Mars Petcare US issued a voluntary recall on July 2 for two lots of Pedigree canned dog food after the company discovered that products it had already flagged as contaminated with sharp metal and plastic fragments were never destroyed, but were instead sold to consumers across the country.
The recall covers 13.2-ounce cans of Pedigree High Protein Chopped Chicken & Duck Flavor wet dog food, lot codes 613C3KKCFC and 613C1KKCFC. The company says the cans pose risks of choking, lacerations, and gastrointestinal blockages to pets that consume the contents.
What makes this recall different from a routine contamination notice is the path the product allegedly took to reach shelves. Mars Petcare US stated that the cans had previously been tested, found to contain "sharp metal and plastic foreign material," and then sent to a third party to be disposed of. Instead, the products were "fraudulently diverted" and sold into the U.S. market, the company said.
The FDA published a recall notice covering the two affected lots. Mars Petcare US says it is now working with unnamed federal authorities to investigate how the diversion happened.
The timeline here is worth following closely. At some point before the July 2 recall, Mars Petcare US tested the product, identified the contamination, and made the right call: pull it and send it out for disposal. The company contracted a third party to handle that destruction.
That third party, whose identity has not been publicly disclosed, apparently did not destroy the cans. Instead, the contaminated dog food re-entered the commercial supply chain and made its way onto store shelves across the United States. Mars Petcare US has not said which retailers carried the product or how many individual cans are potentially in circulation.
No injuries or deaths have been reported to the company as of publication. But the FDA notice makes clear that the foreign material inside the cans, sharp metal and plastic, could cause serious harm to any dog that eats it.
Pet owners who have the recalled product are urged to stop feeding it immediately and contact Pedigree at 1-800-525-5273.
This is not the first time Pedigree products have been pulled from the market over foreign-object contamination. In 2024, the New York Post reported that 315 bags of Pedigree Adult Complete Nutrition Grilled Steak & Vegetable Flavor dry dog food were recalled from 176 Walmart stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana after the FDA warned that loose metal pieces inside the bags "could pose a health hazard to pets." No injuries were reported in that case either.
The 2024 recall was far more limited in scope, a few hundred bags at a regional chain. The current recall is nationwide, and the alleged mechanism is not a production-line accident but an act of fraud.
That distinction matters. A manufacturing defect is a quality-control problem. A third-party contractor allegedly diverting contaminated product back into commerce is a supply-chain integrity problem, and potentially a criminal one. Federal authorities are investigating, but no charges have been announced and the contractor has not been named.
Pet food safety has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years, and for good reason. Recalls keep piling up across the food supply chain, affecting products for both humans and animals.
The risks are not limited to pets. A CDC researcher, Casey Barton Behravesh, noted during a salmonella outbreak linked to dry pet food that "dry pet foods are an under-recognized source of salmonella infections in humans." That outbreak, documented by Fox News, sickened 79 people across 21 states between 2006 and 2008. Nearly half were children aged two and younger who likely became infected by touching contaminated pet food dishes and then putting their hands in their mouths.
In that case, at least six unrelated pet food recalls were issued in a single year due to possible salmonella contamination. The pattern is clear: when pet food safety breaks down, the consequences extend well beyond the food bowl.
The current Pedigree recall involves physical contaminants rather than biological ones, but the principle holds. Households with young children and dogs should be especially cautious about checking lot codes and removing any affected cans.
The American Red Cross and the American Kennel Club both publish guidance on recognizing choking in dogs. PetMD offers resources on signs of gastrointestinal blockage and internal lacerations. Owners whose dogs may have consumed the recalled food should watch for unusual behavior, difficulty breathing, vomiting, lethargy, or refusal to eat, and contact a veterinarian immediately.
Pet ownership costs are already climbing, and an emergency vet visit caused by a manufacturer's contaminated product, one that was supposed to have been destroyed, adds insult to injury for families who trusted a major national brand.
The two affected lot codes, again, are 613C3KKCFC and 613C1KKCFC, printed on 13.2-ounce cans of Pedigree High Protein Chopped Chicken & Duck Flavor wet dog food. Consumers can call 1-800-525-5273 with questions.
Mars Petcare US has not disclosed the identity of the third-party disposal contractor. It has not said when the diversion was discovered or how many cans made it to market. The company has not named the retailers that stocked the product.
Federal authorities are involved, but their identities, whether the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations, the Department of Justice, or another agency, have not been specified. No arrests or charges have been announced.
These gaps matter. If a contractor can intercept product that a major corporation flagged as dangerous and funnel it back onto store shelves undetected, the disposal and tracking systems that consumers rely on have a serious weak point. Regulators have been busy rewriting food labeling rules, but labeling means nothing if contaminated product marked for destruction never actually gets destroyed.
Mars Petcare US deserves credit for issuing the recall once the diversion came to light. But the fact that the company's own quality-control process caught the contamination, routed the cans for disposal, and still saw them end up on American shelves raises hard questions about oversight of the disposal chain itself.
Americans treat their dogs like family. They deserve to know that when a company says a dangerous product has been destroyed, it actually has been.
Catching the contamination was the easy part. The system failed at the step that should have been simplest: making sure the bad product never came back.