If you’re just catching up Midwestern Pet foods (manufacturer of Earthborn, ProPac, SportMix, CanineX, Venture, Unrefined and Wholesomes) rounded out 2020 with an expansive ‘voluntary’ recall secondary to aflatoxin contamination among a variety of their products. As 2021 began the ‘voluntary’ recall became larger – however, as retailers and consumers we were assured that this incident was isolated to one of their four US plants. If you are wondering why I put ‘voluntary’ in quotes, it’s because voluntary recalls are actually not voluntary – they are forced by the FDA (For more on that, see my other article ‘Voluntary Recalls Are Not Voluntary’ here). In short, when a company is subject to a voluntary recall it appears to imply that either the company did not have to recall the product, or that they may have found the issue themselves and thus recalled the product ‘out of an abundance of caution’, when in fact it is usually pretty far from the truth.