Some things never change: A pet-food recall … on a Friday night
By Gina Spadafori
September 12, 2008
Not just any Friday night, either, but one when a major hurricane is threatening a major city. Do you think maybe we weren’t supposed to notice? Well, we did:
FRANKLIN, Tenn., Sept 12, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Mars Petcare US Announces Nationwide Voluntary Recall
Today, Mars Petcare US announced a voluntary recall of products manufactured at its Everson, Pennsylvania facility. The pet food is being voluntarily recalled because of potential contamination with Salmonella serotype Schwarzengrund. This voluntary recall only affects the United States.
[...]
The company stopped production at the Everson facility on July 29, 2008 when it was alerted of a possible link between dry pet food produced at the plant and two isolated cases of people infected with Salmonella Schwarzengrund.
Even though no direct link between product produced at Everson and human or pet illness has been made, Mars Petcare US is taking precautionary action to protect pets and their owners by announcing a voluntary recall of all products produced at the Everson facility beginning February 18, 2008 until July 29, 2008 when we stopped production.
Here’s the rest. When will companies ever learn that most of us understand that manufacturing has a lot of moving parts, and it’s very possible for something to go wrong. Stuff happens, even to good companies.
What we cannot understand is a company not trying harder to get the word out when that happens. The Friday night dump-and-run release does not earn you any points with your customers, current or potential. Dumping bad news when the media is looking elsewhere is a tradition as old as newspapers. But when the bad news involves food, that’s just not acceptable.
Credit where credit is due department: The FDA just issued the release on the recall. On a Saturday. This is a huge improvement from their performance during the rolling recalls, when we often knew what had been recalled before they did and it could take a day or two (business days!) for them to catch up.
I am still NOT LETTING GO of the invective one of my vets flung at me upon discovering that I was — gasp — feeding raw.
Haven’t you ever heard of Salmonella?! he demanded.
At the time, all I had to throw back at him was aflatoxin.
Later, of course, it was “melamime.”
Now it’s his dread Mob Enforcer, Sal Monella, right there in the stinkin’ kibble.
And huge surprise, this is the same bacterial contamination that I was hearing about midsummer — and NOW they post a recall?
Comment by H. Houlahan — September 12, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
Sal Monella … careful there. Some of us are Italian, you know … :)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — September 12, 2008 @ 8:09 pm
I have this strange obsession of typing ‘pet food recall’ into Google news at least once a day. I guess there’s a reason for it. *sigh*
Comment by Therese — September 12, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
Sal Monella … careful there. Some of us are Italian, you know … :)
Yeah, and some of us sleep with ‘em and are married to their whole fam damilies. Not just Italian — Sicilian. Nothing scares me any longer. Is there a word in Italian for shicksa?
Careful or I’ll send you the unredacted Three Little Pigs story that I got today from my Aunt-In-Law, the Biazzo who was born a Gulino but takes after the Occhipintis. And is, come to think, married to one Sal and Great-Auntie to another. (This story is, I have to admit, a step above the usual Aunt-In-Law email glurge.)
Anyway, don’t mess with those Monellas, most especially the South Hackensack Monellas. Sal and his brother Joey will kick you in the gut, and if you don’t shape up, see to it that you sleep with the (frozen, Chinese) fishes.
Comment by H. Houlahan — September 12, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
Mars, again?
Didn’t they have a recall not too long ago?
Comment by Marcy — September 13, 2008 @ 12:35 am
http://www.itchmo.com/pennsylv.....-food-2212
http://www.reuters.com/article.....7120080515
These two links from same plant…different dates…same problems…
Comment by Carol V — September 13, 2008 @ 4:15 am
Yeah, and some of us sleep with ‘em and are married to their whole fam damilies. Not just Italian — Sicilian. Nothing scares me any longer. Is there a word in Italian for shicksa?
Based on my own family’s experience, I’d say that the Sicilian word for shicksa is “Irish.” :)
Comment by Lis — September 13, 2008 @ 4:43 am
http://itchmoforums.com/news-r.....8#msg86698
some good venting going on here too…
Comment by Carol V — September 13, 2008 @ 4:54 am
My opinion: Mars has had so much negative posted online regarding the possible link between Nutro and pet illnesses/deaths, they are desperate to bury anything like a “real” recall.
Comment by slt — September 13, 2008 @ 5:36 am
31 states involved. Walmart and Sam’s Club brands are included.
Did anyone notice that the homepage for Mars Pet Care is marspetcare dot com and that the recall page goes to petcare dot mars dot com. Wouldn’t this make it more difficult for a customer to find out info?
Here’s the whole list of foods recalled so far
http://www.petcare.mars.com/
Comment by dontfeedmepoisonedpetfood — September 13, 2008 @ 6:29 am
Based on my own family’s experience, I’d say that the Sicilian word for shicksa is “Irish.” :)
Comment by Lis — September 13, 2008 @ 4:43 am
Oh ha! You got that right!
Gina
Comment by Gina Spadafori — September 13, 2008 @ 6:47 am
Careful on the Italian…”Spadafori” isn’t exactly Anglo. ;-)
On the raw feeding…invectives flung at clients on the raw deal usually come from a good place…too bad it’s largely a misinformed one. I consider it a great teaching opportunity—not a reason to client bash.
Comment by Dr Patty Khuly — September 13, 2008 @ 8:29 am
I am beyond pissed at this for the same reason mentioned in the first post. Why late Friday? Oh wait, I know.
Furthermore, why not announce if they’ve tested any of the recalled bags? It’s not rocket science.
I do know if 2 unrelated humans get salmonella and they investigated enough to figure out that both fed their pets Mars foods, this has been ongoing for weeks. So don’t give me that crap that this was “precautionary”.
The only good news for pet lovers in all this is that salmonella can pose serious threats to certain young, old, immune compromised animals, but otherwise healthy adults generally shake it off.
The bad news for these corporate sh*theads is that this time there’s a huge risk for human tansmission. They don’t care if pets die, because there’s not much money to be made in liability. But humans?
I would encourage everyone to NOT return what you have right away. You can always do it in a couple weeks. But I want to see how this shakes out before I return my only proof that I had some of this stuff.
Also, sorry to sound crabby, but the raw feeding debate doesn’t belong here.
Comment by Kelly Quinn — September 13, 2008 @ 8:52 am
Also, sorry to sound crabby, but the raw feeding debate doesn’t belong here.
Comment by Kelly Quinn — September 13, 2008 @ 8:52 am
We try not to tell readers where to go with the debate.
But let me make this point, AGAIN:
Throughout the pet-food recall, we asserted again and again that this wasn’t about home-prepared vs. commercial. We resisted calls from raw feeders to make that part of what we wrote about.
We have asserted all along that the VERY MINIMUM people should be able to expect from a food — sold for people or for pets, doesn’t matter, no matter where it’s sold or the price it’s sold for — is that IT SHOULD NOT CAUSE ILLNESS OR DEATH.
That’s the bottom line here. The safety of the food-supply system, not the home prepared vs. commercial debate.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — September 13, 2008 @ 9:22 am
“We have asserted all along that the VERY MINIMUM people should be able to expect from a food — sold for people or for pets, doesn’t matter, no matter where it’s sold or the price it’s sold for — is that IT SHOULD NOT CAUSE ILLNESS OR DEATH.”
Absolutely!!! Shouldn’t be this hard to achieve.
Comment by kb — September 13, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
I think the Friday night press releases have as much to do with the stock market as they do with pet owners. The stock market this weekend has its attention on something else too; Lehman’s and other players in the financial markets trying to save their hides. That fiasco will probably overshadow negative news regarding Mars.
As I recall, there was a lot of stock dumped by insiders prior to the last round of pet food recalls.
Comment by Mary — September 13, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
I’m curious about how these sort of recalls happen…I mean, we know that pet food companies are not required to test each product for things like Salmonella (AAFCO only gives quality control/testing “guidelines” which, are entirely voluntary) ….so, did Mars just run an annual sampling test or receive some complaints from consumers or what?
Also, are there “allowable tolerance levels” of salmonella in pet foods like there are in certain human foods? If so, I wonder what the levels are and what - if anything - we know about how safe or unsafe those levels are to pets or to the people handling the pet food.
Comment by Joy — September 13, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
I wonder if this story from August in Atlanta regarding the Special kitty kibble has anything to do with the current recall…??
http://www.wsbtv.com/video/17184047/index.html
Comment by Carol V — September 13, 2008 @ 4:15 pm
I agree, Joy. We can’t even guarantee the absence of salmonella in human food, and it would be unrealistic to expect perfection.
But what little I know about this is the same old story of knowing more than they release. It’s not just the Friday pm thing - the investigation has been going on for weeks.
And their press release was worthless. Did they test the bags eaten by the cats of the 2 victims? How can you leave that out of the story?
The Atlanta thing is interesting but it might be something else. For one thing, it’s not manufactured at the same plant. They could have two totally separate problems.
Comment by Missyjax — September 15, 2008 @ 6:30 am
according to one of the cat’s owner..his food is involved…a poster at itchmo has made contact with him and he is a member there as well..I guess time will tell…
http://itchmoforums.com/your-p.....1#msg86851
Comment by Carol V — September 15, 2008 @ 3:34 pm