The FDA has provided some transparency to the public.
The FDA Data Dashboard states: “FDA created the Data Dashboard to increase transparency and accountability by allowing you to view and analyze FDA publicly available data through easy-to-use, visually accessible, customizable, and easy-to-understand graphics.”
For companies regulated by the FDA (pet food and human products), consumers can search for inspections, compliance issues, and recalls. The FDA data dashboard contains a wealth of information, but there is a learning curve and it doesn’t provide much in-depth information.
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Start on the FDA Data Dashboard home page:
Clicking on “Inspections” in the Compliance Dashboard column will take you to a page with inspection information for all FDA regulated products. For example:
Also available on the inspection home page are charts by inspection type, citations, inspection maps, inspection details, citation details and published 483 (inspection reports).
Looking at the summary citation details, the third item on the list is for Phillip’s Pet Food & Supplies Corporation (a pet food distributor).
Click on that item (FEI number) and the following screen will appear.
The page states the pet food distributor “failed to take corrective action when temperature control was lost.”
But that’s all it tells us. Was this raw pet food or frozen prepared pet food? Was this some other product that required refrigeration? Was the product destroyed or shipped to a pet store without disclosing that it had “lost temperature control”? We don’t know.
For this transparency to truly benefit consumers, full reporting needs to be provided and these questions answered.
If you want to search for inspections of a specific pet food manufacturer, the FDA website offers a filter option. You can find the filter option just above the first graph on the inspections home page. Clicking on this option will open the following sidebar:
I selected the “Legal Name” option and typed in “Nestle Purina” and it brought up a variety of company names. I checked all company names that contained Nestle Purina Petcare. The result was a separate page specific to all these Nestle Purina Petcare company names. The inspection chart specific to Nestle Purina Petcare was as follows:
Here are the inspection details for Nestle Purina PetCare (the inspection page has a scrolling option to view more detailed information than is provided in the image below):
Here are some quote details specific to Nestle Purina Petcare:
Additionally, clicking on the FEI number on the citation details page above will take you to another page that provides more information specific to this pet food manufacturing plant. Clicking on the first link (FEI number 1924965) found information specific to the Nestle Purina Pet Care Company plant in Hager City, Wisconsin.
You can search for recalls. If you want to check for recalls on a specific pet food, click on the Recalls link on the FDA Data Dashboard homepage and enter the filter options you want to search. Using the same example above (Nestle Purina Pet Care Company), it would look like this:
Also, on the Nestle Purina Pet Care Company recall listing, if you click on the FEI number of the recall, you will be taken to a page that shows the following:
If you want to learn more about a specific pet food manufacturer, this FDA website has a lot of general information. The site takes some time to navigate and understand, and unfortunately it doesn’t provide much detailed information about inspections or compliance issues, but the FDA data dashboard is a good starting point for researching pet food manufacturers. It’s a small step for the FDA.
I wish you and your pet all the best.
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
The Truth About Pet Food
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