test

There are a couple of new voluntary recalls because of Salmonella contamination of pet diets or treats. Both are US products, and the recalls were posted on the FDA website just before (Canadian) Thanksgiving.

One recall is for possible Salmonella-health risk associated with a raw frozen beef dog food from Raw Bistro Pet Fare (MN). That’s not very noteworthy, since Salmonella contamination of raw diets is common. Focusing on the odd batch of food with known contamination when we know that a large percentage of these diets at retail are actually contaminated doesn’t really help much (but the recall is still worthwhile). It’s fair to assume that any raw diet that’s not been high pressure pasteurized is harbouring Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria and/or other pathogens. High pressure pasteurized diets are much lower risk, but not zero risk.

The other recall is for possible Salmonella contamination of specific lots of Raw Dog Barkery, BellePepper Cats, and Kanu Pets brand freeze dried treats from Foodynamics (WI). Recalls of pet treats in particular are worth discussing, since raw animal-based treats are commonly contaminated, but people often don’t often think about them as “raw” unless the word is right in the name (which it often isn’t). You can find dried or freeze dried treats made of pretty much any animal part (e.g. liver treats, rawhides, hearts, pig ears, bully sticks) in most pet stores. If there was no cooking step in preparing the treat, it should be considered high risk for contamination with Salmonella and other bacteria (and raw poultry-based treats can also be a risk for contamination with H5N1 influenza virus in some regions theses days).

As opposed to diets, treats are not often marketed as raw or prominently labelled as raw. People may assume that dried treats have been cooked. They may also erroneously assume that freeze drying eliminates bacterial contamination (when in fact freeze drying is an excellent way of preserving bacteria for long term storage). Some of these treats, like liver treats, are even common in veterinary clinics, because even there people may not make the connection with any risk.

I’ll give a shout out to Fooddynamics for the voluntary recall for their freeze-dried treats in this case. Although kudos shouldn’t we warranted, we’ve seen pet food companies other pet food companies ignore and deflect in response to contamination of their products, instead of doing the responsible thing by issuing a recall, so it’s good to this company doing the right thing.

Impressively, the FDA reported that “Foodynamics successfully traced 100% of the product distribution within hours of the recall notice and has contacted all direct customers. No adverse health effects have been reported in pets or humans to date.” Presumably these are pretty small production lots and sales are online so the company can easily trace who bought what. Still, it’s impressive to see that a company willing and able to track down all purchasers.

It’s also nice to see that “Foodynamics has ceased the production and distribution of the product while it works with the FDA to continue its investigation into what caused the problem.” Again, that shouldn’t be surprising or encouraging, but we’ve seen so much “deny and deflect” by other companies that it’s refreshing to see this type of response.

It was also noteworthy that contamination in both cases was detected through routine FDA surveillance, not in response to animals or people getting sick. That means we got lucky to some degree, since only a miniscule percentage of retail products are tested, but it also shows that surveillance can help prevent problems in two ways:

  • They got contaminated food off the market.
  • It led to an investigation that will hopefully reduce the risk of future problems for the company, if the investigation identifies anything that can be improved.

However, with raw diets, there may not be a lot the company can do. The critical control point is cooking, and if they don’t do that by nature of the product being sold raw, then there’s always going to be a risk of contamination of the final product. Good manufacturing practices can help reduce cross contamination and ongoing contamination from equipment, but can’t prevent Salmonella contamination in the ingredients themselves. If Salmonella comes in and products aren’t cooked, it’s going to come out with the final product.

So, there’s a mix of good and bad in this scenario. Ultimately, there’s still the question of risk from treats and how to reduce said risk.

  • Should we avoid treats? No.
  • Should we avoid raw treats? Yes.

Determining whether a treat is raw can be a challenge for the average consumer:

  • If the label says “raw” then it’s obvious.
  • If the product is freeze-dried, there’s unlikely a cooking step involved, so assume it is raw.
  • If the treat looks like a piece of an animal (e.g. pig ear) and it doesn’t say it was cooked, odds are it was just dried; treat these as raw too.
  • If the product looks like a kibble or other non-anatomical shape, they were probably extruded / cooked and are therefore lower risk (though still not zero based on the odd chance contamination occurs after the cooking step).