What was recalled
The TruPet 2018 recall sequence covered two distinct product lines across two distinct recall events:
February 2018: Treat Me Crunchy Beef Delight dog treats — freeze-dried single-ingredient beef chunks sold in 2.5-oz resealable bags. Lot #20190514 13753, Best By May 14, 2019. The FDA published the formal notice at FDA Recalls archive.
April 2018: Boost Me Mighty Meaty Beef Topper Meal Enhancer — freeze-dried beef meal enhancer for sprinkling over kibble. Lot #20190531 13815, Best By May 31, 2019. The FDA published this notice at FDA Recalls archive. Both recalls were triggered by FDA finished-product Salmonella testing under the agency’s ongoing raw pet food surveillance program.
The two-event sequence is significant because it occurred in parallel to the Vital Essentials 2018 Salmonella sequence (covered separately on our Vital Essentials Feb 2018 page and Vital Essentials April 2018 page). Vital Essentials and TruPet’s Boost Me were both produced at the Carnivore Meat Company facility in Green Bay, WI; the shared production facility explains the parallel Salmonella detections across both brand portfolios in the same time window.
Why it was recalled
The shared root cause across the TruPet and Vital Essentials 2018 Salmonella events was the Carnivore Meat Company production facility’s beef ingredient stream and/or production environment. The four 2018 recalls (TruPet February + April; Vital Essentials February + April) all involved beef-based freeze-dried products from the same facility within a four-month window — a pattern consistent with either supplier-level Salmonella in incoming beef or environmental harborage at the production site. Freeze-drying reduces moisture content to a level inhibitory to bacterial growth but is not a reliable kill step for Salmonella — the process reduces moisture but does not raise temperature to lethality, meaning incoming Salmonella in raw beef survives freeze-drying and can be detected in finished product.
Carnivore Meat Company corrective actions post-April-2018 reportedly included enhanced supplier qualification, environmental monitoring expansion, and finished-product testing protocol revision. Neither TruPet nor Vital Essentials has had a publicly documented FDA pathogen recall since the 2018 sequence closed, suggesting the post-2018 corrective actions resolved the underlying root cause.
Health risks for your pet
No consumer illnesses (animal or human) were reported in connection with the TruPet 2018 recall sequence. The detection was driven by FDA finished-product Salmonella testing rather than consumer illness complaints. Salmonella in raw and freeze-dried pet food presents the standard clinical risks: self-limited gastroenteritis in healthy adult dogs (diarrhea, vomiting, fever, lethargy), more severe disease in puppies, seniors, and immunocompromised animals, and zoonotic exposure to humans handling the product. The zoonotic risk pathway is particularly concerning for freeze-dried meal enhancers like Boost Me because owners typically sprinkle the product over kibble by hand multiple times daily, increasing direct hand-to-food contact frequency.
What to do if you bought affected product
All recalled TruPet Treat Me Crunchy Beef Delight (Lot #20190514 13753) and Boost Me Mighty Meaty Beef Topper (Lot #20190531 13815) have expired Best By dates; no household pantry should still contain recalled product. Current TruPet / TruDog production operates under post-2018 supplier qualification and finished-product testing protocols. Pet owners feeding freeze-dried meal enhancers, freeze-dried treats, or raw pet food should follow strict handling-hygiene protocols: separate utensils and storage for raw pet food, immediate handwashing after handling, no cross-contamination with human food prep surfaces. Pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and immunocompromised adults in households feeding raw or freeze-dried pet food face elevated Salmonella severe-disease risk and should avoid direct handling.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
TruPet / TruDog freeze-dried products are not in the KibbleIQ scored database — our methodology v15 covers commercial dry kibble, fresh cooked food, selected raw-coated kibble, and a Treats Rubric v1.0 catalog of 18 specific treat products. The 2018 two-event Salmonella recall sequence reflects a shared production-facility root cause with Vital Essentials at Carnivore Meat Company; both brands have had no publicly documented FDA pathogen recalls since the 2018 sequence closed, suggesting effective post-2018 corrective action. The structural lesson for raw and freeze-dried pet food: shared production facilities create shared risk profiles — brand-name labeling alone does not address the underlying processing infrastructure. Recall-history scoring under our planned methodology v2 will consider production-facility shared root causes as a category-level signal when scoring brands that source from contract manufacturing.