From the show floor at Interzoo 2026 to the latest developments in pet food safety and regulation, this episode explores breaking news and notable headlines happening across the pet care industry. Hosts Dr. Stephanie Clark and Jordan Tyler discuss Barking Mad's international debut in Nuremberg, emerging innovations in pet nutrition, recent pet food recalls, and the growing number of lawsuits against pet food companies.

Helpful Links

🌍 Learn more about Interzoo, the world’s largest pet industry trade show, and stay tuned for upcoming episodes from the show floor!

✅ It’s official! You can now follow us on LinkedIn here!

🧫 Read more about Coolty Meat, the latest complete-and-balanced cultivated meat product launched for dogs.

⚖️ Find additional details about this year’s class action lawsuits against pet nutrition brands here: https://www.classaction.org/news/category/pets

Show Notes

00:00 – Barking Mad Goes to Interzoo 2026!

01:44 – 34 Interviews, 12+ Hours of Content

06:08 – Cultivated Meat Arrives in Pet Food

14:43 – Raw Pet Food Recalls to Know About

24:02 – The Scoop on Pet Food Lawsuits in 2026

31:39 – Final Thoughts & What’s Next

Stephanie Clark

Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. We’re your hosts, Dr. Stephanie Clark—

Stephanie Clark

—and I'm Jordan Tyler.

Stephanie Clark

Hello!

Jordan Tyler

Hey, you.

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

How much bigger could it actually be? I was shocked at how big it was. I don't even know how you could get through that place in four days and see everything. It's impossible.

Stephanie Clark

And remind me. Right? It's in different rooms. Like this is not in one big convention hall.

Jordan Tyler

This thing takes up the entire convention center. It's like a… it's like a neighborhood block just full of these huge exhibition halls. And it's hilarious. The first like the three days, like leading up to the show. It's like you're walking through the floor and there's trash everywhere, and there's people smoking cigarettes and there's, you know, people with forklifts driving all over the place and you're like, oh my God, what's going on?

Jordan Tyler

And then you show up at like eight the next morning and it's like completely pristine. There's no trash on the ground. All the boots are vacuumed and like, all the glasses shining.

Stephanie Clark

But let’s talk about something really cool, though about this show. Barking Mad went global at the show, right?

Jordan Tyler

We did. We did… Around the world in four days. Essentially. We did. So, we had Kallman—Kallman Worldwide—which put on the US pavilion at Interzoo. So, they so kindly sponsored the booth that we had on the show floor, similar to what we did at SUPERZOO last year. You guys heard those episodes. We basically sat there and conducted, I think it was 34 interviews throughout four days of the show.

Jordan Tyler

I was like, stuck in that box the whole time, not complaining. You're just a goldfish. It did get a little hot in there, and I did get a little cranky at some point. But yeah, 34 interviews with 34 plus people. Some of the interviews were two people. One of the interviews was two people and two dogs. And I think that took us to like just under 12 hours of content…?

Jordan Tyler

So boy, do we have a treat for you. Like when I can figure out how we're going to get through all that content, we're going to have so many treats for you guys. But yeah, I might have been non-verbal for 48 hours after the show, but I mean, it was… it was so… it was very rewarding, very fulfilling, very like it gave me a lot of energy.

Jordan Tyler

And then when it was over, I was like a dead person. I talked way too much.

Stephanie Clark

Props to you because I think after day one I would have been like picking my brain up off the floor like it's eking out of my ears, because let's just talk about like, the amount of focus and care and intention that you're putting into each one of these interviews, for every individual that sat down with you and then times that by 34, four days.

Jordan Tyler

And I will say, so this is English is my first language. It's my only language, right? I'm a spoiled American and that's what I'm working with, unfortunately. But I'm sitting down with all these people where English is not their first language. For some of them, sure. But for many of them, most of them, no, it's not. It's their second language, or maybe even their third or fourth.

Jordan Tyler

And so I'm sitting there like, okay, I'm getting pretty tired. I'm starting to lose my words. I'm starting to lose my train of thought more easily in English, the only language that I know. And these people are sitting across from me and like native German speakers and it's like they're on day four as well, and they're equally tired and they've equally been talking as much as I have.

Jordan Tyler

And now they're having to, like, translate in real time. And I was just like, I am so sorry. I can't even speak real words right now. And I don't even have to do those mental gymnastics so…

Stephanie Clark

But let's talk about one other thing about Barking Mad. Because we had mentioned socials and last week, I don't know. Sometime in May we became LinkedIn official.

Stephanie Clark

Group where like Facebook official was a thing. So, we are now LinkedIn official!

Jordan Tyler

Yes, we will link that in the show notes for you guys, but that I mean, that was one of our last channels, I think, to get on other than some of the like more emerging ones, but we're on all the majors. We're on all the major podcast streaming platforms. So, go check us out, leave us a comment. We seriously, we love it when you guys have questions and ideas for us to cover on the podcast in broader episodes.

Jordan Tyler

So please, please, please go follow us and interact with us there. And you might see your idea in a future episode.

Jordan Tyler

Tell me about this Coolty Meat thing. So, you saw this headline about a culti-mated… culti-mated meat? All right. I'm just going to throw that in the running as a potential name for this ingredient, but a cultured meat dog food that launched at interview, the show that we were just talking about. Tell me about it.

Stephanie Clark

Yes, I when I was looking at trending things happening in May and pet, this one popped up and I, I wanted to talk to you about it. I want to get your take on it. And really, I would love to get so many more people's take on it, which is why we're going to do another episode strictly focusing on this.

Stephanie Clark

So, there is a wet—so canned diet—it's complete and balanced dog food that contains 26% cultivated meat. And this is free of antibiotics, hormones and preservatives. And it's said to be for dogs with food intolerances without being too spicy. And you can hit the red button if I am too spicy or squirt me with a water gun.

Stephanie Clark

Let's talk about some things real fast. And I'm not dogging on cultivated meat. But I think we need to really talk about like, “free of antibiotics, hormones.” So, most all meat is right, like the USDA does put guidelines on meat or, you know, animals have to be X amount of days of antibiotics, the whole hormone things.

Stephanie Clark

They have to be free of these anyway. So, I think there's like a huge misconception there. But we won't go down that rabbit hole. Then let's talk about preservatives. Most canned food is not riddled with preservatives, whether that be natural or synthetic, just because of the way that the cooking process is. And then let's talk about food intolerances.

Stephanie Clark

This is again, tell me if I'm too spicy here. This isn't really a huge issue in pets, but with that being said, there are some pets that have food intolerances. So, I'm not dogging on this right now, but I think the way we market things needs to be maybe just a level of realistic.

Stephanie Clark

And I think this is really interesting because cultivated meats love it, hate it, don't understand it. It's the future right now. It's what things are going towards. And so cultivated meat is a product that is produced by growing animal cells and a controlled environment. So, think of like a petri dish way, way, way, way back, you know, in high school and science class growing things on those petri dish.

Stephanie Clark

So, say we're going to grow animal cells. So, meat and a petri dish, lab grown meat you may have heard of but it's really, it's farming without animal farming. So, mixed perceptions all around. Some states are like, yeah, let's do it. Some states are like, absolutely not. Don't get rid of my animal farming. I mean, truthfully, I don't really know where I stand on this.

Stephanie Clark

I think it's going to be really interesting to see from a nutritional standpoint where the amino acid profiles pan out. Are we using cultivated cells to grow cultivated meat? Like how far derived from the cultivated meat are your next cultivated meat generations, if that makes sense?

Jordan Tyler

I've never thought of it that way. Yeah, that's a really good point.

Stephanie Clark

Or do you always start with an original animal cell? And if so, where are those cells coming from? I don't know, I think I'm asking more questions and causing more doubt than I am clarity in this. But what is your take on this?

Jordan Tyler

I also have kind of a convoluted take and that I like, can't really decide if this is like the best thing since sliced bread or like, you know, I just I still have some questions, right? I have questions about the nutritional integrity, if you will. Not necessarily that I question our ability to create lab-grown meat and be able to do it in a way that's safe and complete, like, I think we totally can.

Jordan Tyler

And I think that there are actually some really interesting arguments for being able to like, fine tune amino acid profiles of cultivated meat. Whereas like if you're getting it from an animal, it's more fixed, right? Because it's just coming from the animal. Whereas you can control those factors in a lab setting. But that said, yeah, there's really not enough research on it to say, “Okay, yes, we should feed this to our pets for a long period of time.”

Jordan Tyler

We need that longitudinal research. We also have some interesting cultural responses when it comes to this as like a sustainability initiative. Right? So, it's being taken kind of politically. My personal opinion is something like this is needed as like a compliment. You know, I'm not saying we should ban all animal farming. I actually, I love steak, okay? Do not get me twisted.

Jordan Tyler

But like as a, as a compliment or as, like a supplement to all the protein that we all eat. All animals, including our companion animals, including our livestock. You know, it makes so much sense for me for, like, livestock feed or for like pet food, whereas like for humans, I understand, you know, we want more variety and we want more choice.

Jordan Tyler

So, I see that as being more complementary.

Jordan Tyler

Another really interesting like semantic argument here is natural versus synthetic, right? Like you can have a natural preservative or a synthetic preservative and you can have one that's both and that's going to come up here in a second.

Jordan Tyler

But like since we're growing this in a lab in a petri dish, does that make this synthetic even though all the inputs are natural? Like, how are we going to square that in the eyes of consumers that are constantly asking for things to be more natural and less synthetic?

Stephanie Clark

We know that there's this huge push for premiumization. We know that there is a huge push for biological aging, more than just comparing nutrients when you're comparing food, you know, different foods. This, to me feels like a step in the opposite direction, which I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just if we're pushing for premiumization, “meat first,” “real meat,” and then all of a sudden now we have this cultivated meat option, it feels like it falls kind of like in the… in the camp of like insect protein, where like, it's absolutely needed.

Stephanie Clark

There's nothing wrong with it. It's a great compliment. It's really going to help with like the supply chain putting off that that strain. Right? As like you mentioned, we love steak. We love eating meat first too. And now if we're feeding our pets like that and we already don't have enough in our supply chain, and now we're competing with our animals, like what's going to happen?

Stephanie Clark

So, like these alternative protein options are a necessity. They have to happen. But how do you… it feels like pet is going in one direction and then we have these cool options. Is it going to take?

Jordan Tyler

We'll get off the soapbox now and move on to something that's a little less subjective. Yeah, a little a little less subjective. These are facts. This is recalls.

Jordan Tyler

So, it was May 7th. That was when the recall was published.

Jordan Tyler

Because a finished product, Albright's raw pet food Chicken Recipe for Dogs tested positive for Salmonella. So Salmonella it's a foodborne pathogen, a foodborne illness, and it can make people really sick. It can also make pets sick, but pets aren't as susceptible to, you know, having actual signs of being ill from Salmonella. They are more like carriers. So, they can, like, give it to us and give it to our children and our neighbors and our neighbors children.

Jordan Tyler

And that's what makes it really dangerous, because we're the ones that are handling their food, right? They're not going to open the freezer and thaw their own food, especially if it's raw and then feed themselves. We have to do that. So if it's contaminated with Salmonella, that's a real food safety risk. Luckily, no illnesses have been reported in relation to this Albright's recall, but it's still important to know about, right?

Jordan Tyler

Especially if you feed raw food, especially because it can be difficult to handle. There's a lot of safety steps there. And I don't know about y'all, but I am not the poster child for food safety in my own kitchen. Please don't come and see me there because you're not going to like it. And I know I'm not the only one.

Jordan Tyler

Okay, so just be aware.

Stephanie Clark

Yeah, I think there's two points that we need to make to this or I would like to make to this is it's a voluntary recall meaning they tested their finished product. They tested positive for salmonella. No one is forcing this company to recall. But the company has taken upon themselves to say, hey, we don't feel comfortable with this and we're actually going to recall this on our on our own voluntary moral.

Stephanie Clark

So, I do want to call that out because sometimes we hear of recalls and we're like, “Ooooooh, it's so bad, you're in trouble. You're going to the principal's office!” And I'm not saying that it's not bad, but I'm saying that they are doing the steps right now to make sure that this product doesn't hurt anyone or any pet.

Stephanie Clark

But like you had mentioned, it's not the, “Oh, well, this has Salmonella in it.” It's the residuals. Right? So, when an animal eats something that may have Salmonella in it, what they can actually do is they shed it in their feces. And this is the problem that can that can kind of get out of hand or get out of control is if you think about, are you cleaning that surface that the feces was on or are you nasty?

Stephanie Clark

And you'll wear your outside shoes in the house? Wink, wink, Jonathan David.

Stephanie Clark

But if other animals are shedding Salmonella in their feces and you step through that, you could have Salmonella on your shoe, on your foot, and then you track it in the house. And then if you have young children like I do who are crawling on the floor, it's just as you see this like snowball effect. So like, first take your shoes off when you get in the house.

Jordan Tyler

Now, we judging. Now we're judging you.

Stephanie Clark

Now I am judging. No, there are few things in life. Say thank you for presents, especially around Christmas, and take your shoes off in the house. But as you can see, like now, we have all these environmental potentials of where Salmonella is. And I mean Salmonella is everywhere, everywhere. But if we're just having these shedding hotspots, it's just eventually someone could get sick.

Stephanie Clark

So, it's just this trickle effect or snowball effect of like, yeah, okay, you may have cleaned the bowl really well. You may have cleaned the utensils or the prep area, but are you cleaning where that feces has now landed? And are you controlling where that feces or the equal matter particles, poo particles go? My bet is no.

Jordan Tyler

There was some other recall that that happened a little later in May, and it's actually an old recall, but it was a company that expanded that recall and added some products to it. And now there are a total of 64 different products across various packaging sizes and weights that are implicated in this recall, which were I mean, that's a lot of product.

Jordan Tyler

So, this was adding a Beef and Turkey Medley product. The company is a Raaw Energy and they were tested, finished products were tested and found that some of them did contain Listeria. And yeah, this this is similar to Salmonella. And the pets can become infected and not necessarily show symptoms, but they can become carriers. They can spread these bacterium through our environments, and then we get them and then we get sick.

Jordan Tyler

And yeah, you don't want to get sick with this bacteria. It causes nausea, vomiting, aches, fever, diarrhea… really all the things that you don't want. And if it's persistent or it goes untreated, you know, it can lead to systemic issues, like potentially fatal illnesses, like Stephanie said. So womp womp. But again, I'm pretty sure this was also a voluntary recall.

Jordan Tyler

But right. They're doing this because they know that they need to protect their consumers. And this actually, they shared a message to the FDA along with the expanded recall. They say, “To better serve our customers will be temporarily stopping all production of dog food until May 21. This pause is necessary so we can carefully evaluate current issues, address them properly, and take corrective,” sorry, “appropriate corrective actions,” which I just want to point out is not every company will do that, right?

Jordan Tyler

And I actually I've seen a recall in the past where a raw food company got hit with like a Salmonella or Listeria recall, and they were like trying to fight it. Right? Because pets don't get as sick. That was their argument. And I was like, this is not the message that you want to be sending right now, but okay, weird flex.

Jordan Tyler

I just thought that that was like a really transparent thing to do and say and be like, “Hey, we're stopping production so that we can seriously think about our food safety standards.” I don't know, what do you think about that?

Stephanie Clark

So, for anyone listening, I'm going to explain this. Hopefully you've seen this movie reference. I hate doing movie references, but when you're talking, this movie popped into my brain and I'm like, this is great. I'm going to say it. I'm going to commit to it. Have you ever seen Osmosis Jones? So, one of my favorite movies. Surprise, not surprise.

Stephanie Clark

But like, you know, like the bad, bad, bad guy in there. This is Listeria. Like. And I'm not saying that it is. I honestly can't remember, but, like, this is what we're talking about when we're talking about Listeria. So when you, when companies when a product test positive for Listeria, you really should. And I I'm pretty sure you have to I'm saying that I'm pretty sure because I don't know if there's like any legal thing around it…

Stephanie Clark

So I'm… I don't have the authority to say that. But you have to stop production like, you shut down because you essentially have to dismantle everything and scrub it and clean it, like when you're talking serious, like pregnant women can miscarry if they get infected with Listeria. Like this kills people. So like, you really have to shut everything down.

Stephanie Clark

And so this company, you know, announcing, “Hey, we are stopping, we are shutting down,” right now. They are… well, as of today, hopefully they're up and running. But what they've had to do since then is really dismantle all of their things, scrub it down, swab all these surfaces, make sure they're all now testing negative for Listeria and having to restart. It probably cost them a ton of money, a ton of time.

Stephanie Clark

They stop production, so they weren't producing anything. Like it's a huge financial burden. So anyway, I all I could think about was like Osmosis Jones and that like evil guy when he's like touching things in the body and it's just like… destruction.

Jordan Tyler

Insert clip here.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah, yeah. Luckily, these products that were recalled by Raaw Energy were not distributed, you know, to every single state in the United States. There's certain states where they were distributed, and I believe food had to be ordered from the website and picked up by customers. So, you know who you are. You know, if you're if you might be implicated or have product that's implicated in this recall.

Jordan Tyler

But, like we do, we'll put links in the show notes for this one and the Albright’s recall we just talked about, so that you guys can learn more and keep you and your pets safe.

Jordan Tyler

Alright. Should we talk about lawsuits?

Stephanie Clark

Stephanie Clark

Stephanie Clark

Stephanie Clark

And you, Jordan, you and I, we're not people who kiss and tell. So, let's just talk about what some of these class action lawsuits or about and let's leave maybe the names for a mysterious one.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah. You guys can go and read for yourselves, but there are some themes, right? These aren't one-off class action lawsuits, like there are themes to this, and there are recurring things that people continue to sue pet food companies over. And really quick before I'm sorry, Stephanie, but before we get too deep into it, class action lawsuit is different from a normal lawsuit, in the sense that it means that a group of consumers or people that were wronged by a company, or by a product or by some organization, they actually band together.

Jordan Tyler

And that's the class. And the class is taking action through the lawsuit. So it's multiple people and they usually have really, really large settlements. Right? Because you're paying out multiple people that have been harmed by these claims or perceptibly harmed by these claims. But anyway, Steph, take us into it.

Stephanie Clark

Stephanie Clark

claims no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. This group of people believe that is not truthful. That some things that are listed in their label maybe don't abide by those definitions. This one, I think, is going to be really interesting to see how it all plays out, because I believe depending on this ruling, will have a trickle effect to how almost every other brand responds to this.

Stephanie Clark

Stephanie Clark

Another one is excessive fat claims. So, a brand quote unquote failed to warn people that their diets had high fat levels. This is very subjective. “High fat,” AAFCO doesn't describe what high fat is. You technically don't have to disclose a max fat on your guaranteed analysis, just a minimum fat. So this will be really interesting. But we do know that fat can lead to other health issues.

Stephanie Clark

But really trying to identify what that level of fat is really coming down to an individual dog. So, this will be interesting. Another one to follow and then one that I didn't know about or that I hadn't heard a lot about was PFAS and packaging. And I'm going to butcher this, but it's a polyfluoroalkyl substance and packaging.

Stephanie Clark

Sure. Yeah. And so, coming out of California, needing to disclose this sort of chemical substance in packaging and I'm saying “chemical” because everything is really a chemical compound. But TBD on what you really need to do with that.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah. So that one's interesting because I think all companies that sell especially food in packaging, because that's usually how it comes, are supposed to be like moving away from PFAS or PFAS or whatever. And so, the fact that there's a lawsuit out about this is maybe some people are slower, maybe enforcement is happening quicker than people expected. TBD.

Jordan Tyler

I just think it's—I think it is an interesting thing to bring up because obviously the number of class action lawsuits that we're seeing in pet and specifically pet food, right, are accelerating. That's just a fact of the numbers that we're looking at and that we're seeing, and we continue to see similar class action lawsuits, things about artificial flavors, preservatives and colors, things about packaging materials, things about DCM, things about ingredients being in there at levels that maybe they shouldn't be, or maybe the marketing being a little bit misleading to the reasonable consumer, as they say in the courtroom.

Jordan Tyler

But I think consumers are confused about what they're seeing on labels and what they're then seeing in headlines and on the news, and even in their own pets, you know, physiology and well-being. And they're—they have questions. And when a company can't answer those questions, then people feel like they have to take it to the strong arm of the law.

Jordan Tyler

I don't know, I'm like really off on my idioms today. So, I apologize for that one. But definitely do go check out the show notes and for some more details about some of the things that we talked about today. And stay tuned for conversations coming out of the Interzoo booth that we had at the show over there in Germany, for SUPERZOO—

Jordan Tyler

It's coming up quick, you guys. It's like two months away and I'm freaking out already. But it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. And yeah, just keep up with us. We're going to keep bringing you upsides content like this, deep dives and whatever you want. Let us know what you want to hear.

Stephanie Clark

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Barking Mad. If you want to learn more about BSM partners, please visit us at www.bsmpartners.net. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite leading podcast platform, or share it with a friend to stay current on the latest pet industry trends and conversations.

Jordan Tyler

We'd also like to thank our dedicated team: Ada-Miette Thomas, Neeley Bowden, Kait Wright, Cady Wolf, Anna Guilfoyle and Jacob Parker. A special shout out to Lee Ann Hagerty and Michael Johnson in support of this episode, and to David Perez for our original music in the intro and outro. See you next time!