Years Dog Food Recall: All Fresh Meals Pulled After Reports of Sudden Dry Eye in Dogs

In short: Years recalled its Signature fresh meals in August after reports of sudden dry eye in dogs. On 24 September it published its investigation, which found no contamination or toxin in the food, and it will restart deliveries in October with buckwheat removed. That settles the contamination question. It does not settle whether the food was linked to the eye cases: Years' own figures put the rate among its dogs far above the national one, and the independent vet study is still under way. Return any recalled stock rather than feed it, and if your dog has been diagnosed, do not stop its eye treatment without your vet.

The Investigation Has Reported

Added 30 September 2026. The rest of this page is the record of the recall as it happened, with each change dated.

Years published the results of its investigation on 24 September, on its notice at years.com/pages/care and in a 17-page report. The headline:

"The investigation found no contamination, toxin, safety, packaging migration, or manufacturing issue, and no link was identified to reported cases of sudden bilateral dry eye."

The scale of the testing is real. Years reports 21,757 individual test results across 1,129 distinct substances, covering 101 ingredient samples, 273 retained and customer-returned meals, and every batch of buckwheat it had used, through accredited laboratories including Eurofins and Fera Science. The buckwheat alone was tested for 940 substances, including the known suspects: tropane alkaloids, mycotoxins, heavy metals and fagopyrin, the toxin buckwheat is known for. Nothing was found. Two separate expert reviews of the factory and supplier controls found them sound.

That answers the question this recall had narrowed to. In August Years was describing "potential contamination within a portion of buckwheat supply, rather than buckwheat itself". On the evidence it has published, there was no contaminated supply. We said in August that the results should be published "whichever way they go, including if they clear buckwheat", and Years has published them. That deserves saying.

What Changes For Owners

• Deliveries restart in October, and every recipe is now buckwheat-free, using quinoa, which is what the recipes contained before the change. Existing subscribers have a delivery slot reserved, and Years says the price is not changing.
• Refunds are narrower than they were. Food bought before 17 August can still be returned for a refund. But in August, asked whether customers were owed for every buckwheat box they had already fed, Years answered "YES". It now says: "Based on the investigation's findings, a refund isn't possible, as no toxin, safety or contamination issue was identified with the ingredient."
• Years will not pay vet bills. The August line inviting owners with vet costs to "please contact us" has gone. On insurance it says it "is not legally permitted to deny, negotiate, accept or comment on any individual insurance case". In place of payment it offers affected owners free video consultations with veterinary ophthalmologists and RCVS vets, a free prescription service, and 24/7 vet messaging. Shop buyers can ask for the same access.
• Years is funding an independent study, led by the Cambridge veterinary ophthalmologist David Williams, looking at tear gland tissue from affected dogs. In August we listed whether it would fund one, rather than just welcome one, as an open question. It will.

What The Investigation Does Not Settle

The report is careful to say that no link was identified. That is not the same as showing there was none, and four things on Years' own pages make the gap visible.

It rules out contamination, not buckwheat itself. Years says the question of whether buckwheat might trigger "individual sensitivity, an adverse reaction, or some other biological pathway not yet known to science, in certain dogs" is not one it can answer. Its own report adds that in Finland and Hungary, where Years is not sold, "dry and wet dog foods containing buckwheat were present in a significant number of affected dogs' diets, at a prevalence higher than buckwheat's overall market share". Years stresses that this is "not proof of correlation or causation", and that is right. It is also not nothing, and it points at the ingredient Years has just removed.

The rate among Years dogs is on a different scale to the chart. The report's headline chart ranks cases per million dogs: Finland 32.0, the UK 15.6, Hungary 14.3. The UK figure comes from dividing all 196 UK cases by the country's 12.6 million dogs. A page earlier, the same report gives the rate among the ~63,000 dogs Years fed between March and August: 0.25%, which is about 2,500 per million. Both numbers are Years'. Only one is on the chart. Years argues that publicity after the recall means Years-fed cases were more likely to be reported, and that is a fair point: owners who had heard of the recall were far more likely to come forward. Whether reporting bias can explain a gap of that size is exactly what the independent case study exists to establish.

The case figures are presented as BrAVO's. Years says data "provided by the British Association of Veterinary Ophthalmologists (BrAVO)" shows 155 cases in Years-fed dogs, plus 41 in UK dogs never fed Years and 55 abroad. BrAVO's own statement of 23 September gives none of that breakdown. It says "more than 200 cases have now been reported", that "not all affected dogs have been fed the same diet", and that "no causal relationship has been established between KCS and any particular food, ingredient or manufacturer". Years' own page records that BrAVO "does not consider it appropriate to provide further breakdown or interpretation of the case numbers" until its validation is complete. We could not find the 155 and 41 figures anywhere BrAVO has published them. Years' own count of 192 reports, which had not been updated since 18 August, is no longer on the page.

The investigation is Years'. It was commissioned, paid for and published by the company whose food was recalled. The experts are named and the laboratories are accredited, and we have no reason to doubt the test results. But BrAVO went out of its way to say that David Williams, who is advising Years, "is not acting on behalf of BrAVO and is not involved in the KCS study". The genuinely independent answer on cause is BrAVO's, and it has not been published yet. The Food Standards Agency, which Years says has been given all the results, has still published nothing about Years at all.

If Your Dog Has Dry Eye

BrAVO's statement carries advice that matters more to affected owners than anything about the food:

"We would also strongly advise owners not to stop prescribed treatment for dry eye unless advised to do so by their veterinary surgeon or veterinary ophthalmologist. In some affected dogs, a significant injury to the tear-producing glands is suspected. Even if diet is ultimately shown to be a contributing factor, changing diet alone may not restore tear production."

BrAVO is also asking vets to report every case of sudden dry eye in both eyes, whatever the dog eats. If your vet has diagnosed it, ask them whether they have filed a report.

The Recall As It Happened

Years, the UK fresh dog food subscription brand, has voluntarily recalled its entire range of fresh meals after reports of dogs developing sudden dry eye in both eyes at once.

The recall was sent to customers by email on the evening of 17 August 2026. Floofers received it directly as a Years customer, and when we first published this piece there was no notice on the Years website and no coverage anywhere else.

Years has since put a public recall notice on its site at years.com/pages/care, linked from a banner on its homepage. It confirms the email and adds a considerable amount of detail, including that the Food Standards Agency and Trading Standards were both advised before the recall was issued. We have updated this article throughout to reflect it.

Everything below that is attributed to Years is quoted from that notice or the customer email.

What Years Has Said

Years says it has been reviewing "a number of reports of dogs developing sudden, bilateral dry eye" and launched a formal investigation working with customers, vets, specialist advisers and independent laboratories.

The conclusion so far:

"Our investigation has identified a potential link between buckwheat, a common ingredient in dog food, and these cases."

On the decision to recall before that link is confirmed:

"Ultimate confirmation will come with laboratory testing, but we've taken the precautionary decision not to wait, and voluntarily recall all Years fresh meals with immediate effect."

On the scale:

"To date, this has affected just 0.1% of our customers, 57 suspected cases of dry eye reported through our customer support channels as of 16th August, with the majority reported after the 12th."

Years adds that it accepts there will be cases that were never reported to them, that "even one case is one too many", and that it would welcome funding an independent study with the veterinary and ophthalmology community.

Correction. When this piece first went up we noted that 57 cases at 0.1% implied a customer base of roughly 57,000, and flagged it as our arithmetic rather than a Years figure. The published notice gives the real number: approximately 40,000 customers year to date, which puts 57 cases at closer to 0.14%. Our inference was wrong and we have removed it.

What still stands from those figures is the timing. The majority of reports arrived after 12 August. A cluster that tight in a four day window is what usually forces a company's hand, and Years itself cites "rising case numbers" as part of the reason it recalled on the 17th. The number has not stopped moving since.

The Case Count Has More Than Tripled

Years updated its notice on 19 August with a new figure:

"As of 9pm on 18th August, 192 customers in total have reported potential, as yet unverified, eye issues out of approximately 40,000 customers."

That is 192 reports rather than 57, in the space of two days. Against approximately 40,000 customers it works out at roughly 0.48%, not the 0.1% Years had been quoting. For a week the notice carried both figures at once, and which one a reader took away depended on how far they scrolled. That framing has since been removed. As of 1 September the 0.1% appears once, in the timeline, dated to 16 August and given as a plain parenthetical rather than as reassurance. The 192 never moved again, and was removed on 24 September.

Two caveats belong with that number and they cut in opposite directions. Years calls the reports "potential, as yet unverified", so this is a count of owners who have come forward, not of confirmed diagnoses. Equally, it only counts owners who reported to Years. Anyone who raised it in a customer Facebook group, or went straight to their vet and no further, is not in it.

Years Has Answered Two Of Our Questions, By Amending Its Website

Since 19 August we have been putting two questions to Years on readers' behalf: whether people who bought it in a shop are covered, and whether it will pay veterinary costs. It has not written back. It changed its website instead.

This section describes the notice as it stood on 25 August. The refund and vet cost terms changed again on 24 September: see what changes for owners at the top of this page.

The notice was marked "Last updated 25 August 2026" when it moved on both.

Shop buyers are covered. Asked "I bought Years in a shop, not online. Am I covered?", the notice now answers:

"Yes, in exactly the same way as anyone else. It doesn't matter which shop you bought it from."

The remedy is a refund, not account credit. The original customer email offered a credit to your Years account. The notice now tells you to "take it back to your point of purchase - wherever you bought it - for a full refund". It adds that you need no receipt or order number, that there is no time limit, and that a part-used pack is refunded in full. If you have finished earlier packs and no longer have the packaging, it asks you to make contact.

There is now a route for veterinary costs, but not a commitment:

"If you have incurred veterinary costs that you believe may be connected to this issue, please contact us."

That is more than was there before, and anyone holding vet bills should use it. It is still not a promise to pay anything, and it says nothing about the long term medication dry eye usually requires. Treat it as a door rather than an answer.

Two things have not changed. The case count still reads 192 as of 9pm on 18 August, unmoved through website updates on the 19th and the 25th. And the notice still tells owners of symptom-free dogs there is "no need" to have them checked.

Two Weeks On, The Case Count Still Has Not Moved

Years updated its notice again on 1 September 2026. The headline number did not change with it.

It still reads 192 as of 9pm on 18 August, now unmoved through edits on the 19th, the 25th and the 1st. A fortnight has passed since that figure was taken. Years says individual reports are "being assessed" and that it "will publish verified findings at the conclusion of our investigation", which is a fair position to hold on verified cases. It does not explain why the published figure has not been refreshed. What the page presents is a count of reports received, not of confirmed diagnoses, and that is a number Years could update without waiting on any laboratory result.

Two other things have not moved. There is still no Food Standards Agency alert, fifteen days on, for a product the FSA was told about before the recall was issued. The FSA publishes pet food alerts as a matter of routine, including for salmonella in raw food and for vitamin D levels, so the absence of one here is conspicuous rather than ordinary. It has published three product recalls since the Years recall, on 21, 25 and 28 August, and none of them concerns Years. Our record of UK dog food recalls sets the two lists side by side. And years.com/pages/retail, the page whose whole job is sending people into shops to buy Years, still carries nothing at all.

The notice has grown in other ways. It now carries a dedicated address, dcb@years.com, alongside a symptom tracker for owners of diagnosed dogs. There is an Alternative Feeding block pointing customers at other suppliers while subscriptions are paused, an Information for Vets section of third-party resources, and a passage thanking the customer advocates who set up the Facebook groups, crediting them with giving the company "the ability to properly challenge our advisors". The investigation now has a named shape too: a root cause analysis specialist, a toxicologist, and an RCVS Specialist in Small Animal Clinical Nutrition.

That last part cuts both ways. Publicly crediting the owners who forced the issue is more than most companies manage, and it should be said. It also sits oddly next to a case count that has not been updated since the day after they forced it.

Which Products Are Affected

Every fresh meal in the Signature range. From the recall notice:

• Every recalled recipe contains buckwheat, at between 6.3% and 7.2% depending on the recipe
• That covers puppy, adult and senior meals
• The Chef's Collection range is excluded, because it is built on quinoa rather than buckwheat
• Breed Health+ supplements are not affected. They contain no buckwheat
• Treats and other products are not affected

A correction of ours. When we first wrote this up we said every Years fresh recipe was affected. That was too broad. The 18 August notice referred to "all Years Signature Meals" in its detail, and the 19 August version spells it out: the recall is of "all Years Fresh Meals (excluding Chef's Collection)". If you feed Chef's Collection, it is not part of the recall.

One detail that has not had much attention: Years describes the reformulation as "returning to super seed, quinoa" and says it will "return our recipes to the formulation our customers knew before the change". Buckwheat was not a longstanding ingredient. It was a recipe change, and the recall reverses it.

What You Should Do Now

The recall instructions still apply to any Signature meals you have left from before 17 August:

1. Do not feed them, to your dog or any other animal, and do not donate or sell them.
2. Return them for a refund. Years still refunds any product bought before the recall. It no longer refunds meals you have already fed, which it said in August that it would.
3. Subscriptions were paused automatically on the night of 17 August. Years says subscribers now have an October delivery slot reserved, with the new buckwheat-free recipes, which can be changed in the account area.

We would add four things to that list. They were written for the first week of the recall and they still hold for anyone whose dog was on the food.

Check your dog's eyes properly, tonight. Not a glance. Get them under a decent light, look at both eyes, and look again in the morning. Bilateral onset is the pattern here, so a dog with one gunky eye and one clear one is a different question from a dog whose eyes have both gone dull and sticky over a few days.

Photograph the meals and the packaging before collection. Batch codes, best before dates, the lot. Once Years collects the food, you have handed over the only physical evidence you had. A phone photo costs you nothing.

Write down when your dog started on Years and when symptoms began. If this ends up in front of a vet, an insurer or a lawyer, a dated note written this week is worth far more than a memory in six months.

Do not wait and see. Dry eye is progressive, it is painful, and the difference between catching it early and catching it late can be the difference between managed and permanent. If you are unsure whether what you are looking at counts, that is exactly the point at which to ring the vet.

What Years Knew, And When

The published notice includes a timeline, and it is the most revealing part of the document.

• Reports arrived at first "within a range that did not initially indicate an unusual pattern"
• Late July: Years begins receiving multiple reports of sudden bilateral dry eye
• 1 August: an independent vet and RCVS Specialist in Small Animal Clinical Nutrition advises that, on the case data available, "it is highly unlikely that there is any link between the feeding of Years foods and the occurrences of dry eye in dogs", but that Years should investigate anyway
• Years commissions UKAS-accredited laboratory testing across meals and Breed Health+ supplements, covering heavy metals, mycotoxins, alkaloids, pesticides and veterinary drug residues, and appoints a root cause analysis specialist and a toxicologist
• After 12 August: the majority of the first 57 cases are reported
• By 9pm on 18 August: the count has reached 192
• 17 August: Years recalls

Two things stand out. The first is that the expert advice on 1 August pointed away from the food, which is the sort of thing that can slow a company down for a fortnight, and Years is candid that customers may have found the pace "frustratingly slow".

The second is who moved it. Years explicitly credits the customers "who set up Facebook groups, who pushed, and who demanded answers", saying their advocacy gave the company "the ability to properly challenge our advisors". That is an unusually direct admission that the owners got there before the process did.

Dry Eye In Dogs (KCS): What It Actually Is

Dry eye's proper name is keratoconjunctivitis sicca, almost always shortened to KCS. It means the tear glands are not producing enough of the watery part of the tear film.

Tears are not just lubrication. The cornea has no blood supply of its own, so it takes oxygen and nutrients from the tear film, and tears also flush out dust and bacteria. Take the tear film away and the surface of the eye is left inflamed, exposed and painful. The body compensates by producing thick mucus instead, which is why the classic sign is sticky discharge rather than a visibly "dry" eye.

Left untreated, KCS leads to corneal ulcers, then to scarring and pigment spreading across the cornea. That pigment does not go away. It is the mechanism by which dry eye takes a dog's sight.

Most canine KCS is immune mediated and comes on gradually, often in predisposed breeds such as West Highland White Terriers, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Pugs, Shih Tzus and English Bulldogs. It can also follow certain medications, some infections, or damage to the nerve supply. What is being described in these reports is different in character: sudden, in both eyes, in dogs of any breed.

Our full guide to dry eye in dogs covers the tear test, the treatment, what it costs to manage long term, and the one thing you must never put in a dog's eye.

Symptoms To Check For

What you might see	What it usually means
Thick, sticky, yellow or green discharge that keeps returning	The eye is producing mucus to compensate for missing tears
Redness in the white of the eye and the inner lids	Inflammation from an unprotected surface
Squinting, excessive blinking, holding an eye half shut	Pain
Pawing or rubbing the face on carpet and furniture	Irritation, and a route to further damage
A dull, lacklustre or cloudy look to the eye surface	Loss of the smooth tear film, or early corneal change
Both eyes affected at once, over days rather than months	The pattern reported in this recall

If you see these, ring your vet, ask for an appointment promptly, and say the words "Years recall" when you book. It changes what the vet is looking for.

What The Vet Will Do

The test for dry eye is quick, cheap and non invasive. It is called a Schirmer tear test: a small paper strip is tucked inside the lower lid for 60 seconds and the vet reads how far the tears wick up it. Anything under 15mm per minute is abnormal, and under 5mm is severe. Your vet will usually also stain the eye with fluorescein dye to check for ulcers.

Treatment is normally a ciclosporin or tacrolimus ointment that suppresses the immune attack on the tear glands and pushes tear production back up, alongside artificial tears and sometimes antibiotics if there is an ulcer. It often works well. The catch is that it is usually for life, and stopping tends to mean relapse.

That makes cost a genuine factor. Ciclosporin eye ointment is a long term prescription, so it is worth knowing that vet prescription fees are being capped at £21 from later this year, and that you can take a written prescription to a VMD registered online pharmacy rather than buying at the practice. If your dog is insured, read our guide to UK pet insurance before you claim, because how a chronic condition is recorded at diagnosis affects cover for the rest of your dog's life.

Is Buckwheat In Dog Food Dangerous?

This is the question that will be searched most in the next week, so it deserves a careful answer rather than a scary one.

Buckwheat is not a grain. It is a pseudocereal, related to rhubarb and sorrel, and it turns up widely in grain free and hypoallergenic dog foods precisely because it is normally well tolerated. There is no established body of evidence that buckwheat causes eye disease in dogs, and no regulator has said so.

When we first wrote this, the possibilities were wide open: the ingredient, a supplier or batch, a contaminant, a storage problem or something in processing. Buckwheat is a known host for certain moulds, and mycotoxins are a recognised route to harm in pet food.

Years' investigation has since closed most of those off. Every batch of buckwheat it used was tested for mycotoxins, tropane alkaloids, heavy metals, pesticides and fagopyrin, and nothing was found. Cases were not concentrated in any one buckwheat batch or production run. What is left open is the one possibility testing for contaminants cannot reach: that some dogs react to buckwheat itself. Years says that question is for "appropriate scientific experts and regulatory bodies", and its own report records buckwheat foods turning up disproportionately in affected dogs' diets in Finland and Hungary. See what the investigation does not settle above.

Our position: do not throw out an unrelated food because it lists buckwheat on the label. If your dog eats something else containing buckwheat and has no symptoms, there is nothing in the public record to act on. If your dog develops sudden dry eye in both eyes, tell your vet everything it eats, including treats.

The Part Worth Saying Plainly

Recalling an entire range on a suspected link, before the lab confirms it, is the right call and a costly one. Years deserves credit for making it quickly rather than quietly monitoring the numbers for another month.

The communication is weaker where it turns to reassurance. "Just 0.1% of our customers" was a strange framing to put next to 57 dogs. It became a stranger one when the company's own count reached 192 and that line stayed on the page. Years has since dropped it, and that deserves recording: as of 1 September the 0.1% appears once, tied to the 16 August count it actually describes. Offering "a thank you gift, for your patience" in the next box lands badly against owners who may be facing a lifelong medication bill and a dog with reduced sight. Years also said in August that the reformulated recipe would swap buckwheat for quinoa in six weeks, which presumed the answer to a question its own lab had not yet answered. As it turned out, the lab found nothing and Years removed buckwheat anyway, citing precaution and customer preference. That is a reasonable call.

Since the investigation reported, one thing stands out above the rest: the refund has shrunk. In August Years told customers, in one word, that they were owed for every buckwheat box they had already fed: "YES". On 24 September that became "a refund isn't possible". The investigation is the stated reason, and it is a real one. But customers were given a commitment in the first week, and it has been withdrawn on the strength of a report the company itself commissioned, while the independent vet study is still running.

Of the three gaps we identified in the published notice, two have since narrowed.

Shop buyers, now covered, eight days late. For the first week the notice spoke only to subscribers. Every remedy in it was a subscription remedy: the automatic pause, the account credit, the collection. Someone holding a pack off a shelf had no route to anything and no reason to have seen the notice at all. Pets at Home filled that gap itself, publishing a recall policy naming the affected packs, offering a full refund, and withdrawing more of the range than Years recalled. A Pets at Home spokesperson confirmed to us that the withdrawal covers stores as well as the website, that going wider than the recall was the retailer's own precautionary decision, and that any Years line can be returned to store for a refund. Years has now caught up, and on 25 August its notice began telling shop buyers they are covered "in exactly the same way as anyone else". That is the right answer and it should have been there on day one. It also has not reached the one page where it would do the most good: years.com/pages/retail, whose entire purpose is sending people into shops to buy Years, still carries no recall notice of any kind, re-checked on 30 September, six weeks on.

Veterinary costs, now answered: no. In August the notice invited owners who had incurred vet costs to get in touch, which was a door rather than a commitment. As of 24 September that invitation has gone. Years will not pay vet bills, and says it cannot comment on insurance claims. What it offers instead is free video consultations with ophthalmologists and vets, a free prescription service, and 24/7 vet messaging. That support is worth having, and it is also not the same thing as paying for diagnosis or lifelong medication.

Advice against precautionary checks, since removed. Asked whether a symptom-free dog should be checked, the notice said for weeks that there was "no need". That line is not on the 24 September version. A Schirmer tear test takes 60 seconds and costs very little, and the defining problem with dry eye is that its early signs get dismissed at home as a gunky eye. If your dog has been on the food and you are near a vet appointment anyway, we would ask for the test rather than not.

To Years' credit, the FSA and Trading Standards were notified before the recall rather than after. We said in August that what mattered was the follow-through: the independent study should actually be funded, and the findings should be published whichever way they go, including if they clear buckwheat. Both have happened. Years has published its results in full, including a 17-page report, and is funding a study at Cambridge.

One absence has lasted the whole way through. Six weeks in, there is still no Food Standards Agency alert of its own, re-checked against the FSA feed on 30 September. The FSA publishes pet food alerts as a matter of routine, including for a dog food multipack that might have contained small pieces of metal and for single-line salmonella findings in raw food. Here there are 192 reported cases of a painful and potentially sight-threatening condition in dogs, and the only published warnings anywhere are the manufacturer's own and a retailer's. Years says it advised the FSA and Trading Standards before recalling, and we have no reason to doubt that. What has not happened is any public communication from either of them, which leaves the people least likely to be reached, the ones who picked up a tray in a shop, depending entirely on the company that made it. We keep a running record of UK dog food recalls and which ones the FSA published, because this is not the only one that never made the official list.

And Years' own case count never moved. It read 192, as of 9pm on 18 August, through every edit of the page until 24 September, when it was replaced outright by the 155 figure Years attributes to BrAVO. Years has never explained why its own count stopped being updated, and it no longer publishes one.

If Your Dog Is Affected

Take it in this order.

1. Vet first. Appointment, Schirmer tear test, mention the recall. Once your dog is on treatment, do not stop it without your vet's say-so, even if you have changed food. BrAVO warns that changing diet alone may not bring tear production back.
2. Keep everything. Invoices, clinical notes, photos of the food and packaging, dates.
3. Tell Years, and ask your vet to tell BrAVO. Reporting to Years gets you access to its free ophthalmologist consultations and prescription service, including if you bought the food in a shop. BrAVO's independent study is the one that will decide what caused this, and it depends on vets reporting cases.
4. Find out what type of insurance policy you have, before the condition is formally recorded. Only a lifetime policy keeps paying for a condition that needs medication for life. Time limited policies cover a condition for around 12 months and then exclude it, and maximum benefit policies stop once a fixed sum is used up. Ask your vet to note the dietary history and to record the diagnosis precisely, and do not switch insurer afterwards, because dry eye will be pre-existing everywhere else. Our dry eye guide sets out what each policy type does.
5. Do not sign anything that settles a claim while your dog's prognosis is still unknown. Early KCS and established KCS with corneal pigment are very different outcomes. Years has said it will not pay vet bills, but it took that position before BrAVO has reported.

If you want to be better prepared for the vet visit itself, our guide on what to ask your vet covers the questions worth having ready.

What We Have Asked Years

We have put questions to Years and will publish their response in full. Their public notice, which went up after we first published, has since answered several of them.

On 19 August we also wrote directly to Darren Beale, Years' co-founder and chief executive, after his notice was updated without answering the two questions owners keep asking. We have undertaken to publish whatever he sends in full.

Years replied on 19 August. The reply confirms receipt of our questions and says the company's "website should be updated soon which should assist with your queries". It does not answer any of the questions still outstanding below.

Darren Beale has not replied at all. We asked for a response by 5pm on Friday 21 August. That deadline passed a week ago, with nothing from him and nothing further from the company.

What happened instead is that the website changed. On 25 August, Years rewrote the remedies section of its notice and, in doing so, answered the two questions we had been putting to it since the 19th: shop buyers are covered, and there is now a route for veterinary costs. Nobody was told. There was no email to us, no update note on the page saying what had changed, and as far as we can establish no announcement to customers. An owner who read the notice on 20 August and took away "account credit, subscribers only" has no way of knowing they are now owed a cash refund they can claim without a receipt.

That is the pattern of this recall in miniature. Years has generally got to the right answer, and has generally got there without telling anyone it had moved. We will still publish anything Mr Beale sends, in full.

Answered by the published notice:

• A recall notice is now live on years.com, linked from the homepage
• The FSA and Trading Standards were both advised before the recall was issued
• The case count has risen from 57 on 16 August to 192 as of 9pm on 18 August, from approximately 40,000 customers year to date
• The Signature fresh meals are affected, at 6.3% to 7.2% buckwheat. Chef's Collection, supplements and treats are not
• Years will publish the final investigation results
• Shop-bought stock IS covered (answered 25 August, on the website, without reply to us). A shop buyer is covered "in exactly the same way as anyone else", returns to the point of purchase, and needs no receipt, no order number and no packaging within any time limit
• The remedy is a full refund, not the account credit originally offered, and a part-used pack is refunded in full (25 August; narrowed on 24 September to products bought before the recall, and no longer covering meals already fed)
• There is a route for veterinary costs, though not a commitment to pay them: owners who have incurred costs are invited to make contact
• The "just 0.1%" framing has gone (answered 1 September, on the website again, without reply to us). The figure now appears once, tied to the 16 August count it describes
• The laboratory results (published 24 September): no contamination, toxin or safety issue found, across 21,757 test results
• Veterinary costs: Years will not pay them (24 September). It offers free consultations and a prescription service instead
• What the investigation examined: ingredients and suppliers, recipes and manufacturing, nutritional and microbiological factors, contaminants and natural toxins, packaging, and food safety systems, over a production period of 1 March to 17 August
• The quinoa reformulation went ahead despite the results not implicating buckwheat, on the grounds of precaution and customer preference
• Years will fund the independent study, led by David Williams at Cambridge

Still outstanding. The first three arose from the 24 September report and have not yet been put to Years.

• Why the refund for already-fed buckwheat boxes was withdrawn, having been confirmed with a "YES" in August, before the independent case study has reported
• Where the 155 and 41 case figures come from. Years attributes them to BrAVO, and BrAVO's own statement gives only a total of "more than 200"
• Why the report's headline chart shows the UK rate across all dogs (15.6 per million) but not the rate among Years-fed dogs (0.25%, about 2,500 per million), both of which are in the same report
• Why Years' own case count stopped at 192 on 18 August, and was never updated before it was removed
• Why nobody was told the remedies had changed, on 25 August or on 24 September
• Why years.com/pages/retail still carries no recall notice, six weeks on
• Whether the Chef's Collection exclusion was always intended, given the same notice once stated that all Years recipes contain buckwheat

If you bought Years in a shop rather than by subscription, our separate report sets out where you stand on a refund.

We Will Update This Page

This is a developing story and we will keep this page current as it moves.

Things we are watching for now: BrAVO's own findings, which are the independent answer on cause; the results of the Cambridge study Years is funding; any Food Standards Agency or Trading Standards statement; whether the October restart happens on time; and any change to the refund position if BrAVO's findings point at diet.

Update log

• 30 September 2026, tenth update: Years' investigation has reported. Its notice, marked "Last updated 24 September 2026", and a 17-page report say 21,757 test results across 1,129 substances found no contamination, toxin or safety issue in the food, ingredients or packaging, including every batch of buckwheat used, and that "no link was identified" to the dry eye cases. Deliveries restart in October with buckwheat removed from every recipe. Added a new section at the top setting out what the investigation found and what it does not settle: it rules out contamination but not a reaction to buckwheat itself, which Years says it cannot answer; its own report notes buckwheat foods appearing disproportionately in affected dogs' diets in Finland and Hungary; its rate among Years-fed dogs (0.25%) is on a different scale from its headline chart (15.6 per million UK dogs); and the 155 and 41 case figures it attributes to BrAVO do not appear in BrAVO's own statement of 23 September, which gives "more than 200" cases and says no causal link to any food has been established. Two remedies have changed and our FAQ answers have been corrected: refunds now cover only products bought before 17 August, withdrawing the August "YES" for already-fed boxes, and the invitation to contact Years about vet costs has been replaced by a statement that it will not pay them, with free consultation and prescription support instead. Years is funding an independent study at Cambridge and has published its results, both of which this article had asked for. Years' own count of 192 is no longer on the page. Added BrAVO's advice not to stop dry eye treatment. Unchanged: no FSA alert (FSA feed re-checked 30 September) and no recall notice on years.com/pages/retail. All re-verified live on 30 September.

• 1 September 2026, ninth update: Years has updated its notice again and the case count still has not moved. The page is now marked "Last updated 01 September 2026" and still reports 192 reports as of 9pm on 18 August, unchanged through edits on the 19th, the 25th and the 1st. The "just 0.1%" framing has been removed, which was one of this article's standing criticisms and is a fair thing to record: the figure now appears once, in the timeline, attached to the 16 August count it describes. We have corrected our own text accordingly, in the case-count section and in "The Part Worth Saying Plainly", both of which said that line was still on the page. Unchanged after fifteen days: no Food Standards Agency alert, and no recall notice of any kind on years.com/pages/retail. Also recorded here, though we cannot establish exactly when each appeared: a dedicated dcb@years.com address and a symptom tracker, an Alternative Feeding block pointing customers to other suppliers, an Information for Vets section, a passage crediting the customer advocates who set up the Facebook groups, and a named investigation structure of a root cause analysis specialist, a toxicologist and an RCVS Specialist in Small Animal Clinical Nutrition. All re-verified live on 1 September.

• 28 August 2026, eighth update: Years has answered two of our questions by editing its website, without replying to us and without telling customers. Its notice, now marked "Last updated 25 August 2026", says shop buyers are covered "in exactly the same way as anyone else", and has replaced the original account credit with a full refund, obtainable at the point of purchase with no receipt, no order number and no time limit, and payable in full on a part-used pack. It also now invites owners who have incurred veterinary costs to make contact, which is a route rather than a commitment. We have corrected this article throughout, including the FAQ answers on refunds and shop-bought stock, which described the old credit-only position. Also noted: Darren Beale did not respond by our 5pm deadline of Friday 21 August, or since; the case count remains frozen at 192 as of 9pm on 18 August across at least two subsequent edits of the page; there is still no Food Standards Agency alert, eleven days on; years.com/pages/retail still carries no recall notice at all; and UK Pet Food, the trade association, has published owner guidance confirming that Years is not one of its members. Years has also softened its own framing, from a potential link with buckwheat to "potential contamination within a portion of buckwheat supply, rather than buckwheat itself".

• 19 August 2026, seventh update: Questions put directly to Darren Beale, Years' co-founder and chief executive, alongside a second approach to the company. On top of veterinary costs and shop-bought stock, we have asked whether the rise from 57 cases to 192 was communicated to customers or only added to the page, whether the "just 0.1%" line is staying now that the same page reports a figure nearer 0.48%, and whether the Chef's Collection exclusion was always intended given the notice also says all Years recipes contain buckwheat. Response requested by 5pm on Friday 21 August.

• 19 August 2026, sixth update: We have gone back to Years to say that being pointed at its own website is not an answer to the questions the website does not address, and asked again about veterinary costs and shop-bought stock. We have also put questions to all three retailers that sell Years in shops. Both are covered in our retail report. Responses requested by 5pm on Friday 21 August, and we will publish them in full.

• 19 August 2026, fifth update: Years' own case count has more than tripled. Its notice, now marked "Last updated 19 August 2026", reports that 192 customers had reported potential eye issues as of 9pm on 18 August, against the 57 recorded on the 16th. That is roughly 0.48% of approximately 40,000 customers, not the "just 0.1%" the same page still quotes higher up. The notice also states for the first time that the recall excludes the Chef's Collection range, which uses quinoa rather than buckwheat. We have corrected our own description of the scope, which was too broad. Still no answer on veterinary costs, and still nothing for people who bought Years in a shop.

• 19 August 2026, fourth update: Years replied to our questions. The reply confirms receipt and says the company's "website should be updated soon which should assist with your queries". It does not answer either of the two that matter most to owners: whether the recall covers stock bought in shops, and whether Years will cover veterinary costs. As of the early afternoon of 19 August the public notice still read "Last updated 18 August 2026". We will publish their answers in full when they arrive.

• 18 August 2026, third update: Years has published a public recall notice at years.com/pages/care with a homepage banner. Article updated throughout. We have corrected our earlier arithmetic on customer numbers: we inferred roughly 57,000 customers from the 0.1% figure, and the notice gives approximately 40,000. Added the Years timeline, the confirmation that the FSA and Trading Standards were notified before the recall, the fact that credit covers all previous buckwheat boxes rather than just the current order, and that supplements and treats are unaffected.

• 18 August 2026, second update: Questions put to Years by email, with a response requested by 5pm on Thursday 20 August. We will publish their answer in full.

• 18 August 2026: Story published. Recall confirmed via customer email dated 17 August. No public notice from Years and no regulatory alert at time of publication.

Floofers is not a veterinary practice and nothing here is a diagnosis. If you are worried about your dog's eyes, speak to your vet. If your dog is in obvious pain, treat it as urgent.