RECALL ALERT - VIVA RAW PET FOOD

Thank you for such an informative and diplomatic update

I feed base mixes from Dr. Harvey’s because I’ve bought cooked dog food online before, and it arrived in an unfrozen state. I like adding my own protein.

Good for viva

I feed my pets mostly viva raw food and on hearing the news thought immediately that this had to be a shipping handling issue because every single batch of viva food is tested to proactively prevent contamination. Vivas food standards are higher than the food we eat. The FDA considers there to be a safe level of salmonella for human food, literally, so meat for humans is not all tested. Salmonella is airborne it won't be killed by cooking before it can infect humans there is no acceptable level of infectious salmonella or listeria in human food. To the problem imo. Every shipping company that has delivered viva's shipments to me has had inconsistent handling standards at best. As reference viva food comes in frozen vacuum sealed thick plastic packages inside of a thick insulated dry ice shipping box. These sturdy boxes often arrive quite damaged, rounded at the corners, beat to heck, and with some vacuum seals on the packages broken despite still being frozen. If the shipment is left on a doorstep for too long or delayed coupled with this highly negligent handling by both Fedex and UPS it's not hard for me to see how the food could become contaminated even before the potential for customer mishandling. Shipping standards and shipping employee handling need to be sharply improved. I'm not confident making raw pet food accessible in a grocery store would be any benefit at all; I wouldn't want a part-time teenager handling frozen raw food. Raw pet food should only be individually handled by people who are prepared to store feed and sanitize appropriately it's not a category of food that should be available to people that think cats can eat corn. This is terrible news I'm sorry for the family affected they should be properly compensated and the handling of this new food category needs to be brought to a higher standard. I never ever want to see another damaged box delivering this food again or I feel it's not safe to trust how that box of food was thrown around. Viva will need to start foam packing each individual package or something to that effect because shipping companies right now can't be trusted to deliver it safely.

Poor handling and even having the food heat up in transit doesn’t CAUSE salmonella or listeria to occur. It had to have already been in the food before it was frozen. Also, the reason they allow some salmonella on human chicken is because they know people will be cooking it before eating.

Sir that’s your business to continue to feed your animal brand. Just hope your pet is ok afterwards.

I feed viva. But I cooked them before serving. Because I never feel safe feeding him raw. Is that ok?

I have fed viva in the past

I love how you said don't invalidate the pet parent's experiences, yet you go on to say that salmonella & e.coli are normally found in the stool of dogs. Which is true, but misleading. Salmonella and E.coli, although found in the GI system, should never be present in food or found in the blood of an animal. You are biased and you know it.

I had a negative experience with viva raw last year and the CEO personally called me after issuing my refund to give permission to remove my negative review where I explained that my per became sick after eating viva raw. They were very quick to hush my experience as the we're getting ready to launch into a bigger market and my review would negatively impact their revenue. There was little remorse for my pets well being. I hope they do better.

ive been saying this. everybody was trying to make it a Purina issue. It wasnt a Purina issue. It was a contaminated batch issue, which can literally happen to any pet food manufacturing company. unless you're preparing the food yourself, you will never know exactly what is going into the food.

My dog is thriving on Viva. There are recalls for “people food” all the time. Let’s keep this real.

Anything raw this will eventually happen and not just in pet food