Voluntary Recall of One Lot of Natural Balance® Ultra Premium Chicken & Liver Paté Formula Canned Cat Food

Kflowers

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If already posted, apologies, but I just got the email

"Ingesting impacted product may cause nausea with excessive salivation, constricted pupils and poor vision, diarrhea or vomiting to more severe symptoms including difficulty walking, muscle shaking, tremors, irregular heartbeat, difficulty breathing, possible cardiac or respiratory failure and, in extreme situations, death. Pet parents are encouraged to contact their cat’s veterinarian immediately if their cat is displaying any of these symptoms. "
 

Caspers Human

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It sounds like somebody at the factory messed up! :eek:

Products like this are produced on large, automated assembly lines. Workers at the factory receive written orders (or by computer message) to make a certain amount of a given product. Then they have to set up the machinery, put all the ingredients into the dispensing machines mix them up and program them to dispense the correct amounts.

Choline chloride is an additive that goes into the batch. It's used as an essential nutrient, much like a vitamin supplement. (Even though it's not actually a vitamin.) If you read the label, you'll see it listed in the ingredients statement.

Let's say that the factory wants to make 1,000 cases of canned cat food. A worker needs to put, for example, 100 pounds of one ingredient, 50 pounds of another ingredient and so-on, into a giant mixing machine, mix it up then put it into a hopper that feeds the canning machines. The cat food is automatically canned, labeled, boxed, wrapped and put on pallets to be sent to a warehouse where it will be distributed to grocery stores for people to buy.

In one day, workers might make several batches of product on the same production line. Each batch has a specific recipe that is detailed in its accompanying work order. What happens if a worker misreads that work order and puts in the wrong amount of ingredients? What if that person put in two pounds of choline chloride when he was supposed to only put in one?

The last batch he ran might have called for two pounds but he didn't read the work order and just put in the amount he thought was right.

Oops! Recall!

Fortunately, this is the reason why mass produced products have dates and batch codes on their labels. If a problem occurs in a batch, they can track it down and get the bad product off of the store shelves before too many people use it.

Most production factories have testing and quality control departments that take a certain percentage of the product off the lines, before it gets shipped, and tests it to be sure that everything is right, before it gets into the hands of consumers. If there is a problem, quality control workers will send out a message to stop production until the problem is fixed.

It is likely that most of that bad batch got pulled out of production and this recall is just a safety measure to be sure that no bad product goes out the door. Maybe a few cases got shipped but likely not.

Factories do things like this all the time. This is how business gets done, these days.
I have worked in factories like this. I've seen it, first hand. Let me tell you... People who work in production factories take it as seriously as a heart attack!

I've seen workers get chewed out for sneezing but not stepping off the assembly line!
They probably wear gloves, masks and full length smocks or aprons but, still, if somebody has to sneeze, they have to step away from the line. Afterward, they are required to change their masks and gloves or, possibly, wash with sanitizer solution.

I'll bet you that whoever made this mistake probably got called into the front office and got a nasty @$$ chewing... that is assuming that they didn't get fired on the spot.

Bottom line: Problems like this happen, occasionally, but 99% of the time, they get caught before any product goes out the door. It may sound bad but we should look at this as a good thing because people are watching out and doing things to resolve them.

Yes, if you have some of this product and the date/batch codes match up, DO take it back to the store and get a refund but don't worry too much. That's why we have the recall system in place, to begin with. :)

I know because I used to work in a place that makes a nationally distributed brand of frozen pizzas that many of you might recognize.
 

tarasgirl06

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I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something!! Thought it might be another version - you never know.
TYSM for catching that and alerting me, FeebysOwner FeebysOwner . I troll the news and try to be proactive on stuff like this because of course it can save precious lives. That's a food I used to buy, too.
 

Dianainthebin

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I came here looking to see if anyone was affected by this food, because I was, but I cannot find anyone else.
On june 21st, I fed my 2 cats and one was ill within 1.5 hours, the other started an while later.
The first one got better after 3 hours, but the other did not. After visiting the vet I wrote to natural balance.
Several emails later and a couple calls, they stated the food had been on the shelves for 9 months with no other issues, they refunded my money for the remaining food I had. That was june 29.
The disturbing part...I found out today about the recall from my sister! They never contacted me in the 4 days since they did the recall.

When did they know about the problem?
Why did they not know there was an issue when I first inquired?
Was it my inquiry that made them check?
I assume they did not contact me for monetary reasons

Anyone else out there!
 

tarasgirl06

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I came here looking to see if anyone was affected by this food, because I was, but I cannot find anyone else.
On june 21st, I fed my 2 cats and one was ill within 1.5 hours, the other started an while later.
The first one got better after 3 hours, but the other did not. After visiting the vet I wrote to natural balance.
Several emails later and a couple calls, they stated the food had been on the shelves for 9 months with no other issues, they refunded my money for the remaining food I had. That was june 29.
The disturbing part...I found out today about the recall from my sister! They never contacted me in the 4 days since they did the recall.

When did they know about the problem?
Why did they not know there was an issue when I first inquired?
Was it my inquiry that made them check?
I assume they did not contact me for monetary reasons

Anyone else out there!
My heartfelt *Prayers* for you and your loved ones.
I am not affected by this, but I did post about it and I did used to buy this food for my cats. I stopped when they seemed to not care for it any more, several years ago.
I can't answer your questions, but just wanted you to know I care about your family and that I hope and pray better oversight occurs, for the food supply of everyone.
 

tarasgirl06

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Kflowers

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Update on the continuing story above --

my question is, do you trust Smuckers now at all?
 

tarasgirl06

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Update on the continuing story above --
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my question is, do you trust Smuckers now at all?
I go a lot farther than that, K Kflowers -- I do not trust this society at all, period, end of story. And I certainly don't trust the USDA. The entire food supply is not adequately inspected and apparently, those in charge simply do not care. *The URL is showing as "blocked" when I attempt to access the site, FYI. And when I click on it from the email, I get THIS:
This page isn’t working
u5183562.ct.sendgrid.net sent an invalid response.


ERR_INVALID_REDI
 
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