Is the FDA Supporting Dry Cat Food?

There are signs that the federal agency charged with protecting the health of the public and their pets, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is acting in a biased way when reporting on bacterial contamination of pet food at pet shops.

FDA

If this is true, is it because they are being lobbied (hassled to put it crudely) by the pet food manufacturers? It wouldn’t surprise me because nowadays there is a lot of information on the internet which explains the ins and outs of cat food. Cat owners are much better informed than they used to be and dry cat food is criticised regularly for its inadequacies.

Obviously the FDA has to act in a completely neutral manner. How else can they do their job properly? But a person ‘in the know’ and with connections within the pet food business, Susan Thixton, states the following:

When FDA representatives go into pet stores to inspect the food they employ sloppy procedures. For example, they reuse sample containers, don’t wear sterile gloves, don’t use a sterile tool to remove a pet food sample and puncture packaging to obtain a sample rather than open the product properly.

Using these apparently sloppy techniques the FDA has come up with a very low incidence of Salmonella contamination of 1 case in 250 samples for dry pet food. In contrast, of 196 raw pet food samples there were 15 positives for Salmonella and 32 positives for Listeria.

These figures are not reflected in pet food recall data for the past five years. For raw food there were 27 recalls for bacteria contamination and for dry pet food the number is 78.

Thixton recommends that pet store owners keep an eye on FDA inspectors the next time they visit their store.  If needs must she suggests that the retailers film the activities of the inspectors.

Is something fishy going on? Perhaps I am being too skeptical and the title is deliberately provocative. I don’t trust government agencies. They have power over the success and failure of products and businesses and are therefore open to lobbying and worse by manufacturers. This risk applies to all government agencies.

Wash hands after handling dry pet food
Wash hands after handling dry pet food.

Associated: Vets underreport to the FDA.

2 thoughts on “Is the FDA Supporting Dry Cat Food?”

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. Thanks for the information, I support the fact that you need to monitor the quality of feed and packaging and agree that FDA is not working correctly. Perhaps it is worth creating another organization to control the production of animal feed. I also think that you need to use only environmentally friendly packaging https://mcdonaldpaper.com/eco-friendly ,which will positively affect the safety of feed and of course the environment.

  3. A new report on Susan’s site TruthAboutPetFood has reported Maryland Dept of Ag. has issued a STOP SALE on Stella and Chewys freeze dried chicken #111-5 due to finding Listeria in samples. The site offers many details about this, and over 29 responses from readers.

    Many believe that this is a “set up”, and don’t trust the findings, although others report dogs getting sick after eating.

    If anyone uses this pet food, avoid touching it, and bag it up. I don’t think it should be thrown away because it’s evidence, which could be valuable later on.

    If I were throwing it away, I think it’d put it in the toilet, so no other animals might accidentally get into it.

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