PRESS RELEASE: Animal Outlook Complaint Prompts FDA Inspection and Recall of Bravo Packing, Inc. Pet Foods

For immediate release

Media contact:
Jenny Hunter, Director of Communications
jhunter@animaloutlook.org

Carney’s Point, New Jersey, March 4, 2021 — Bravo Packing, Inc. has recalled both its Performance Dog and its Ground Beef frozen raw pet foods due to possible contamination with Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes following a complaint made by nationally recognized animal advocacy group Animal Outlook. Bravo (unaffiliated with Bravo Pet Foods), located in New Jersey, slaughters cows and horses and includes both cow and horse meat in its product lines. Americans generally believe there is no domestic horse slaughter. In fact, Bravo and others slaughter horses in the U.S. for animal food.

In December 2020, Animal Outlook notified the FDA that a sample of Performance Dog Diet we tested was positive for Salmonella. This was confirmed in a subsequent investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), along with Listeria contamination. The FDA announced the recall yesterday. These contaminants pose risks to both animal and human health.

Amanda Sorvino, horse activist and actress, went undercover at Bravo Packing in 2008 and witnessed shocking cruelty. “Ex-racehorses and other animals were left at Bravo’s ‘kill lot,’ where they were starved for several months and up to two years, abused and ultimately killed in the presence of their terrified herd mates,” she said. “The company sold the meat to big cat enterprises across the country. Once, Bravo’s manager entered the ‘kill lot’ after midnight with a baseball bat, hit the only seeing eye of a partially blind draft horse with the bat and then called me, admitting his macabre, shocking act,” she continued. Sorvino facilitated rescue and eye surgery for that horse and then went on to rescue 10 other horses from this facility. “It’s mind-boggling that places like Bravo still exist,” she said.

Bravo has been the subject of numerous complaints for selling contaminated animal food and animal cruelty.

“This recall represents the latest in a long history of issues uncovered at Bravo Packing,” said Will Lowrey, Legal Counsel for Animal Outlook. “For years, Bravo Packing has profited off the bodies of horses and cows butchered in filthy, squalid conditions and then sold to the unsuspecting public. We appreciate the FDA’s swift action and are hopeful that this recall signals the beginning of the end for Bravo Packing.”

Past complaints against Bravo include:

• The FDA issued a warning letter to Bravo in 2020 describing filthy conditions.
• The FDA warned the public not to feed Bravo’s Performance Dog frozen raw pet food to their pets after samples tested positive for Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes contamination in 2019.
• A consumer complained to the FDA that Bravo’s products contain meat “from dead, dying, and disabled livestock” in 2018 (FDA Consumer Complaint/Injury Report #153962).
• Bravo sells a horse meat product for exotic animals that the FDA found to be “contaminated with Pentobarbital and Phenytoin” in 2016.
• Horses Bravo kept and slaughtered for their meat have been described as “emaciated,” “starving” and “too weak to stand.”

If your pet or a pet you know of has become ill after eating food from Bravo Packing, please contact Animal Outlook at info@animaloutlook.org.

About Animal Outlook

Animal Outlook is a national nonprofit 501(c)(3) animal advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission: To change the world for animals. By deploying an arsenal of strategies to challenge the status quo of animal agribusiness, we’re exposing truth, delivering justice, inspiring change, revolutionizing food systems and empowering others to stand up for animals by leaving them off our plates.