hey friends it's jess and jericho here with another cat food recall update.
this cat food recall was for a kibble manufacturing company
for potential salmonella contamination.
so this recall is with natural balance food inc.
it is a voluntary recall limited ingredient diet green pea and chicken dry cat formula
for possible salmonella contamination.
the announcement was on may 20 2021.
and it looks like so far the product names are the five pound bag and 10 pound bag
of limited ingredient diets green pea and chicken formula dry cat food.
and then the best if used by dates are 10 of march 2022.
so if you're feeding this cat food you're going to look at the bag "best if used by"
and it'll have the expiration date as well as the lot number.
this is what the front of the bag looks like.
all right so this is natural balance website let's point out a few things on the bag.
so green pea and chicken formula that's the product name.
natural balance limited ingredient diets that's the brand name.
and i love how they it's called the natural balance you know to further enforce natural.
you know that's a big marketing buzzword.
and another marketing phrase buzzword phrase is limited ingredient diets.
you know pet food manufacturers know that cat parents want limited ingredients.
they want to see as as minimal you know processed and artificial ingredients as possible.
so again this is another marketing buzzword phrase
that pet food manufacturers use to promote their products.
make it seem better than it is.
kind of distract you from looking at the back of the bag and looking at the ingredients.
because the ingredients are what matters, not the brand's name.
and not this pretty picture of the mountains.
and then here's another marketing buzzword grain free.
so grain free does not mean carb free.
there are plenty of vegetables, starchy foods, legumes that all have carbohydrates.
just because there's no grains doesn't mean that it's carbohydrate-free.
and they have a few other marketing buzzwords here they have some claims.
help support healthy skin and coat,
single animal protein source, and then fiber helps support healthy digestion.
so let's break down this label and see what actually matters.
so first what you're going to look at is the product name.
aafco has many rules regarding the product name
that actually tells you how much of the named ingredients are in the product.
so this product name the one that was recalled is green pea and chicken formula.
that word "formula" right there means that they're somewhere between 25
and 94.9 percent of green pea and chicken combined.
so the named ingredients here are green pea and chicken.
green pea comes first chicken is listed second.
so chicken actually only has to be three percent of that 25% combined.
so the minimum requirement for the second named ingredient is only three percent.
if it said chicken and green pea then that would mean chicken has a little bit more
dominance in the ingredients. and green pea would be at least three percent.
but chicken is listed as the second named ingredient.
so that means that there's only a minimum requirement of three percent.
and we go down to the ingredients we see green peas, chicken meal, chicken chicken fat preserved
with mixed tocopherols that's a version of vitamin e, pea protein, natural flavor,
salmon oil again preserved with that vitamin e resource, and then then we have flaxseed.
and the rest are basically vitamins and minerals and preservatives.
so the first ingredient is green peas right there we see there's a carbohydrate source.
the next ingredient is chicken meal and when we go to aafco's website and look up
under frequently asked questions...
it says "so as it pertains to animal source ingredients items such as meat
and bone meal and other rendered ingredients are also byproducts".
then it says do meat by products ever contain matter from disease or disabled animals?
and then it says "under the broader definition for byproducts which
includes ingredients like meat and bone meal yes
certain carcasses or parts may be rejected from use for humans and processed into animal feed".
so then we go back to the bag and we see you know single animal protein source,
natural, limited ingredients.
but then when you actually look at aafco's definitions which all pet
food manufacturers have to abide by when they create and label their products,
we understand that some of these chicken ingredients
the chicken meal specifically could be from 4d meats meaning dead disease dying and disabled.
we have no idea because aafco doesn't require
the pet food manufacturer to list the quality of these ingredients.
they just ask for the ingredients list.
so now let's take the guaranteed analysis numbers and see how many carbs are are in this product.
so we take 100 minus the protein, minus the fat,
minus the fiber, minus the moisture. ash isn't listed so i'm going to use three.
i found that that's pretty much the average across the board.
so the approximate carbs including moisture in this product is 40%.
now we have to convert that to a dry matter basis meaning remove the moisture.
because cat foods have different moisture content so you always have to convert to
a dry matter basis to compare cat foods properly.
so we take 100 minus the moisture we get 90 that's the dry matter of the entire food.
we take the carb amount including the moisture and divide it by the
dry matter of the entire food and then multiply by 100 to make it
back into your percentage and get 44% carbs on a dry matter basis.
so we go back to the ingredients we see the first ingredient is a carbohydrate source,
fifth ingredient pea protein carbohydrate source.
going back to the product name green pea and chicken formula we know based
on aafco rules that chicken only has a minimum requirement of three percent.
so green pea is certainly the dominant ingredient in this product.
we go to the about us page it says "premium by nature".
and if we go back to aafco's faq page and search for premium. "are premium pet products
better? unlike natural inorganic premium is a totally unregulated term in feed law.
whereas premium gasoline must be higher octane standards than regular gasoline,
premium pet food doesn't have any special requirements that differ from any other pet food".
so again we see marketing buzzwords.
premium to be fair isn't listed on the label but it's on the website.
so when you're searching around to do a little research you know
you're going to find these marketing buzzwords on the website as well.
not only on the pet food label.
but again all pet foods have to abide by aafco's rules and definitions
and aafco doesn't have a definition for premium.
so any cat food manufacturer can use the word
premium regardless of the quality of their products.
the biggest objection to raw feeding is bacteria salmonella.
but clearly kibble recalls are way more serious than raw recalls for salmonella.
for example this year alone 2021 over 150
kibble products were recalled due to potential salmonella contamination.
but only one raw manufacturing company had a recall and it was nine products.
so what are your objections to raw feeding?
let me know in the comments below.
can't say bacteria because clearly it's a risk in kibble too.
is it cost related? is it time related?
is it that you just don't know where to start?
is it that you tried raw in the past and your cat didn't eat it?
let me know in the comments below so i can make videos to address your concerns.
thanks for watching!