What was recalled
On February 15, 2018, The J.M. Smucker Company announced a withdrawal of certain canned dog food products across four brands within its Big Heart Pet Brands portfolio: Gravy Train, Kibbles ‘N Bits, Ol’ Roy (Walmart private label), and Skippy. The withdrawal expanded a separate Gravy Train 2018 pentobarbital recall (covered separately) into a portfolio-wide action across multiple Smucker-owned brands sharing the same upstream ingredient supplier.
The triggering event was an independent investigation by ABC7 News in Washington DC partnered with Ellipse Analytics, a food-testing laboratory. Of 15 cans of Gravy Train tested, 60% (9 cans) tested positive for trace amounts of pentobarbital. After Smucker confirmed the presence of pentobarbital in the tallow ingredient supply used across multiple brands, FDA formally upgraded the company’s voluntary product withdrawal to a recall. The recall covered all lots of the affected products manufactured from 2016 through February 2018 — a 2+ year production window. The withdrawn products were distributed to retailers nationwide. FDA’s formal alert documented the full scope, ingredient-source traceback, and risk assessment.
Why it was recalled
Pentobarbital is a barbiturate used in veterinary practice as an anesthetic and as a euthanasia agent. Its presence in commercial pet food is interpreted as evidence that the source meat stream included euthanized animals — typically rendered into tallow (rendered animal fat). Federal law restricts the rendering of euthanized animals into pet food except under very narrow exceptions (specifically: horses, with strict labeling). The J.M. Smucker portfolio-wide event traced to a single tallow supplier serving multiple Smucker brands across the affected production window. FDA’s investigation of the supplier identified the contamination pathway and Smucker terminated the supplier relationship. The 2018 event came against a backdrop of broader FDA enforcement on euthanized-animal rendering during 2017-2019; the Evanger’s 2017 event covered separately at our Evanger’s 2017 page drove a similar industry-wide supplier audit. FDA characterized the pentobarbital levels in the Gravy Train samples as “low” with the agency’s preliminary risk assessment indicating the levels were unlikely to pose a health risk to pets, though FDA emphasized that pentobarbital should never be present in pet food regardless of dose.
Health risks for your pet
The pentobarbital levels detected in J.M. Smucker product were trace amounts below acute-toxicity thresholds; FDA’s preliminary risk assessment indicated the levels were unlikely to pose acute health risk to pets. No reported pet deaths were definitively tied to the trace residue levels in the Smucker portfolio products, though several class-action lawsuits filed during 2018-2020 alleged subclinical effects from chronic low-level exposure. The acute pentobarbital toxicity syndrome (covered separately in our Evanger’s 2017 page) presents within minutes to hours of high-dose ingestion as profound sedation, weakness, ataxia, slow heart rate, shallow breathing, and coma. The trace levels in Smucker product would not produce the acute syndrome but raise the principled question of whether any pentobarbital in pet food is acceptable. FDA’s zero-tolerance enforcement position addresses this by requiring removal of pentobarbital-positive product from the market regardless of dose; the agency’s preliminary risk assessment was descriptive of the specific event’s acute risk, not a relaxation of the policy.
What to do if you bought affected product
All recalled J.M. Smucker product has long-expired Best Before dates; no household pantry should still contain affected cans. The lasting consumer-facing lesson reinforces the importance of ingredient-source transparency, particularly for rendered fat (tallow) used in canned and dry pet food. Brands that publish their rendered-fat supplier qualification protocols and document pentobarbital-specific testing on incoming tallow shipments carry lower exposure surface than brands that rely solely on supplier-provided certificates of analysis. The 2017-2018 sequence (Evanger’s 2017, Gravy Train 2018, J.M. Smucker portfolio 2018) drove industry-wide tightening of tallow supplier qualification; current brands operate under post-2018 stricter testing protocols.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
The J.M. Smucker Company is one of the largest pet food companies in North America, with Big Heart Pet Brands operating Kibbles ‘N Bits, Gravy Train, Milk-Bone, Meow Mix, Skippy, and 9 Lives among others; the company also manufactures Walmart’s private-label Ol’ Roy. Our methodology v15 scores these brands on their current ingredient lists per our published methodology; we do not deduct points for a 2018 supplier-side pentobarbital event when the corrective actions (supplier termination, expanded tallow testing, traceability documentation) are documented and effective. The brands within the Smucker portfolio currently score in the C and D range on most variants, reflecting ingredient-quality considerations rather than the 2018 recall history; recall-history scoring under future methodology v2 will weight the 2018 event as a supplier-driven issue with documented corrective action, less heavily than systemic manufacturing-floor failures like the Midwestern Pet Foods 2020-2021 aflatoxin pattern. For now, our recommendation: read both our current J.M. Smucker review AND this recall page when evaluating the brand.