What was recalled
This page synthesizes FDA Warning Letters issued to pet food manufacturers and suppliers from 2018 to 2024. The 2018 JBS USA Souderton PA Warning Letter documented violations related to pentobarbital-contaminated rendered beef tallow being supplied to pet food manufacturers; the FDA found pentobarbital in 4 of 9 samples at the JBS facility during a joint FDA / Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture inspection starting March 13, 2018. The 2018 Evanger’s Warning Letter followed the February 2017 pentobarbital event at Evanger’s Hunk of Beef and documented supply-chain control violations.
The 2020 Bravo Packing Warning Letter followed the September 2018 + September 2019 + March 2021 sequence of FDA pathogen events at the Carneys Point NJ facility (the Warning Letter sat between the 2019 advisory and the 2021 voluntary recall) and documented insanitary conditions. The 2021 Midwestern Pet Foods Warning Letter followed the 2020 SportMix aflatoxin event (130+ dog deaths) and the 2021 multi-brand expansion; it documented company-wide preventive-controls failure across the Oklahoma manufacturing facility. The 2024 Mid America Pet Food Warning Letter (November 22, 2024) consolidated findings from November 2023 and January-February 2024 inspections, documenting persistent in-facility Salmonella at the Mt. Pleasant, TX production facility and unresolved violations under FSMA Preventive Controls for Animal Food.
Why it was recalled
FDA Warning Letters represent regulatory escalation beyond recall actions. Most pet food recalls are voluntary recalls initiated by the manufacturer in response to FDA pathogen detection or internal-testing detection. Warning Letters document FDA findings that the manufacturer’s corrective actions have not adequately resolved underlying violations — they typically follow inspection cycles where FDA inspectors find ongoing issues after a recall closure. Warning Letters carry higher enforcement weight than recalls and can precede further FDA actions including injunctions, facility seizure, or criminal referral if violations persist.
The pattern from 2018 to 2024 represents the maturation of FDA enforcement-action use in pet food under FSMA Preventive Controls for Animal Food (final rule September 2015, implementation 2016-2018). Pre-FSMA, pet food enforcement relied primarily on voluntary recalls and the threat of mandatory recall orders. FSMA shifted enforcement toward inspection-and-Warning-Letter posture: FDA conducts routine on-site inspections, identifies preventive-controls violations, requests corrective action with timelines, then escalates to Warning Letter when corrective action is inadequate. The 2024 Mid America Warning Letter is the most advanced example of this enforcement posture — it consolidated multiple inspection cycles documenting persistent violations after a 2023 recall closure. The FDA Warning Letter archive at the FDA Warning Letter resource documents the regulatory baseline.
Health risks for your pet
Warning Letters do not themselves represent disease events — they are regulatory documentation of inspection findings. However, the underlying findings cited in Warning Letters typically relate to ongoing or unresolved disease-risk patterns at the manufacturer. The 2018 JBS USA Warning Letter related to pentobarbital exposure risk in pet food consumers; the 2020 Bravo Packing Warning Letter related to ongoing Salmonella + Listeria exposure risk in raw pet food consumers; the 2021 Midwestern Warning Letter related to aflatoxin exposure risk; the 2024 Mid America Warning Letter related to ongoing Salmonella exposure risk. The pathogen-disease patterns underlying each Warning Letter are detailed in our individual recall encyclopedia pages for each event. The Warning Letter itself signals persistent or systemic violations, which warrants substantially higher consumer-trust caution than a single recall closure followed by clean inspection cycles.
What to do if you bought affected product
If you are considering a pet food brand, check whether the manufacturer or any of the brand’s licensed manufacturers have received FDA Warning Letters in the past 5 years. The FDA Warning Letter archive is searchable by manufacturer name. A current or recent Warning Letter is a meaningful negative quality signal — it indicates that FDA inspectors found violations the manufacturer has not adequately resolved. Brands with Warning Letters in the past 12-24 months carry materially different forward risk than brands with clean inspection histories. The corrective-action timelines specified in Warning Letters provide a window for the manufacturer to demonstrate improvement; if subsequent inspections find continued violations, FDA can escalate to injunctions, facility seizure, or criminal referral.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
The brands affected by the 2018-2024 Warning Letters (J.M. Smucker / Big Heart Pet Brands portfolio via JBS USA tallow supplier; Evanger’s; Bravo Packing / Performance Dog; Midwestern Pet Foods’ SportMix + Pro Pac + Splash; Mid America Pet Food’s Victor + Wayne Feeds + Eagle Mountain) are scored, partially scored, or absent from the KibbleIQ database per our published methodology. The Warning Letter pattern is orthogonal to ingredient-quality scoring — it represents enforcement-action history rather than formulation quality. Recall-history scoring under our planned methodology v2 will include Warning Letters as a distinct dimension alongside recall events, with weight for recency and severity. A Warning Letter combined with a recent recall (Mid America 2023 recall + 2024 Warning Letter) represents the canonical high-penalty case in our methodology v2 design.