I found 15 needles in my Royal Canin food I ordered from Chewy
I found 15 needles in my bag of Royal Canin hydrolyzed cat food that I ordered from Chewy.
My parents have a cat and I have a cat who both eat this prescription food. My mom orders the food through Chewy and we share it, I typically take a large ball jar of the food back to my home with me. On Wednesday night I was at my parents house and I was petting their cat while she was eating. She was eating off of a feeding mat on top of their bureau. Off to the side of the mat, about 8 in from the kibble, were four sewing needles. I immediately blamed my dad of sewing something and leaving the needles there. He said it absolutely was not him. My mom and I were baffled. She suggested maybe they came out of the food but I said no way.
On Thursday something caught my eye on my kitchen floor in my own home and it was a needle. I had no explanation for it and mentioned to my mom that I found a random needle at my own house. We both thought it was extremely strange.
On Friday morning, my mom scooped kibble out of the bag, and there was a needle sticking out of the food in the scoop. I proceeded to take the food out of the bag and dig through it. I found 10 needles. (Yes, I dug through the bag with my bare hands. I'd already picked up five of these fairly large sewing needles, I was not afraid of them poking me. I realize now there could have been tiny needles in the bag that could have poked me but in the moment I was not thinking clearly. Chalk it up to me being plain stupid.)
The needles are all of different size but they are all sewing needles. I thoroughly inspected the bag for holes and did find one small one, but it is hard to tell if it is from a needle. It could be from a cat clawing it. Or like others have suggested, it could be a needle hole from the needle poking from inside the bag outwards. So at this point there's no way of telling if the needles were put in there at the factory, warehouse, distribution center, or during shipping.
I contacted Chewy and they asked for photos and lot numbers. I haven't heard back yet. I contacted Royal Canin, and they asked for the same thing. I have not heard back yet.
I have no explanation as to how we did not notice those first five needles come out of the bag. Maybe it was in the night when it was dark and the cats were begging for a 3:00 a.m. treat? I don't know.
Pet owners, please please please check your pet food. A dog could easily gobble these needles up. Thankfully cats are dainty eaters and our cats ate around them.
Disclaimer: I posted this on cats, pets, and mildly infuriating already, and it was removed on all three subs. While the majority of the comments were supportive, there were a lot of people who said I was making this up. I went into further detail in this post. My previous posts were condensed to get rid of (what I thought was) unnecessary details. But apparently it sounded "made up". I don't feel I owe anyone explanations about the details of my posts. The people who take it seriously will hopefully check their pet food!
I could not add photos initially because I was on the web version of Reddit on my phone and there was no button to add media. I have switched to the mobile version and I can add media now. I'm not trying to make either Chewy or Royal Canin look bad. I have been an extremely loyal customer of Chewy for many years and would recommend them to anyone. Their customer service is the best in the business. Royal Canin makes the only hydrolyzed food my cat, and my parents' cat, is able and willing to eat. It took years of us both vetting and battling skin lesions and ear infections to realize this food is the only thing that works for our cats. We did not notice anything off with the bag of food when we opened it. We had been using this bag of food for probably a week before finding the needles. Yes, the bags are vacuum sealed shut, but there is still lots of excess packaging so if there were a hole it would not be obvious that there is air getting inside. People are tearing me up for this but I don't care. I want to get the word out and want pet owners to check their pet food. Say what you want about me, call me names, diagnose me with a mental illness , whatever. If you think I am karma farming, the simplest way to combat that is by not interacting.