What was recalled
The May 21-22, 2014 Petco and PetSmart announcements covered all chicken, duck, and other meat jerky pet treats manufactured in China sold at their combined 2,600+ U.S. retail locations. The action was categorical by country of origin — not brand-specific, not lot-specific, not based on FDA recall directive. Both retailers cited the ongoing FDA investigation into chicken jerky pet treat illness reports as the rationale, although neither retailer publicly tied their action to a specific contaminant finding.
Petco operations completed the in-store removal first; PetSmart committed to a longer phased withdrawal completed by March 2015 to allow private-label and contract-manufacturing transitions. The NBC News reporting at NBC News investigations and the CNBC follow-up at CNBC’s May 2014 report documented the retail-channel mechanics of the action. After the 2014 withdrawals, both retailers shifted their jerky-treat sourcing to U.S., New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand manufacturers. The combined retail action effectively closed off the largest U.S. retail channel for China-origin chicken jerky treats, although smaller importers and online channels continued to bring China-origin product into the market on a smaller scale.
Why it was recalled
The 2014 Petco and PetSmart actions came at the seventh anniversary of the FDA chicken jerky investigation (which began in August 2007) and at a point where the FDA had run more than 1,000 tests on 250+ products without conclusively identifying a single contaminant root cause. The 2013 voluntary recall wave triggered by New York State Department of Agriculture detection of unapproved antibiotic residues — covered in our separate Waggin’ Train 2013 page, Milo’s Kitchen 2013 page, and FDA Chinese Chicken Jerky 2007-2015 overview — had not produced a conclusive causal finding for the underlying illness pattern.
The retailers’ decision reflects a market-driven response to regulatory uncertainty: when the underlying contaminant could not be identified by FDA testing, the most defensible market posture was categorical exclusion of the product source until the safety question resolved. The decision is unusual because it bypassed the typical FDA recall-driven retail response and applied country-of-origin precaution as the safety-management lever. Industry coverage noted that the action reflected consumer-pressure dynamics as well: pet owners had been pressuring retailers to drop China-origin jerky for years, and the 2014 actions represented retailer-level acknowledgment that the brand-trust cost of keeping the product outweighed the revenue benefit. The action helped establish a precedent for later retail-driven raw-food posture decisions (e.g., Petco’s 2018 commitment to remove artificial ingredients from its private-label and exclusive brands).
Health risks for your pet
The Petco and PetSmart actions reduced ongoing exposure risk for the largest consumer cohorts buying through the two retailers’ channels, but did not retroactively address the historical FDA-tracked illness count: 6,200+ dog illnesses, 26 cat illnesses, 3 human illnesses, and 1,140+ dog deaths through the FDA’s December 31, 2015 cumulative cutoff. The clinical pattern in affected dogs followed the same Fanconi-like syndrome presentation documented across the seven-year FDA investigation: increased thirst and urination, decreased appetite, lethargy, vomiting, diarrhea, with glucosuria appearing in urinalysis at normal blood glucose. After the 2014-2015 retail withdrawals, new pet illness reports tied to China-origin jerky declined sharply — consistent with the retail-channel-exit hypothesis that the largest exposure pathway had been closed. Smaller-volume continued availability of China-origin jerky through smaller retailers and online channels means residual exposure risk remains; consumers checking country-of-origin labels remains the primary protection.
What to do if you bought affected product
Petco and PetSmart have continued the post-2014 sourcing posture: chicken jerky pet treats sold through their channels are sourced from the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand, not China. If you buy chicken jerky pet treats from any retailer, check the country-of-origin label — "Distributed by" or "Manufactured for" addresses indicate the brand owner, not the manufacturing location. Look for explicit "Made in USA" or "Product of New Zealand" labeling for clearer sourcing. Online channels (Amazon, eBay, smaller specialty sites) continue to carry some China-origin jerky; the country-of-origin label remains the consumer’s primary risk-management lever. If your dog develops increased thirst and urination plus lethargy on any jerky-type treat, request urinalysis from your veterinarian; glucosuria with normal blood glucose is the diagnostic signature of Fanconi-like syndrome.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
The 2014 Petco and PetSmart retail withdrawals are not events in the KibbleIQ scored database per se — they are retail-level safety actions rather than brand-level recalls. The case study is important to the encyclopedia because it illustrates a market-driven safety lever distinct from the FDA recall mechanism: when regulatory uncertainty persists after years of investigation without conclusive root-cause finding, large retailers can apply categorical sourcing decisions as a substitute for FDA-mandated recall. The 2014 actions also set a precedent for later retail-driven posture decisions in pet food sourcing and ingredient transparency. KibbleIQ’s Treats Rubric v1.0 considers country-of-origin transparency as one factor in treat evaluation, alongside ingredient quality and processing-method transparency — an approach consistent with the historical lesson of the 2007-2015 Chinese chicken jerky investigation and its market-driven 2014 conclusion.