We've got the Recalled Dog Food Blues.....

I'm sure that you've heard that Diamond, maker of Taste of the Wild, Nature's Domain and a host of other dog food brands, has a big recall going on. This time, there's a danger of Salmonella in the food and reportedly humans have become ill from handling the food and some dogs may have become ill too. They have traced the problem to the South Carolina plant (not China this time folks, right here in the US). We are now seeing that this recall is effecting other brands as well such as Wellness and Nature's Balance. It's getting hard to find a "good quality" food that's not affected.
This is nothing new, one of the most memorable recalls came in 2007 when wheat gluten from China caused widespread recall after potentially thousands of pets developed renal failure and died. Since then there have been several recalls for Aflatoxin, E. Coli, high levels of vitamin D, Salmonella and who knows what else. Just recently we had to stop feeding chicken jerky treats from China, which are causing severe illness but are still on the shelves at some of the big box stores.
There is no pattern, we can say don't feed your dogs anything that comes from China, but then there are problems in the US too. We try to steer away from brands which have been recalled, but so many of the brands are made in the same factories. We can try to feed only the "high quality" brands, but this last recall and others prove that even they are not immune to quality problems.
Until now, we have been feeding Nature's Domain with no problems. Feeding a grain free food had helped with skin and ear issues in several of our dogs. Changing everyone over to another food is going to result in all kinds of smelly problems for a few days....and then we'll have to see if the new food causes any new problems. Ugh!
I am confused as I'm sure that everyone is. It's impractical to cook all of our dog food for all of our dogs, but it seems to be the only way to avoid unintentionally poisoning our dogs for whom we want only whats good.
We will continue to search for a "safe" brand of food, but I am starting to wonder, is there really one out there?