Court Certifies PFAS-Based Class Action Over Smucker Pet Food

The J.M. Smucker Co. faces a certified class action alleging its pet food labels misleadingly tout products as “100% healthy” and “nutritious” despite containing titanium dioxide and packaging that may contain PFAS.

In an opinion focused primarily on the alleged presence of PFAS in the packaging, the Northern District of California held that Smucker’s failure to disclose PFAS could conflict with its health-based marketing claims, satisfying the plaintiffs’ evidentiary burden for class certification.

“Smucker does not need to explicitly label its products as ‘PFAS Free’ for there to arise an assumption that the products are free of such materials; this is especially true when the rest of the packaging asserts benefits to the user’s health and nutrition,” the opinion, filed January 22, 2026, states.

The court additionally concluded that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged the presence of PFAS poses an unreasonable safety hazard that must be disclosed.  While there is uncertainty about whether PFAS could migrate from packaging to the pet food itself, Smucker’s arguments that PFAS would not migrate “go more towards the weight of the evidence, a question that gets to the merits of the case and is inapplicable at this stage,” the court held.

It is immaterial that different pets might be affected by PFAS differently, since the plaintiffs allege economic harms rather than health harms, the court added.

The court was also unpersuaded by Smucker’s argument that the named plaintiffs did not rely on the alleged omission.  While the plaintiffs initially testified that they had not reviewed the labels, the court credited supplemental declarations stating that they had done so.

The class certification encompasses all persons in California who purchased certain 9Lives, Kibbles ‘n Bits, or Meow Mix-branded products from November 4, 2018, through December 31, 2022.

The case is Jeruchim v. The J.M. Smucker Co., No. 22-cv-6913 (N.D. Cal.).