What was recalled
On August 14, 2013, The Procter & Gamble Company voluntarily recalled specific lots of Iams and Eukanuba dry pet food after routine internal Salmonella testing returned positive results. The recall covered 29 product cuts in total: 11 types of Eukanuba dry dog food, 8 types of Iams dry dog food, and 10 types of Iams cat food. All affected products carried Best By dates in November 2014, indicating production during a narrow window in fall 2013.
The affected products were produced during a 10-day window at a single manufacturing site; P&G’s investigation determined the contamination was contained to that production window. The recalled lots represented approximately 0.1% of P&G’s annual pet food production — a narrow event by volume but distributed across a wide brand-line spectrum because the affected production plant manufactured multiple consumer-facing cuts under both the Iams and Eukanuba labels. Coverage from Food Safety News documents the affected SKU list. The event preceded P&G’s 2014 sale of its pet food business to Mars Petcare; the Iams and Eukanuba brands have been Mars-owned since 2014.
Why it was recalled
Routine internal Salmonella testing at P&G’s manufacturing facility detected the contamination before any consumer illness reports surfaced. The detection-driven recall pattern is the safety net the post-2008 FDA Amendments Act traceability rules were designed to enable: manufacturers test their own product, find contamination, and recall affected lots before clinical disease reaches the consumer population. The 10-day production window suggests a transient environmental contamination event (most likely post-extrusion harborage at the fat-coating or cooling area, the same failure mode documented at Mars Petcare’s Everson plant in 2007 and Diamond’s Gaston plant in 2012). P&G suspended affected production lines for cleaning and remediation. The 0.1% annual-production scope reflects rapid identification and containment — far smaller than the Diamond 2012 (15 brands, multi-month event) or Midwestern 2020-2021 (multi-year aflatoxin sequence) recall scopes. The internal-detection-then-recall pattern is the quality-systems opposite of the SportMix 2020-2021 event where external (FDA) detection followed company-level testing gaps.
Health risks for your pet
No consumer illnesses (animal or human) were reported in connection with the 2013 P&G recall. Had affected product reached pets, the clinical pattern would have followed standard Salmonella enteritis in dogs and cats: diarrhea (sometimes bloody), vomiting, fever, anorexia, lethargy, typically self-limited in healthy adult animals but more severe in puppies, seniors, and immunocompromised pets. The zoonotic human-handling risk remains the larger concern with any dry kibble Salmonella event: pet owners who handle contaminated kibble without subsequent handwashing can transfer the bacteria to their hands, food prep surfaces, and (in households with young children) directly to floor-level exposure pathways. CDC and FDA jointly recommend washing hands after handling pet food regardless of recall status. The 2013 event’s zero-illness count is the favorable end of the spectrum and validates the internal-testing-and-recall response sequence.
What to do if you bought affected product
All recalled Iams and Eukanuba product has expired Best By dates (November 2014); no household pantry should still contain recalled product. The Iams and Eukanuba brands transferred from P&G to Mars Petcare in 2014; current Iams and Eukanuba production operates under Mars’s quality-systems programs, which include post-2008 FDA traceability, post-extrusion environmental monitoring, and finished-product Salmonella testing. The 2013 manufacturing-facility event has not been repeated under Mars ownership through 2026. If you fed Iams or Eukanuba product during the 2013-2014 distribution window and your pet developed Salmonella-consistent illness, the timing aligned with this recall, though no cases were confirmed at the time.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
Iams (dog and cat) and Eukanuba (dog) are in the KibbleIQ scored database; we score each brand on its current ingredient list per our published methodology. We do not deduct points for a 2013 single-plant 10-day production-window Salmonella event when the corrective actions (production-line cleaning, environmental monitoring expansion, brand-level testing protocol revision) are documented and effective. Both brands transferred to Mars Petcare in 2014 and now operate under Mars’s plant-level quality programs. The 2013 internal-detection-driven recall pattern is a quality-systems credit relative to external-detection events where manufacturer testing missed contamination that FDA later found. Recall-history scoring under methodology v2 will weigh internal-detection events with rapid containment less heavily than serial external-detection patterns. For now, our recommendation: read both our current Iams + Eukanuba review AND this page when evaluating the brand.