What was recalled
On February 3, 2017, Evanger’s Dog & Cat Food Company issued a voluntary recall of five specific lots of its 12-oz Hunk of Beef Au Jus canned dog food. The recall covered lot numbers 1816E13HB, 1916E13HB, 2016E13HB, 2116E13HB, and 2216E13HB, all with Best By dates in June 2020. The trigger was a Washington-state veterinary report that five dogs in one household became ill within 15 minutes of eating from a single can; one dog (a pug named Talula) died. Bloodwork and necropsy traced the cause to pentobarbital toxicity, and FDA testing of the remaining cans confirmed pentobarbital residue.
On February 9, 2017, Evanger’s expanded the recall to include selected lots of its Against the Grain Pulled Beef With Gravy product. On March 3, 2017, additional lots of Evanger’s Hand Packed Hunk of Beef were added after further supplier-trace testing. The consolidated FDA notice is at the FDA recall archive.
Why it was recalled
Pentobarbital is a barbiturate used in veterinary practice as an anesthetic and as a euthanasia agent. Its presence in dog food is normally interpreted as evidence that the meat source included euthanized animals — either intentionally rendered into pet food (illegal under federal law for any species other than horses, with strict labeling required) or accidentally cross-contaminated during processing. Evanger’s identified its beef supplier as a single USDA-inspected facility in Hampshire, Illinois (Bailey Farms). The FDA opened a formal investigation into the supplier and Evanger’s subsequently terminated the supplier relationship. The AVMA’s coverage documented the supplier-trace investigation and the FDA’s broader 2017–2018 effort to source-audit pet food beef streams across the industry.
Health risks for your pet
Pentobarbital poisoning in dogs presents within minutes to hours of ingestion. Clinical signs include profound drowsiness, weakness, loss of coordination (ataxia), unresponsiveness, slow heart rate (bradycardia), shallow breathing, and coma. At high doses pentobarbital is fatal — the drug is, after all, used in euthanasia for that reason. Lower doses cause severe sedation that can progress to respiratory arrest if the dog cannot maintain its airway. The Washington-state case was diagnostically clear because all five dogs in the household showed symptoms within 15 minutes of the same meal — an unusually rapid and coordinated onset that pointed immediately to acute toxicity rather than to a chronic ingredient issue. Recovery for the four surviving dogs required veterinary supportive care including IV fluids and respiratory monitoring; full recovery took several days.
What to do if you bought affected product
All recalled lots have Best By dates that have now expired and the affected supplier relationship was terminated in 2017. If you still have any Evanger’s Hunk of Beef cans in storage with the specific recalled lot codes (1816E13HB, 1916E13HB, 2016E13HB, 2116E13HB, 2216E13HB), discard them and contact Evanger’s consumer affairs for refund — though the original refund window closed in 2018. If you fed any of the recalled product to a dog during the recall window (late 2016 through February 2017) and that dog developed sudden sedation, weakness, or any signs of barbiturate toxicity, the timing aligns with this event; consult your veterinarian about historical exposure if you have unexplained bloodwork or behavioral changes from that period.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
Evanger’s is not currently in the KibbleIQ scored database — the brand operates primarily in regional and specialty channels rather than the mass-market and online channels we prioritize. Our methodology v15 scores brands on their current ingredient list per our published methodology; a supplier-driven pentobarbital event is not a scoring input for the brand’s ingredient quality. However, the 2017 event reflects a quality-systems failure in supplier auditing that is, fundamentally, the brand’s responsibility — pet food manufacturers are accountable for verifying their incoming meat streams. Evanger’s terminated the supplier relationship and revised its qualification protocol; that’s the right corrective action. Recall-history scoring under methodology v2 will weigh single supplier-driven events with documented termination of the failed relationship less heavily than systemic manufacturing-floor issues, but pentobarbital detection in pet food sits at the high end of severity because of the implication that euthanized animals reached the pet food stream.