MOLD IN PAST WYSONG PET FOODS
-Notice, Explanation, and Response-

Mold has been found in some bags of Wysong dry extruded foods manufactured in June and July of 2009. To be safe, no suspect products from these batches should be sold or fed. The affected products are:

Wysong Maintenance™: lot #: 090617
Wysong Maintenance™: lot #: 090624
Wysong Maintenance™: lot #: 090706
Wysong Maintenance™: lot #: 090720
Wysong Senior™: lot #: 090623

Mold spores are in all natural foods. When there is heat, oxygen, and sufficient moisture the spores can bloom into mold. Everyone has experienced this with foods at home.

From what can be determined, the problem with the Wysong foods stems from unusually high heat and humidity on those summer dates. This combined with a malfunctioning moisture checking device is believed to be the cause of the higher moisture.

Sometimes the enrobed dust-on ingredients used on Wysong foods are confused with mold. If there is a question, discontinue feeding and contact Wysong for a determination.

As noted in the article below, mold is a ubiquitous problem in all packaged foods. Wysong takes many measures to address this:

1. Incoming ingredients are tested for moisture and mycotoxins.
2. Finished products are also tested.
3. Ingredients are used to inhibit mold growth.
4. The NutriPak oxygen and light barrier packaging inhibits aerobic mold growth.
5. Products are nitrogen flushed to remove oxygen.
6. Products are fresh batched.
7. Ingredients are used to help adsorb toxins should they be present.
8. People are advised to refrigerate or freeze unused product, i.e. treat it like any fresh natural food is treated.
9. Most importantly, Dr. Wysong has advised for the past 30 years against feeding any singular food meal after meal. Diets should be rotated and fresh foods incorporated into meal planning in order to decrease the risk of chronic exposure to toxins that may be present in any one food. This information is on all Wysong packaged pet foods.

Notice of the problem:

1. Immediately alerted all distributors and retailers.
2. Posting to website
3. Report to FDA and attempted contact with USDA/APHIS
4. Replies to all customer inquiries

Concerns, questions, allegations:

We ask that you please consider the following before giving credence to allegations and committing to an opinion. Also consider that Wysong has led the pet food industry in almost every natural and healthy food innovation for the past thirty years. This has resulted in wonderful health to tens of thousands of pets through multiple generations.
As will be seen below, the primary complaint seems to be about the speed with which we gave notice. At first report of potential mold in our products, Wysong launched an internal investigation. Batch records were re-examined, numerous bags of product opened and scrutinized, product samples were acquired from customers, and testing in-house and out-of-house conducted

Once Wysong ascertained that there was mold presence and the potential for mold (based on moisture tests) in certain batches we alerted our distributors, who were the primary recipients of these batches of product. Distributors were instructed to dispose of the product, as well as pull product from stores that had already received the product. Product from these problematic batches that remained in-house was disposed of.

Additionally, Wysong immediately contacted stores that received recalled product from us directly, and asked them to remove the products from store shelves.

Much of the criticism regarding the recall has centered on us purportedly not publicizing the recall enough, or that we are attempting to downplay or hide the recall. What is missed here is that we keep thorough records pertaining to who receives what products. Accordingly, when we determined a recall was necessary we put our focus into alerting those that actually received the products, and not those that had no reasonable chance of acquiring the affected products. Also, consider that Wysong is a small family business, not on the scale of most pet food companies that sell products far and wide with no knowledge of who purchases. Such companies would need to do a more generally publicized recall.

MORE INFO on Website along with questions and answers
http://www.wysong.net/recall.php