What was recalled
On February 16, 2018, The J.M. Smucker Company voluntarily withdrew specific lots of wet dog food sold under four of its brands: Gravy Train, Kibbles ’N Bits, Ol’ Roy (Wal-Mart private label produced by Smucker), and Skippy Premium. The trigger was a multi-month investigative-journalism report by ABC News and its affiliate WJLA-TV (Washington, D.C.), which tested 62 cans of various brands and found pentobarbital residue in several Gravy Train and Kibbles ’N Bits cans. FDA subsequently confirmed low-level pentobarbital in some of the implicated lots. The withdrawal covered specific UPC codes and Best By dates; the consolidated FDA notice and product list is at the FDA recall archive.
The withdrawal was technically labeled as a “voluntary market withdrawal” rather than a recall because the level of pentobarbital detected was below any threshold associated with acute toxicity. FDA’s position, communicated in its February 16, 2018 statement, was that the level posed no health risk but should not have been present at all; the agency opened a formal supplier-trace investigation.
Why it was recalled
Pentobarbital is a barbiturate used in veterinary euthanasia. As with the Evanger’s 2017 event, its presence in pet food is interpreted as evidence that the meat source included euthanized animals — either knowingly rendered into pet food (illegal under federal law) or accidentally cross-contaminated during processing. Smucker traced the contamination to a single beef-tallow supplier and suspended the relationship. The AVMA reported in April 2018 that FDA’s broader investigation across multiple manufacturers identified the same Illinois rendering facility implicated in the 2017 Evanger’s event, suggesting a systemic supplier-stream issue rather than two unrelated incidents. The FDA subsequently revised its inspection protocols for pet food rendering and tallow suppliers.
Health risks for your pet
The pentobarbital concentrations detected in the Gravy Train and Kibbles ’N Bits cans were below acute-toxicity thresholds, and the FDA reported no confirmed dog illnesses or deaths attributable to consumption of the affected product. This is a meaningful difference from the Evanger’s 2017 event, where five dogs in one household showed acute pentobarbital toxicity from a single meal. The Smucker products contained trace-level residue rather than acute-dose contamination. That said, the presence of any pentobarbital in pet food is a quality-systems failure: barbiturates have no nutritional or functional role and should be absent from the supply chain at all detection thresholds. Chronic low-dose pentobarbital exposure has not been well-studied in dogs, but barbiturate metabolism in canines is similar to humans (hepatic CYP450 oxidation) and the conservative recommendation is zero detectable exposure.
What to do if you bought affected product
All affected lots have Best By dates that have now expired; no current Smucker product carries the recalled lot codes. If you fed your dog Gravy Train, Kibbles ’N Bits, Ol’ Roy, or Skippy wet products during late 2017 through February 2018 and your dog experienced unexplained drowsiness or sedation symptoms, the timing aligns with this event — though the FDA noted no confirmed illnesses from the affected product. The withdrawal’s consumer-affairs reimbursement window closed in 2019. Owners looking for Smucker dry-food brand history should note that the wet-food withdrawal did not implicate the dry-kibble production line; Kibbles ’N Bits dry product was not part of this event.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
Our rubric (v15) scores brands on their current ingredient list per our published methodology. Kibbles ’N Bits dry kibble is in our active database and earns a D-tier grade based on its ingredient panel (wheat-flour-led, by-product meals, BHA preservation, artificial colors) — not because of the 2018 wet-food pentobarbital event. The structural reason Kibbles ’N Bits scores poorly is the cheap-ingredient formula, not the supplier-trace history. Full details in our current Kibbles ’N Bits review. Recall-history scoring under methodology v2 will weigh the 2018 wet-food event as a supplier-driven incident with documented termination; the brand-level rubric grade is set by current ingredient quality, which is the primary signal pet owners control when making feeding decisions. For now, our recommendation: read both our current Gravy Train review AND this recall page when evaluating the brand.