About APOG

Australian Pet Owners Group (APOG) is an independent organisation focused on the betterment of Australian Pet Food Regulations and Standards.

Recall & issue log of pet food brands and pet products in Australia

Issues with pet food brands and pet products often go unreported in Australia. In terms sickness and adverse reactions in pets it can be hard to substantiate a causative link to a product on a case by case basis.

With no system or guidance in place, veterinary professionals in Australia rarely investigate the possibility of a pet food product being the cause of an illness.

The purpose of the APOG Recall & Issue Log is to track potential consumer issues with pet food brands and pet products.

If you suspect an issue with your pet related to a pet food brand or pet product in Australia, please use the Recall & Issue Log to help us correlate issues for the benefit of consumers, manufacturers, and retailers.

If you would prefer to remain anonymous when logging an issue with a pet food brand or product, please use the “guest comment” feature. We will never disclose the identity or email address of a person.

About the Australian pet food industry

The pet food industry of Australia enjoys the leniency of self-regulation, which offers the consumers of pet foods and pet products little reassurance these products are safe.

The last 10 years has shown many occurrences of pet food contamination of plastics (such as plastic head tags), metal, and glass, affecting many brands.

We have seen many occurrences of toxicity in pet food, elevated levels of sulphite preservatives and chemicals, and a potential risk from euthanised and baited animals being used in meat and meat by-product ingredients.

The Australian Standard for Pet Food Manufacture AS-5812 (2017) offers manufacturers a great deal of ambiguity when marketing and labelling pet food products.

In Australia we have many pet food products imported and irradiated from countries with a history of ambiguity, risk, or toxicity, with the only labelling requirement of these products to state “Must not be fed to cats”, in small print.

Sponsorship, funding, and influence of corporate pet food manufacturers on University Veterinary studies restricts our veterinarians from learning unbiased animal nutrition.

Pet food manufacturers have influence over veterinary studies, historically providing coursework, paraphernalia, and lecturers employed by them rather than the university. This remains a conflict of interest.

Veterinary professionals are not trained to consider diet-related conditions to be caused by diet, such as diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, or even allergies or intolerances.

Australia has a reporting system in place from the Australian Veterinary Association known as PetFAST, which receives little use and only available to some veterinary practices.

It is uncommon for a veterinary professional to use the PetFAST system as any pet illness may be multifactorial.

Latest reports

  1. Just tried the supervite “happy dog” this week and my Staffy who normally eats anything without a worry has not…

  2. Boxer dog, 6 years old, had quick (within in 20 minutes) reaction after eating Schmackos Liver strapz – retching and…

  3. Started this bag and noticed the kibble was smaller and multi-coloured (black and brown). Thought maybe they had just changed…

  4. we had exact same problem, they’ve been eating it for 2 years and wouldn’t touch the latest bag either, cats…

  5. We got a new bag of Ivory Coat Grain Free – 10 month old golden after a day or so…