Updated October 2026
Whether old pet food reaches a customer is mostly settled at the dock, when each lot and its date are written down. How the shelves are arranged later can't make up for a date nobody recorded.
Lot tracking for pet food means writing down each lot number and its expiration date when the stock arrives, then carrying both through to every order. We record lot and expiry at our dock. Dated stock is picked first-expired, first-out (FEFO), and we use first-in, first-out (FIFO) where the product calls for it. Every unit stays tied to its lot all the way onto the order it ships in.
By The Fulfillment.com team
A lot is one production batch. Every unit in it shares an expiration date, and in a recall the whole lot shares the same fate. If its number and expiry aren't recorded against the SKU at receiving, nothing later in the warehouse can rotate that stock by date or find it in a recall. The information simply was never captured.
So we record before we store. When a shipment reaches us, each lot and its expiration date go into the system against the SKU and its on-hand count. From then on you can look up what we hold three ways: by SKU, by lot or by expiry date. A pet food brand needs those views when an auditor asks what is in stock and when it expires. A recall needs them when the question comes down to which orders carried lot X.
The conditions the food is stored in, and what facility registration does and doesn't cover, are a separate decision. Our guide to pet food storage and FDA-registered holding goes through both. For the heavy freight and subscription work that runs alongside lot tracking, see our pet products fulfillment overview.
FIFO (first-in, first-out) ships whatever arrived earliest. For a durable with no date, that works, because how long it has sat on the shelf doesn't change anything that matters. Pet food, treats and supplements are different, because the order they arrive in and the order they expire in often don't match. A lot received later can carry an earlier date than one received before it. Common reasons include:
Under FIFO, that later lot waits behind the older arrival and runs out its date on the shelf while the SKU keeps selling. FEFO (first-expired, first-out) goes by the date on the product instead, so the sellable lot with the nearest date always ships first, whenever it came in. To choose the rule for a SKU, ask:
A wrong rule fails quietly. Run FIFO on a dated SKU whose lots arrive out of date order, and you end up writing off expired stock while near-dated units reach customers. Neither shows up until someone counts the inventory or a complaint comes in. FEFO can't make that mistake, because it always picks by date.
We run both rules and set one for each product, based on what the product is and what you want for it. Many pet catalogs mix dated food with undated items that mostly cost money to ship. Cat litter and kibble freight optimization draws the same line from the shipping side.
Recording the lot at the dock is half the job. The other half happens once a picker has the unit in hand. The lot stays with the unit after it leaves the bin, and when the order is packed, the lot is written onto the order record. After the order ships, that record shows which units were in it and which lot each one came from. Every later question about the order depends on that link, and the link starts with how our receiving team checks stock in.
The link earns its keep when you need to look back. Say you or a supplier names a lot with a problem. Rotation no longer matters. What matters is which of the orders already shipped carried that lot. Because each order is tied to its lots, the answer is a definite list of orders. You don't have to estimate across a date range or quarantine the whole SKU. We run the pull against that list, so it reaches only the orders that carried the affected lot. Lot capture and FEFO picking both run through our lot, expiry, and FEFO control service.
Lot capture and FEFO are how we work. They aren't a certification we hold or a registration we claim on your behalf. As the holder of your sealed animal food, we run a targeted pull when an affected lot is named, and you stay the label registrant. Our guide to animal food rules: holder vs registrant sets out the full split.
Treats, chews and supplements get the same handling as food. We record lot and expiry when they arrive and pick them by FEFO, and pet supplement and treat fulfillment covers those products in more depth.
Because on dated food, the order stock arrives in and the order it expires in can differ. FIFO ships the earliest arrival first, so a lot that came in later but expires sooner can sit behind it until it ships close to its date, or past it. FEFO sorts by expiration date, and the nearest-dated sellable lot goes out first no matter when it arrived. That makes FEFO the usual choice for pet food, treats and supplements. FIFO suits undated durables, and products whose arrival and expiry dates move together. Both are sound methods, and the product decides which one we use.
We record each incoming lot number and its expiration date at receiving, against the SKU and its on-hand count. After that you can look up stock by SKU, by lot or by expiry. When an order is packed, the lot goes onto that order too. That is what lets a recall pull a single lot instead of quarantining the whole SKU.
This is the step where the tracking data gets made. Before a unit goes to a shelf, we read the lot number and expiration date off the case and link them to the SKU and the on-hand count. From then on the lot is tracked. If that step is skipped, nothing further along can rotate the stock by date or name the lot in a recall. Recording at intake has to come first, before any question of how the stock is shelved.
Every shipped lot is tied to the order it went out in, so a problem lot points straight to the orders that carried it. We run the pull against those orders only, and the rest of the SKU is not quarantined. We carry out the pull as the holder, and the brand stays the label registrant with the regulatory duties.
No. FEFO and lot-and-expiry tracking are for products with a date on them. Pet food and treats need them, and so do chews and supplements. Cat litter, crates and beds have no expiration date, and neither do leashes. For those, FIFO, which goes by arrival, is the natural rule, and tracking expiry by lot adds nothing. We set the rule one SKU at a time instead of once for the whole catalog.