If you are still recovering from the shock that the brand of pet food you buy is affected by the Diamond recall which you had no way of knowing until Friday night, get hold of yourself. Because you must now navigate the maze of Is It Safe? It’s a challenging little game you can play by visiting the Diamond website (or the website of the brand you feed), scrolling through the list of brands affected and the list of states in which they were distributed, and then getting a Native American code talker to help you decipher numbers on the bag, provided you saved it.
If you make it this far in the game, there’s bad news: the food you have still might be tainted. That’s because the information keeps changing. Brands are being added, production codes are being updated and even if your state is not listed, there’s this little gem:
Further distribution through other pet food channels may have occurred.
But perhaps you are diligently saving bags, checking the brand’s website regularly for corrected information and considering you and your pet to be at risk, regardless of geographic location. There’s more bad news: the food you have still might be tainted. I say that for several reasons. Just because your bag’s state, best-by date and production code doesn’t fall into the current list of recalled foods, it was still manufactured in a plant that was shut down on April 8 due to salmonella contamination. So how safe can you possibly feel about it? In 2006, foods manufactured at this same Diamond plant in Gaston, SC killed at least 76 dogs due to aflatoxin poisoning. Furthermore, the latest batch of recalls was released to the public on a Friday night, the traditional time slot for releasing information bound to negatively impact a company’s bottom line, in order to minimize press coverage. Does this give you a feeling of trust in your brand of pet food, even if it’s not one of the recalled lots?
Thanks for playing this round of Is It Safe? The next round begins right now.