Evanger's Dog Food Recall

[GentleLake]

Evanger's Hunk of Beef products have been recalled due to contamination with Pentobarbitol, a drug that's used to euthanize pets..

 

Beef being voluntarily recalled were distributed to retail locations and sold online in the following States: Washington, California, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and were manufactured the week of June 6 – June 13, 2016.

(http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm539900.htm)

5 dogs have gotten sick and one of them has died. (http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/02/sedative-in-dog-food-evangers-issues-recall-after-dog-dies/#.WJXZM39d6TI)

[ramp]

Thanks for the Heads Up. These announcements are always troubling.

[rushdoggie]

This whole deal is very weird, but I applaud Evangers for immediately stepping up and investigating. The pugs involved in this issue are local, and its weird that no other animal got sick from the same batch and sold at the same store. Evangers has tried to communicate with teh dog's owners who have not responded. I think its important to post what Evangers says as well.

 

https://evangersdogfood.com/news-events/pug-family-updates/

[Gloria Atwater]

This whole deal is very weird, but I applaud Evangers for immediately stepping up and investigating. The pugs involved in this issue are local, and its weird that no other animal got sick from the same batch and sold at the same store. Evangers has tried to communicate with teh dog's owners who have not responded. I think its important to post what Evangers says as well.

 

https://evangersdogfood.com/news-events/pug-family-updates/

 

 

Very interesting .... So really, the only "proof" we have of contaminated food is a complaint from dog owners who have never communicated directly with Evangers?

[Tommy Coyote]

This was very strange. I read about this a while back. The owner said she just gave each dog a little bit from the can. All the dogs got sick very quickly. And one died.

 

I suppose it is possible the someone contaminated only that one can. But there have been no other complaints and most of the food has been eaten by now.

[GentleLake]

I was just posting the recall notice for informational purposes.

 

I don't pretend to know anything other than what I've read, but here's an interesting rebuttal to Evanger's statements: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/02/deadly-barbiturates-preceded-by-9-years-of-pet-food-problems/#.WJtJXX9d6TK

[Tommy Coyote]

Wow. Thank you. Interesting. I don't buy Evanger's but this is good to know.

[Sue R]

My dog food store owner, whom I trust implicitly, has not and will not carry Evanger's or any brand that might be co-processed with it, for several reasons that involve ethical issues. Period.

[gcv-border]

My dog food store owner, whom I trust implicitly, has not and will not carry Evanger's or any brand that might be co-processed with it, for several reasons that involve ethical issues. Period.

Where is Evanger's processed and what brands are co-processed with it? This sounds like they do not have their own manufacturing plant?

[Smalahundur]

Very strange. Makes one wonder if Evanger's producer has nasty enemies.

You need quite a high dose of pentobarbital orally to kill even a relatively small dog , especially instantly. Suspicious case if you ask me.

[Sue R]

 

Where is Evanger's processed and what brands are co-processed with it? This sounds like they do not have their own manufacturing plant?

 

A number of brands do not have their own plant. As for Evanger's, Whole Dog Journal lists it as "co-packed in Texas" (this was the listing from 2015, in the current issue) as are a couple of other brands (Nature's Select and Sport Dog Food - neither of which is identified as being packed at the same location so it can't be said that they are) in the listing. Of course, there are many other brands that might be co-packed at the same location.

 

 

So, the short answer is, I don't know which other brands are co-packed with Evanger's.

[Mark Billadeau]

The recommended euthanasia injection dose for a cow, if evenly distributed within the cow, is at the oral ld50 for dogs; however the amount of the injectable pentobarbital euthanasia drug needed to kill a cow is 110ml per 1000lbs of body weight. If a dog ate its body weight worth of tainted beef it would get the ld50 dose. A cow injected with that much pentobarbital would not be able to walk past a usda inspector to enter the kill room at a usda processing plant.

 

We have not yet heard everything about this incident.

[D'Elle]

Apparently, there was enough of the drug to kill a pug. Since it was found in unopened cans both at the pug's home and at the store, it was in the food. Theory is one thing, what actually happens is often something else. I highly doubt that anyone would kill their own dog in order to get some dog food company in trouble. And how would they get the drug into unopened cans in the store? It seems ridiculous to me to be skeptical about this, especially as the company has been in trouble for years for bad practices of one kind or another.

[Mark Billadeau]

I'm not saying the owner killed her own dog, I'm saying the food manufacturer blaming it on contaminated beef (euthanized cow) doesn't add up in terms of the necessary leathal dose of pentobarbital in the context of how much the owner said she fed her dogs.

 

Go read about how canned food is manufactured and then tell us how just a few cans from a large batch were contaminated (lack of other reported dead dogs suggests limited number of tainted cans).

 

Most of the available information does not support contaminated ingredients.

[Tommy Coyote]

I didn't realize they found the drug in other cans. I thought it was just the one. That sounds like someone intended to poison the food-like the old Tylenol poisoning scare way back when.

[Mark Billadeau]

The information on tainted unopened cans comes from a blog post where the author is reporting information they said was relayed to them by the FDA testing lab when they were seeking additional information on this case.

 

For argument sake I am taking this information at face value

[Tommy Coyote]

Whole Dog Journal has a long article on this. This whole case us very odd.

[Sue R]

Yes, very odd. The "facts" just don'the seem consistent. I think there's more to this than what's been said so far.

[smugg254]

Thank you for the information, really appreciate.

[Gloria Atwater]

I'm still baffled by this whole thing. The toxocology report linked above says it found pentobarbitol "in the feed," but that is followed by the caveat, "If this sample came directly from a can." So was this test done on food from the can or from the feed found in the dog's stomach contents?

Nor can I find any definitive test results from any other cans. The FDA announcement speaks of pento in "one lot" of food, but Evanger's statement says that NO other cans have tested positive for pentobarbitol and no other households have weighed in with complains and no other dogs are known to have gotten sick.

The whole thing is just weird. One family of dogs gets sick but no others. Evanger's says the tests of unopened cans came up with nothing. And according to them, the only positive test is related to the dog that died. I'm not entirely clear if the "feed" tested was from the same can the dog ingested, or from the stomach of the dog itself. But it continues to seem as if there was only the one incident and possibly only one can.

Tragic and weird.

~ Gloria

[Sue R]

And now there is another brand's "Shreds of Beef" recalled due to the same thing? Supposedly? I really wonder what's going on. This does not sound like contamination at the plant unless *someone* is contaminating just one (or a very few) cans of food (and it's at the same plant). Or is something happening at the homes of the these dogs? This just does not make sense.

[Mark Billadeau]

Two recalls of canned food for pentobarbital contamination for two different companies owned by the same family with identical corporate headquarter addresses (and suspected shared manufacturing plant). The most recent recall is for food manufactured in 2015. Why would the companies suspect contamination of a lot made in 2015 when the first recall is for food produced in June 2016?

[GentleLake]

And now there is another brand's "Shreds of Beef" recalled due to the same thing?

 

What brand is that? I did a search and can't find anything with that name.

 

I did look on Dog Food Advisor's recall page and see that Against the Grain Pulled Beef with Gravy Dinner for Dogs was recalled "because it may be contaminated with pentobarbital. (http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-recall/against-the-grain-dog-food-recall/).

 

This company is owned by children of Evanger's owners and the recalled food came from the same suppliers, though none that was tested was contaminated according to the Chicago Tribune. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-pet-food-recall-0216-biz-20170215-story.html)

 

ETA: There have been 3 other recalls of canned dog food according to Dog Food Advisor since the Evanger's recall, but those were all for possible metal contamination.

[Tommy Coyote]

And even odder is that pentobarbital is very strictly controlled.

 

I don't know how other vet clinics handle these drugs but I have to buy phenobarbital and it is kept in a locked safe until I get there to pick it up.

[Sue R]

That's it, "pulled" beef.