Cat Food Recall Alert

A recent canned cat food recall was announced yesterday. Certain deficiencies in the cat food were discovered therefore initiating the recall. Read the information below to learn more.


After the massive recalls of a few years back, many pet lovers' hearts stop when they hear word that yet another pet food is being recalled by its maker. It's doubly distressing when it's a heretofore well-regarded brand. Yet that's just what happened on Monday as WellPet, maker of Wellness brand pet foods, voluntarily recalled certain lots of its canned cat food because they lacked sufficient levels of thiamine (also known as Vitamin B1). How serious of a problem is this, and what should you do about it?

Spotting thiamine deficiency

Thiamine is an essential nutrient. As noted here, it helps a cat turn carbohydrates into energy, and plays a part in maintaining a cat's heart and nervous system. It's found naturally in a wide variety of foods, including whole grains, some fruits and vegetables, meat, liver, bread, and more.

Symptoms of thiamine deficiency include decreased appetite, salivation, vomiting, and weight loss. If things are allowed to progress, neurological symptoms can develop, such as unsteady walking, circling, falling, seizures and ventriflexion (bending towards the floor) of the neck.

If there's any good news in this it's that it takes several weeks of exclusively feeding a cat a food that's lacking in thiamine for the deficiency to become a problem and, if spotted early, the effects can usually be reversed, experts say. Because of that, and whether or not you are feeding Wellness cat food to your pet, if you spot these symptoms, you should get your cat to your veterinarian as soon as possible.

Recall details

Though only a few lots of the food in the recall appear to actually have been effected, "to avoid confusion and in an abundance of caution," Wellness has decided to recall all varieties and sizes of Wellness canned cat food with a "best by" date code of 14APR13 through 30SEP13, and all sizes of Wellness Canned Cat Food Chicken & Herring (only) with "best by" date codes of 10NOV13 or 17NOV13. Cat owners should immediately stop feeding Wellness cat foods with those date codes to their pets and contact the company directly at (877) 227-9587. More information, including a letter from WellPet CEO Tim Callahan, is posted at the company website.

ConsumerSearch readers will note that Wellness canned cat foods, including Wellness Chicken Forumula, have earned a Best Reviewed designation in our report on cat food. We are in the process of updating that report. At this point, we can't say for sure if this thus-far isolated incident will be enough for us to remove Wellness from our list of Best Reviewed cat foods. However, WellPet has received some positive comments for how its handled this situation, including one from Susan Thixton, a pet food advocate and owner of the Truth About Pet Food and Petsumer Report websites.

Source: ConsumerSearch

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