't safe either. There have been recent recalls of ground turkey (Aug 2011) and frozen tuna (Apr 2012) for causing illness in humans (Salmonella again). Salmonella is all over the place. As I said elsewhere, people who feed raw are much more likely to be practicing safe food-handling procedures, which means they're less likely to make themselves sick, but they are still feeding it to their dogs (that is, the dogs are being exposed to Salmonella on the raw meats being fed).

 

Here's an article about Salmonella in chickens published in the Washington Post last October. There's a link there to recent recalls of people food because of contamination by various organisms.

 

Good manufacturing practices are key. And it's humans that are responsible for cleanliness in plants that manufacture food stuffs, be it for humans or animals. But just like with the cantaloupe-listeriosis debacle that resulted in dead people, when practices are changed or corners are cut, bad stuff follows. And of course it only takes one small "infestation" to contaminate a whole bunch of what comes after. I may be cynical, but I tend to believe that Salmonella can likely be found just about anywhere foods of any sort are beiing manufactured. All those "safe" plants just haven't had a *noticeable* outbreak (yet). What's safest for your dogs (and you)? Probably home cooked meals sourced locally, but of course that can be cost- and time-prohibitive.

 

I feed Diamond and Kirkland (not at the moment, though). I live in NC so likely have gotten foods from the plant in question. I have not had a sick dog, nor have I been sick (and I don't sanitize after handling kibble the way I do after handling raw meats/bones). I have friends who have used some of the products and had dogs with a bit of diarrhea, to others like me who have been feeding it with no ill effects. I, too, buy kibble and dump it into plastic containers designed for human food use (so presumably not leaching bad things out into the kibble).

 

I'm not saying don't return foods from recalled lots or anything like that, but I really do believe that it's likely just a matter of time before Salmonella is found in some other product, and so it goes....

 

J.

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After a bout with HGE, I am taking no chances. We never were able to determine the origin of the gastroenteritis, but I would rather rule out an even slightly elevated risk of a repeat. A $40 bag of dog food in comparison to a $1700 bill for a three day stint at the ER vet, not to mention the anxiety at the prospect of losing my dog, and I'll take the loss and ditch the food. I have the bag; not the receipt, so I can get a replacement bag but no refund.

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I'm not saying don't return foods from recalled lots or anything like that, but I really do believe that it's likely just a matter of time before Salmonella is found in some other product, and so it goes....

 

J.

 

I was thinking that too, Julie. I changed from Nutro Ultra Holistic to TOTW after the bout with HGE, even though the food may have had nothing to do with it and Hannah did fine on it before. I admit to being reactive to these things after Hannah's scare. But really, I don't feel that I can rule out the possibility of a recall from any dog food company at this point.

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I just returned my bag - refund, replacement bag of a similar content made elsewhere - and the store had returned ALL the affected bags, as requested by the manufacturer. I'm surprised other stores didn't do the same.

 

I'm not too worried about the Salmonella scare - and it seems so wasteful to throw out a whole bag of food. But, better safe than sorry.

 

I do think that in the days before the Internet, there were probably Salmonella and E. coli outbreaks aplenty, that we just never heard about because the technology to share this information on a large-scale basis just didn't exist. Heck, I grew up in a childhood world where we regularly ate raw cookie dough.

 

I suspect that in general, our food is as safe as ever - if not safer. We just know more about every little glitch.

 

Mary

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Some excerpts from the article I linked to:

In 2001, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision accepting the company’s argument that, because salmonella is naturally occurring, the government cannot close a plant due to salmonella contamination.
<--This the result of a lawsuit brought by a beef processing company that said the federal government had no right to shut them down after failing three tests for Salmonella (over the allowed limit) in an 8-month period.

 

And this:

Following the court decision, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced legislation to give USDA the legal authority to shut down plants that repeatedly violate performance standards. Senate Republicans voted as a bloc to kill it, joined by two Democrats.

 

Harkin then made repeated efforts to advance legislation known as Kevin’s Law — in memory of a Colorado toddler who died in 2001 after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 — but the measures never got out of committee. Similar bills on the House side sputtered as well.

 

 

Despite USDA’s lack of enforcement muscle, in July it tightened its performance standards for poultry slaughterhouses for the first time. Under the new standard, no more than 7.5 percent of a plant’s raw chickens can test positive for salmonella bacteria — down from 20 percent previously and in line with the industry’s recent average.

 

As an incentive to comply, plants that don’t meet USDA’s standards are posted online.

 

But the tests sample whole carcasses before the birds are cut into pieces, when further cross contamination can happen.

 

This helps explain why the USDA’s salmonella contamination rate of 7.5 percent in slaughter plants is lower than what the FDA has found in retail stores. In 2009, FDA tests showed that 21 percent of the chicken breasts it sampled from grocery stores were contaminated with salmonella.

 

A 2007 industry study found unsafe temperatures in 30 percent of food transports between processors and distribution centers, and in 15 percent of food transports between distribution centers and retail stores.

 

And we wonder why there are recalls and people getting ill?

 

I agree with Mary that this has probably been happening all along. We are just more likely to hear about it now.

 

J.

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I feed mainly a sort of locally manufactured food but have my special guys on TOTW and they will stay there with me checking the bags. Unfortunately most dog food that is comparable is way out of reach for me.

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A little over a month ago, I opened a new bag of TOTW. That was a Thursday night or Friday morning, by Saturday afternoon, my husband came home to a house covered in vomit and diarrhea. By Monday, three of my dogs had the same symptoms and one was going to the vet. :( I threw away the remaining bag of food. This was about a week before the first Diamond recall (at that time it didn't even include TOTW). I knew in my gut it was the food, and there's no convincing me otherwise now. Of course the bag was long gone, so no checking...I know stuff like this is bound to happen, and probably has been all along, but still, it sucks.

 

I switched to Hi-Tek Rations (Naturals line, grain free). Supposedly made in their own plant in Georgia. So far, so good.

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We just switched Daniel to the Sweet Potato and Venison formula about a month ago. Thankfully, our bag isn't in the recall. Yet. We always empty the food into a large container too, but I cut the lot number, best buy dates, etc., from the bag and put it in with the food, just in case. I also include the receipt.

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I agree with Mary that this has probably been happening all along. We are just more likely to hear about it now.

 

J.

 

I fed Diamond about 28 years ago when most people hadn't heard of it and mostly breeders fed it. Then it became more popular. One day, I opened a bag of dog food, and it just looked different. I could tell by the kibble. I fed it, and my dogs had different stools....not bad stools...just different. No one got sick. I KNEW this was not the same dog food. I called the company and told them what I suspected. They told me that I was right....that they had grown so big over the past few months that they had to "contract out" their dog food and mine was coming from a different plant. Well, I'm pretty positive it was not the same recipe. He told me they would send me a new batch from the plant "my food used to come from". So I got a new shipment of 500 lbs. of dog food.

 

A year later, the exact same thing happened...opened up the bag and knew immediately that it was not the same food. I called again and they again sent me the "right" food. Then I switched foods and stopped dealing with them.

 

About ten years before that, a successful Springer Spaniel breeder in our area lost her entire kennel to the Dad's Dog Food fiasco where the food that was being transported in a train shifted and was exposed to some sort of toxic metal. A horrible experience.

 

Then for us there is the salmonella outbreaks from lettuce, tomatoes, tuna, ground beef, and the list goes on...not to mention anything from China.

 

And I agree, we hear more about it via the internet...but I still think there is an increase over the years.

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And I agree with the increase. I personally can't help but feel that it is a mix of the companies getting so big that they loose oversight and pride as well as employee management.

Either way, it stinks.

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