Company to improve 'inadequate' detection process after pet owner finds metal shavings in dog food

On Monday, we published details about Luke Tyrell from Clitheroe, who was astonished when he found metal shavings in a packet of Harrington's dog food which he had purchased for his dog Diesel.

Mr Tyrell bought the lamb and rice flavoured biscuits from Pets at Home in Clitheroe at the beginning of November, and said when he came to pour the food into his dog's bowl, he noticed tiny little bits of metal wedged into some of the biscuits.

He said: "I emailed the company a complaint with pictures, and they told me to send a sample of the contaminated food in to them."

Mr Tyrell held half of the samples back in case they were lost in the post and on November 23, after sending some of the biscuits to Harrington's on November 12, said he received an email telling him the company still hadn't received the sample.

The Lancashire Telegraph then got in touch with Harrington's, and on Friday December 3, group operations director for Inspired Pet Nutrition Ltd, David Proctor, said that upon receiving Mr Tyrell's complaint, their quality assurance team carried out a backward trace of the batch code to all associated batches of raw materials used, and the route the ingredients followed through the manufacturing process.

Company find 'no fault' with food safety process after 'metal shavings' found in dog biscuits

He said: "Documented records confirmed there were no faults or metal detection rejects during this run.

"We are currently waiting for the sample of the metal find to be delivered to Inspired Pet Nutrition head office so our quality assurance team can test this through our system.

"We will also consult with our head of engineering to identify if this type of metal has come from our plant.

"We hope the above gives confidence in our food safety systems."

However, just days later on December 8, following publication of the story, Harrington's got back in touch with Mr Tyrell and said they had since received the samples, which had been closely examined.

Their response read: "The samples you kindly provided have been closely examined by the quality team.

"The findings are as follows:

• The returned kibble was passed down the line and was not rejected by our metal detector
• The pieces of metal are too small to be detected by the metal detector
• The piece of metal are not magnetic and would not have been stopped by the magnets on the raw material sieves
• The sensitivity of the metal detector is inadequate to detect the metal fines in this food

"It is believed that the metal probably originated within one or other of the raw ingredients and was not identified at the time of processing.

"The following actions are being take:

• A HACCP meeting is called to formally agree to increase the sensitivity of the metal detectors on all our packaging lines
• The supplier of the metal detectors is called to recalibrate the detectors to the required sensitivity

"The pieces if complaint kibble will be used as bench mark test pieces to ensure that the line is capable of detecting metal to this mm.

"In conclusion, our metal detector is not sensitive enough to pick up the metal to this size.

"We've identified a fault and are now able to improve our process to prevent this from happening in future.

"Without customer complaints such as these we are unable to continually improve, so we thank you for raising the complaint with us.

"Most customers may not have even seen this metal fragment, so it's down to your diligence that we can be thankful."

Mr Tyrell said he was offered a 15kg bag of dog food as way of compensation, but was still deliberating whether to accept.

He added: "I feel that had I not come to the press about this, nothing would have been done. And if their metal detector is inadequate, what's to say it's not picked up pieces in other bags of dog food."