Three of the most dreaded words among the animal loving community are pet food recall. No one wants to be the last to know about a recall, but we’re all busy. It’s hard to know how to keep up with recalls, especially when they seem to pop up on Friday evenings at 5pm when we’re occupied with other things, making them slide under our radar until a cat is sick.
Ways to Get Pet Food Recall News Early
Notifications on your Phone from the AVMA
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) maintains the @AVMARecallWatch Twitter account, which is usually among the earliest sources to report recalls. You can follow them on Twitter and read their updates there. For faster notification, you can set up Twitter to send an SMS message to your account every time there is a tweet posting a recall to that Twitter account. Make sure your phone is set up with Twitter (while logged into Twitter, under the gear menu at the top right of the Twitter site, choose Settings > Mobile). Then, on the @AVMARecallWatch Twitter page, click the gear above their timeline and select Turn on notifications. That’s it. Recall news sent straight to your phone.
Email updates from the FDA
Many people consider the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) to include a complete list of all recalls, but that isn’t true. When questioned about a recall missing from their list last year, they explained via email, “We don’t post all recalls. As our main FDA Recalls page states: ‘FDA works with industry and our state partners to publish press releases and other public notices about recalls that may potentially present a significant or serious risk to the consumer or user of the product. Not all recalls have press releases or are posted on this page.'”
Still, the FDA is a valuable resource for recall information, and you can get notices of new updates to their site via email by visiting the FDA CVM page and clicking the Get e-mail updates when this information changes hyperlink. You will receive emails about recalls posted to the FDA CVM site, as well as other related information, such as drug approvals, policy changes, and grant program requests.
Email Updates from Talkwalker Alerts from around the Web
You can also set up a Talkwalker alert to send you news content related to a topic. this delivers information directly to your email inbox, either daily or as it finds new instances of your search term. One downside of this is that news organizations and others in their haste to get the word out about a recall tend to copy basic recall information and paste it without adding much, if any, content, resulting in getting alerts for the exact same information multiple times from different sources.
What Not to Do
As much as we all love the convenience of the big-box pet food stores, don’t count on them to know the latest on pet food recalls. It isn’t their fault. Notification goes from manufacturers to the corporation and then filters down to the individual stores. This is why you may have heard stories of people going into the stores and finding recalled product still on the shelves the day or two after a recall is announced, especially when the recall happens on a Friday or weekend. That process takes time. Small, specialty pet food retailers tend to get the news faster, if only because the word doesn’t have to filter through extra intermediaries at a corporate level.
Also, don’t rely on a news source on Facebook to bring the news to your attention. Even if a Facebook page posts every recall promptly, the algorithms that determine what displays in your news feed currently penalize pages on Facebook so that it’s not safe to rely on all of their posts showing up in your news feed. Unless you plan to visit a page daily to check for new news, you are probably better off finding another way to bring recall news to your attention so that you don’t miss it.
Finally, don’t panic! Being a knowledgeable consumer is your best defense against learning about a pet food recall the hard way. Using some of the tools available to you to make sure you hear about recalls promptly can help keep your pet healthy.
Sparkle says
Thanks for this valuable information – that is awesome, being able to have recalls sent right to your phone!
Maxwell, Faraday & Allie says
We agree completely – thanks for this info!
The Swiss Cats says
We don’t know if such alerts exists in Switzerland (it certainly does, but we didn’t search until today !), but it’s great ! Some brands are active on Twitter ; if you are on Twitter too, it could be a good way to be informed about brands you use daily. Purrs
Fur Everywhere says
This is really great information for pet owners! I’m going to share on Twitter so that others can learn about the resources available to them, too.
madi and mom says
THANK YOU FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT POST.
HUGS MADI YOUR BFFF
Hannah and Lucy says
We’ve never seen a notice about recalling cat food, but we are very discerning and Mum soon learned to only buy us only the flavours we like.
Luv Hannah and Lucy xx xx
Melissa & Truffles says
This is wonderful information. When the BIG recall happened several years back I was between cats at the time and think I would have been a basketcase.
Angel AbbyGrace says
What a great post! We wholeheartedly believe being your own “watchdog” …er “watchcat” is the best line of defense!
William says
Thanks for sharing this is great info!
Marg says
Good information. We just have to be alert and look for the recalls. Thanks for all the links. Have a great day.
The Island Cats says
This is some great info! We’ll have the mom set up those alerts.
Whisppy says
Very interesting. We’ll have to check out the alerts. 🙂
Brian Frum says
That was a bunch of good info! We always forget about doing the text alert thing.
Ellen Pilch says
Thank you for sharing this great information- what a great idea to get recalls sent directly to our phones.
Susan and the gang from Life with Dogs and Cats says
Great advice to get pet food recalls fast!
–Purrs (and wags) from Life with Dogs and Cats
Cathy Keisha says
Great info! I learn about recalls from my FB groups like CWB cos you guys know everything. MOL!
Kitties Blue says
Thanks for an excellent post with very useful information. XO, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Calista Jo
Jen Jelly says
This is a great post, thanks for sharing. Usually I just have a moment of panic when I see another headline regarding pet food recalls. It’s so nice with technology today to be able to stay up to date with alerts like these.
Marty the Manx says
Thanks so much for the information guys!
Deztinee High says
Pawsum posty. Wees hav an RSS feed on da bottom of meez blog dat lists wecalls fwum da poison contwol center.
Luv ya’
Dezi
Mark says
It’s helpful and informative.I always have a dilemma regarding my cat foods. What to feed and what not to.But it’s nice to know that we are on right track to feed our felines. ❤❤❤