Diamond: Facts, Recalls & Verified Foods
Diamond is made by Schell & Kampeter, Inc. (privately held, family-owned; Diamond Pet Foods is the trade name), founded 1970 — it scores green on 1 of 4 WSAVA-aligned criteria we track (0 red, 3 undisclosed), 2 FDA recalls on record, and 0 of the 6 Diamond foods we've verified carry an AAFCO feeding-trial statement.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — · 6 Diamond foods in our corpus
The scorecard
WSAVA-aligned criteria
The World Small Animal Veterinary Association's nutrition guidelines suggest four questions to ask any pet food maker before you buy. Most "best dog food" sites skip straight to ingredient vibes and star ratings — we publish the actual answers instead, each sourced, or marked honestly undisclosed when we can't confirm it.
1 of 4 criteria confirmed yes · 0 confirmed no · 3 undisclosed. Undisclosed is common, especially for smaller brands — it means we couldn't confirm an answer from a public source, not that the answer is unfavorable.
Diamond states it uses an internal team spanning veterinary medicine and companion-animal nutrition disciplines, but does not name a specific individual or state a board certification for any staff member on this or other pages found. Cannot confirm true or false with a real source, so left null rather than guessed.
source & quote
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Facilities are described as Diamond's own in Meta, Missouri (HQ); Gaston, South Carolina; Lathrop, California; Ripon, California; Dumas, Arkansas; Frontenac, Kansas; and Rushville, Indiana. Diamond Pet Foods is well known industry-wide as a company that owns and operates its own plants rather than co-packing.
source & quote
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No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 6 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.
Count of PubMed-indexed records with 'Diamond Pet Foods' in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered) is 0. A reproducible FLOOR, not a total.
These four checks come from WSAVA's global nutrition guidelines for evaluating a pet food manufacturer — not our own opinion score. Read our full methodology →
The company
Who makes Diamond
Ownership and history, each sourced independently — private-label and co-packed brands often hide the actual manufacturer behind the name on the bag.
Parent company
Schell & Kampeter, Inc. (privately held, family-owned; Diamond Pet Foods is the trade name)
source
Diamond Pet Foods' legal parent entity is Schell & Kampeter, Inc. Corroborated by diamondpetcompany.com/our-history/, which states the second generation of the Schell and Kampeter families still own and operate the company — founded by brothers-in-law Gary Schell and Richard Kampeter. Unlike 4health (a Tractor Supply private label manufactured by Diamond), here Diamond Pet Foods/Schell & Kampeter is itself the brand owner.
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Founded
1970
source
Official company history page states the founding year directly.
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Headquarters
Meta, Missouri, USA
source
Meta, MO is the founding location and remains the headquarters; the company also operates additional plants elsewhere (see wsava.owns_manufacturing).
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The safety record
FDA recall history
Joined from the FDA's own Animal & Veterinary recall feed (2019–present) plus curated pre-2019 records — the same live-checked feed as our full recall database, filtered to Diamond.
All varieties and sizes of Diamond and Diamond Naturals dry dog and cat food produced at the Gaston, SC plant
Salmonella contamination linked to at least 14 human illnesses across 9 states — Diamond Pet Foods (Schell & Kampeter, Inc.)
Multiple Diamond-brand dry dog and cat food formulas containing a contaminated corn ingredient
Aflatoxin contamination; FDA investigation found inadequate aflatoxin testing across 12 shipments of corn, with more than 100 dog deaths reported — Diamond Pet Foods (Schell & Kampeter, Inc.)
Join of data/recalls.json (FDA Animal & Veterinary recall feed, 2019-present) + data/recalls_historical.json (curated pre-2019), matched against both the recall's brand field and its responsible-company field (a brand-only match would miss recalls filed under a house sub-line name, e.g. Fromm's 'Bonnihill Farms' line recalled under company 'Fromm Family Foods'). This is NOT a complete lifetime recall history; recalls absent from the live FDA datatable and not curated into recalls_historical.json are not represented.
The corpus
What we've verified from Diamond's labels
Computed directly from the official-label data we've extracted for this brand — never estimated.
Foods verified
6
6 dog
Feeding-trial validated
0
of 6 (0%)
Formulated to meet
6
AAFCO paper calculation
Label transparency
71%
avg. fields disclosed
The foods
Foods from Diamond we've verified
Every one links to its own Verified Label — guaranteed analysis, AAFCO statement, and (where priced) cost per day.