FDA Inspection Report Smuckers Pet Food – Truth about Pet Food

Per FDA Freedom of Information Act documents, Smuckers pet food repeatedly failed to ‘implement nutrient toxicity preventative controls’. The documents received from FDA also disclose another potential concern.

Background information: The J.M. Smucker company issued 3 canned cat food recalls in less than 2 years, all 3 for similar manufacturing errors. In December 2018, Smucker recalled 9Lives cat food for low levels of thiamine (vitamin supplement). In December 2019, Smucker recalled multiple varieties of Special Kitty cat food for excess choline cloride (supplement). And in July 2020, Smucker recalled Natural Balance cat food for excess choline chloride (supplement).

All three recalls were due to insufficient or excess supplements – errors made by this manufacturer adding supplements to the pet food.

We submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to FDA following the December 2019 Smucker Special Kitty cat food recall and again following the July 2020 Smucker Natural Balance recall asking for the manufacturing plant inspection report and any consumer complaints related to these recalls. (After a pet food issues a recall, FDA performs an inspection to document the problems, and perform a trace forward and trace backwards investigation to assure all adulterated pet food has been removed from store shelves.).

The FDA did not provide any information regarding the 3rd recall – Natural Balance – (even though it was requested), but the agency did provide one consumer complaint, the inspection report, and Smucker’s response to the inspection report related to the 2nd recall, Special Kitty.

FDA inspected the Pennsylvania Smuckers pet food plant from 12/16/2019 to 1/9/2020.

The FDA inspection report stated in part:

“You did not identify and implement preventive controls to ensure that any hazards requiring a preventive control are significantly minimized or prevented.

This is a repeat observation from the previous inspection conducted on 03/15/2019.

Specifically, you did not implement Preventive Controls outlined in your Food Safety Plan for the Hazard: Nutrient Toxicity, which you identified as a hazard requiring a Process Control for your canned cat and dog foods you produced, which includes Special Kitty brand Mixed Grill Pate lot # 92630830B on 09/20/2019.”

The December 2019 inspection found that Smuckers repeated the same exact manufacturing failure FDA found during inspection (after the first recall) 9 months earlier. The pet food manufacturer failed to implement safety requirements for supplements added to their pet foods.

Smuckers “respectfully” disagreed with FDA. The FOIA document of Smuckers response to FDA stated they believe they did not fail to implement a safety control “because we considered an event of this sort to be very unlikely to occur.” The Smuckers response document is heavily redacted, but it appears that the pet food company didn’t believe the supplement choline chloride was a risk; “while this hazard could, in an extreme case, cause a serious adverse health effect, the hazard is very unlikely to occur.”

But…there was a serious health effect to (at least) 4 cats provided in the FOIA documents. “One of the cats started exhibiting symptoms of vomiting,vocalizing, hyper salivation, wobbling/ataxia, tremors/seizure-like activity less than 12 hours after the morning ingestion of cat food.”

A suspicious twist…

The FOIA documents stated all four sick cats were tested for “ethylene glycol toxicity” (antifreeze) and all cats tested positive. As it turns out, the pet food supplement choline chloride is frequently combined with ethylene glycol to produce industrial solvents.

This twist makes us wonder if Smuckers sourced a less expensive industrial grade of choline chloride that could have contained ethylene glycol instead of a feed grade choline chloride. Or perhaps the ingredient supplier provided the pet food an industrial grade of the ingredient instead of a feed grade. Unfortunately, the FDA did not appear to investigate this possibility at all. There is no information within the documents the agency provided disclosing the grade of the supplement used in the pet food or any information the FDA investigated the ingredient supplier.

Many supplements used in pet food are available in human grade, feed grade and/or industrial grade. Human grade pet foods are required to use only human grade supplements. Feed grade pet foods could include human grade supplements, but are not required to. Feed grade pet foods should not source industrial grade supplements, however there is little to no regulatory oversight of this as exampled by this FDA investigation.

And unfortunately, no pet owner is informed what grade of ingredients are used in any feed grade pet food.

To read the FDA inspection report of the Smuckers plant Click Here.

To read the Smuckers response to FDA Click Here.

And to read the adverse event report of the Special Kitty cat food Click Here.

Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
TruthaboutPetFood.com
Association for Truth in Pet Food

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