In the face of the recent slew of pet food recalls, you may be asking what is going on in the industry. The answer may surprise you.
According to an article that appeared in the February 15 edition of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) pet food recalls are virtually unchanged year in and year out. What has changed is the media attention paid to these recalls.
In an article written by Katie Burns titled Recalls of Pet Food Rise on the Radar, She states that, "Recalls of pet food are not increasing, but awareness of them might be." She goes on to note that the primary contaminant driving these recalls is "Salmonella contamination, which could pose more of a threat to human health than to animal health."
According to Dr. McChesney PhD director of the Office of Surveillance and Compliance at the Food and Drug Administration, the number of US firms that recall pet food is fairly constant from year to year.
Dr. McChesney believes that there has been increased public awareness and press coverage of pet food recalls in recent years.
The most common contaminant, Salmonella poses little risk to pets, but poses a health risk to pet parents handling the food. There have been outbreaks of Salmonellosis in humans caused by contaminated pet foods, however, according to research conducted in 2011, no cases of Salmonellosis have been found in dogs from contaminated commercial foods.
The writer of the 2011 research on Salmonella contamination in pet foods (JAVMA June 2011), Dr. Kate KuKanich assistant professor of small animal internal medicine at Kansas State found confirmed cases of Salmonellosis only in dogs fed a raw home cooked diet.
Pet food, the article concludes, has a very good safety record, and the FDA is moving ahead with plans to make it even safer, placing stricter safety rules in place.
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