With all the dog food recalls in the news, you have to wonder…are there any brands that have never been recalled? The dog food brand you choose to feed your dog can be vitally important to the health of your pet. It turns out when things go wrong with pet food things can go very wrong. In late 2018/early 2019, the FDA issued a recall on nearly a dozen dog food brands for elevated Vitamin D levels in dry dog foods. These dog foods tested at 70x the normal levels of Vitamin D, such great quantities that it caused Vitamin D toxicity in some dogs.
In an even more extreme set of cases, in 2007 over 5,000 pet products were recalled across 100 pet food brands after contaminated ingredients were used from China. The contaminated ingredients caused kidney failure in dogs and cats, with thousands of them dying as a result.
While most recalls aren’t that extreme, it’s not uncommon for there to be dozens of recalls every year for various issues with dog food. We decided to take a look for dog food brands that have a great track record with recalls – no recalls on record, ever. Here’s what we came up with as our top dog food brands across different kinds of dog food with no recalls and great safety standards.
Dry Dog Food – Acana
If you look through the history of a lot of dog food recalls you’ll find that the issues often come down to bad suppliers or a manufacturing process that isn’t completely controlled by the brand that’s putting their name of the label. For that reason, Acana is the most trustworthy name in dry dog food today, often ranking amongst the most positively reviewed dog foods.
What makes Acana so special is their commitment to quality control and responsibility. For starters, they manufacture 100% of their dog food, never outsourcing to outside kitchens. They don’t have a factory in some big industrial park either. Instead they have an 85-acre plot of farmland in Kentucky that houses their kitchens that produces all of their dog food.
Acana sources all of their ingredients locally with the only methods of preservatives used being refrigeration or freezing – only fresh ingredients make the cut. What’s also important is that Acana only produces their own dog foods in their facilities, so they’re never dealing with lower quality ingredients that could cross-contaminate their products. It’s no surprise then that Acana has never had a recall in over 25 years of business.
Fresh Dog Food – NomNomNow (Delivered to your door).
NomNomNow is a newer dog food startup in the dog food delivery space. They’ve been in operation since 2015 shipping freshly made dog food direct to your door. While they don’t have as long as a track record as many other dog food brands due to the new nature of the space, but so far they’ve been great.
What gives us reason to really praise NomNomNow is that they too fully own and control the kitchens that they make their dog food in. They started with a facility it Pittsburg, California and in 2019 they expanded to a second location in Nashville which will help them better serve all their customers across the United States. By investing the time and money to grow their infrastructure and keep things under their control, it’s a sign that they take quality seriously.
Not every dog food delivery company owns and operates their own kitchens, so they can’t say what else is made in the same facility or prepared on the same equipment before the dog food was. This is a big reason why Woof Whiskers rated NomNomNow as the best-in-class dog food delivery company.
Wet Dog Food – Ziwi
For our wet dog food pick, it was pretty easy to choose Ziwi. Ziwi is a New Zealand based company that sources 100% of their ingredients from within its borders. This company also does everything the right way – ethical meat sourcing, sustainable seafood harvesting, no fillers or artificial binding agents, BPA-free cans, no grains or antibiotics, no caged animal testing, etc. Ziwi has ethics at the top of everything they do.
In the roughly 15 years Ziwi has been in business, they have never had a recall on any of their products. Just like our other top brand picks, they do all their own manufacturing to ensure product safety and quality.
Does Your Dog Food Brand Keep Safety in Mind?
Odds are you aren’t currently feeding your dogs one of the mentioned brands, which may be fine, but now would be a good time to do some research into your dog food brand and see just how much safety seems to be a top priority. Consider the following questions –
- How much of the dog food production do they control? Do they outsource production, do they own all of the factories?
- Where does your dog food company source their ingredients? Are they importing them from overseas?
- How often has the company had to recall products? You can search back to 2016 easily through this FDA page or you can try a regular Google search for a history of recalls.
With more options than ever of brands to feed your dog, it takes a bit of research on your part to make sure you’ve selected a healthy and safe option. That’s just a small price to pay for a healthy, safe dog.
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via Whisker Therapy