Foreign material contamination (FMC) is one of the pet food industry's most persistent and costly challenges. More than 80 recalls in the U.S. last year were attributed to foreign material in food and pet food, and a benchmark survey conducted by FlexXray found that 73% of respondents experience a foreign material incident at least quarterly.
During a recent Ask the Pet Food Pro, Paula Schwarz, senior director of key accounts at FlexXray, and Teki Lyons, director of food safety, quality assurance and sanitation at Brightpet, walked through the full arc of a contamination event: where foreign material comes from, how to catch it, what to do when you find it, and how to protect your brand when things go wrong.
Here are five core questions regarding FMC to offer a practical framework for cross-functional teams.
1. Where does foreign material actually come from?
The sources are more varied, and more internal, than many manufacturers expect.
"In my experience, the two big ones are inbound from raw materials and then by our own design," Lyons said. "Maybe it's equipment or personnel."
Agricultural commodities such as corn and soybeans arrive with rocks, sticks and other field debris. But Lyons emphasized that the materials facilities introduce themselves are equally common.
"Maintenance activity may introduce welding slag or metal shavings, all the way to rubber gloves and hair nets," she said.
Clear plastic has emerged as a particularly stubborn source of contamination, one Lyons said she has grappled with frequently.
"The biggest struggle we've had recently is with clear plastic — very tiny little squares of clear plastic," she said. "Photo X-ray typically doesn't see it."
In one case, Lyons traced the source to how workers were opening frozen ingredient bags near hoppers. In a previous facility, a different problem — chunks of wood appearing in product — turned out to be pallet material breaking off as boxes were dumped directly over a bin.
"I walked out to the floor and watched them," she said. "How are you opening these bags? What knife are you using? You have to observe and understand the process firsthand to know how to fix it."
2. What prevention strategies are most effective?
Both speakers pointed to supplier control as the first and most important line of defense.
"Having a good, robust supplier approval program so you understand where your ingredients are coming from, and what mitigations they have in place in their facility, keeps the big contaminants out a lot of times," Lyons said.
She recommended starting by identifying the highest-risk ingredients and the suppliers that have been most problematic, then building foreign material criteria into supplier monitoring programs — not just microbiological or quality attributes.
"If you have a limit for rocks and you didn't tell your supplier, and they send you some rocks and you reject, they don't understand why that happened," she said. "Be very clear with your suppliers about what your expectation is."
In-facility controls matter, too. Lyons cited magnets at receiving, screening equipment and, for dry pet food, a magnet system positioned just before the preconditioner to capture any metal that gets through a hammermill screen.
But the most underutilized tool, both speakers agreed, is the people on the line.
"The people on the line are your first line of defense to food safety, and they will talk to you if you just spend the time to talk to them," Lyons said. "Encourage them: if you see something, say something."
Schwarz described a personal example that illustrated the cost of ignoring that principle: At a previous employer, a metal detector wand was lost and chopped into product. The employee who lost it had told someone — but nothing happened. The result was blue plastic in product shipped to 3,000 restaurants the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
"The 'see something, say something' mantra is incredibly important," Schwarz said. "I always go back to the Thanksgiving story when people are asking questions — does it really matter? Yes, it really does matter."
3. What does foreign material contamination actually cost?
The financial exposure to FMC goes far beyond the value of product on hold.
"What does it cost to remake that product? What does it cost to have downtime on that line? If it gets outside of your control, are you damaging a customer relationship? Are you damaging your brand?" Schwarz said. "The average recall right now is about $10 million."
In pet food, the stakes carry an additional layer of complexity: the end consumer can't communicate what's wrong.
"Unlike toddlers or children, our consumer can't tell us what is wrong," Schwarz said. "The pet parents' perception of the situation is the reality, so the cost of foreign material goes far beyond a monetary number."
Lyons added that knowing whether a foreign material source originated in your facility or a supplier's can have significant financial implications.
"If I'm 99% confident that it came from a vendor, guess who's going to pay the bill — not me," she said. "You've got to know if it's you or not, because the worst thing you can do is say, 'We don't have those bolts,' and then somebody from maintenance goes, 'Yeah, we actually do.'"
4. When contamination happens, what should facilities do first?
Speed matters above almost everything else.
"As quickly as you can, you want to get your bookends established and get that product on hold," Lyons said. "And then for me, it's calling Paula at FlexXray."
Once product is secured and a risk assessment completed, manufacturers face a choice between internal rework, third-party inspection or destruction. Schwarz cautioned that internal rework is often less capable than it appears.
"If you're running product that you already know has an issue through the same equipment, are you going to get a different result?" she said. "Somebody that's working third shift or a Saturday that's there for the overtime may not be as motivated to find foreign material as somebody that's trained to do that."
FlexXray's process runs at three to five feet per minute, far slower than most inline systems, and is calibrated to detect metal at 0.8 millimeter ferrous and 1.0 millimeter stainless, explained Schwarz. The company inspects a submitted product sample first, then processes full loads, returning both an electronic report and the physical foreign material via FedEx.
"Over 97% of the product we inspect is actually eligible for release," Schwarz said. "That's a really good ROI if you're looking to save product and not send it to the landfill."
She also cautioned manufacturers to be prepared for what inspection might reveal beyond the original incident. In one case, a customer sent product after a metal event, and FlexXray found significant quantities of rock.
"It went from three truckloads of product to 30 truckloads of product," Schwarz said. "Be ready to take the data or the information that you get from the investigation and make the appropriate call."
5. How should companies handle negative media coverage after a contamination event?
Both speakers gave the same answer: don't try to handle it yourself.
"Media training — anybody at the director level or above was media trained at the larger pet food companies I worked for," Lyons said. "If you don't have that capability, hire a third-party communicator. Don't take that on yourself."
She emphasized having a recall or retrieval strategy in place before an event occurs, and coaching all employees to resist the temptation to speak to reporters on the spot.
"If someone jams a microphone in your face, just say, 'Sorry, I can't comment,' and get hold of somebody that actually can speak to it," she said. "They will take a tiny piece of context from that conversation and replay it. It happens in pet food all the time."
The bottom line
FMC will always be part of pet food manufacturing, but the response to it is evolving. Employees are your first line of defense, and understanding your manufacturing process is key to heading problems off before they grow. Employee training should be ongoing and buy-in from your team is paramount.
And on the question of asking for help — whether from a peer, a network contact or a third-party service — always reach out.
"There is nothing proprietary about food safety and quality," Lyons said. "Don't be afraid to ask for help."
Ask the Pet Food Pro is a series of expert chats presented by Pet Food Forum and the editors of Petfood Industry. This session was sponsored by FlexXray.
