Salmonella remains one of the most serious safety concerns facing pet food manufacturers. In 2025, it was associated with 65% of pet food recalls, rising from 47% the previous year. With the FDA maintaining a zero-tolerance policy for Salmonella in pet food and treats, manufacturers need ingredients and processes that help prevent contamination at every stage.
Gold Shield® and GoldPAL Refined Chicken Fat provide that protection by removing the conditions Salmonella needs to grow and verifying every batch through independent laboratory testing.
Why Chicken Fat Can Become a Contamination Risk
Extrusion exposes pet food to high temperatures that destroy harmful microorganisms. However, chicken fat is commonly applied to the kibble after this critical kill step. If the fat contains Salmonella when it is added, the finished food can become contaminated without passing through another high-temperature process.
Fat has historically been considered a low-risk environment because it contains very little available water. During transportation, storage, and transfer, however, small amounts of water can enter tankers, vessels, and production lines. That moisture can create an opportunity for Salmonella to survive when the fat also contains accessible nutrients.
Standard rendered chicken fat may retain several non-fat materials that support microbial activity, including:
- Water-soluble organic compounds, such as amino acids and nucleic acids
- Essential metals
- Inorganic salts
- Other residual impurities
When moisture is introduced, these materials can provide Salmonella with what it needs to persist and multiply.
Removing What Salmonella Needs to Grow
Pet Food Solutions takes a different approach to controlling the risk. Instead of relying only on the low water activity of chicken fat, its patented refining process removes most of the non-fat components that could support bacterial growth.
The process carefully controls water, pressure, heat, and time to separate pure chicken fat from unwanted materials. This reduces the impurities found in standard rendered chicken fat while preserving the nutritional properties and fatty acid profile that make chicken fat valuable in pet food.
By removing the water-soluble nutrients, metals, salts, and organic matter, Pet Food Solutions creates an environment that does not support Salmonella growth. Even if moisture enters the fat later, the nutrients the bacteria would normally use are no longer available.
What the Salmonella Study Found
To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, researchers compared standard rendered chicken fat with Gold Shield® Refined Chicken Fat in a controlled study. Samples of both fats were placed into a 96-well testing plate, with selected wells exposed to Salmonella and others maintained as controls. Researchers then monitored the samples over a 24-hour period.
Every standard chicken fat sample exposed to Salmonella showed substantial bacterial growth. In contrast, none of the challenged Gold Shield® Refined Chicken Fat samples supported growth.
These results demonstrate an important distinction between standard and refined fat. Standard chicken fat can contain nutrients that allow contamination to develop under the right conditions. Gold Shield® Refined Chicken Fat removes those nutrients, making the finished ingredient bacteriostatic against Salmonella.
Safety Begins During Refining
The refining conditions provide another layer of protection. Testing found that Salmonella introduced into standard rendered chicken fat was destroyed in fewer than five minutes when exposed to conditions simulating the Pet Food Solutions process.
This means the process addresses Salmonella in two ways:
- It destroys contamination that may enter with the original rendered fat.
- It removes the non-fat nutrients that could support future bacterial growth.
Together, these protections reduce the likelihood that Refined Chicken Fat will introduce Salmonella when it is applied after extrusion.
Every Batch Is Independently Verified
A carefully designed process must be supported by consistent verification. Pet Food Solutions requires every batch of Gold Shield® and GoldPAL Refined Chicken Fat to meet a specification of undetectable Salmonella.
Each batch is tested by an independent laboratory before it reaches a customer. This provides manufacturers with documented confirmation that the ingredient meets Pet Food Solutions’ microbiological safety requirements rather than relying on process expectations alone. For pet food companies operating under the FDA’s zero-tolerance policy, this additional oversight provides greater confidence in an ingredient added during one of the most vulnerable stages of production.
Closing the Post-Extrusion Safety Gap
The extrusion kill step cannot protect a finished product from contamination introduced afterward. Since chicken fat is commonly applied after that step, its ability to resist Salmonella growth becomes an essential part of the manufacturer’s safety strategy.
Gold Shield® and GoldPAL Refined Chicken Fat help close this vulnerability through a controlled refining process and independent testing of every batch. When an ingredient can eliminate existing contamination, remove the nutrients that support future growth, and provide independent verification for every batch, the difference is clear.
