The 2024 announcement that closed the era of "forever chemicals" in US food packaging — including pet food bags — and set the template for everything that followed.
In 2024, the US Food and Drug Administration announced that grease-proofing materials containing certain PFAS were no longer being sold for use in food packaging in the United States — a list that explicitly included pet food bags, alongside fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, and take-out containers.
The announcement capped a voluntary phase-out begun in 2020, when FDA scientists published safety reviews linking 6:2 FTOH and related compounds to persistent metabolites, and manufacturers agreed to stop sales. The agency's human foods commissioner called it the elimination of a major source of dietary PFAS exposure.
For the pet industry, 2024 was the pivot year: brands began asking suppliers for PFAS statements, retailers began writing it into vendor standards, and the litigation wave that surfaced a year later showed how costly silence could be. Every PFAS-free claim on today's pet packaging traces back to this transition.
Editorial photographs in this news section are real photographs sourced from Wikimedia Commons and used under the licences stated below. Product mock-ups and factory photography are the property of KindPack Pouch.
