# The dog food memo

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The dog food memo," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dog-food-memo/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The internal announcement circulated by the warden of FCI Loretto apologising for having served prisoners dog food on a taco night, which John Kiriakou cites as evidence not of the error but of how bad the ordinary food was, because nobody noticed.*

- **Sent by:** The warden of FCI Loretto
- **Delivered via:** The internal prison email system
- **Subject:** Prisoners accidentally fed dog food on taco night
- **Cause given:** Mislabelling at the meat plant
- **Kiriakou's point:** Nobody had noticed

**The dog food memo** was an announcement circulated by the warden of [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto) through the prison's internal email system, by which prisoners could receive messages from the administration.[1]

In [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account, the warden wrote that he was very sorry, but that a couple of months earlier the prisoners had accidentally been fed dog food on taco night.[1]

## The explanation

The memo assigned the fault elsewhere. The mix-up, Kiriakou says the warden wrote, was not the prison's: it happened at the meat plant, where the dog food had been mislabelled as ground beef and the ground beef mislabelled as dog food.[2]

## Kiriakou's reading

Kiriakou's interest in the episode is not in the error. His argument is that the shame of it was not that the prisoners had been fed dog food, it was that they had not even realised it was dog food, because the regular food is not for human consumption in the first place.[2]

The claim is the same one he attaches to the Friday fish known as [sewer trout](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/sewer-trout), which arrived in boxes marked *Alaskan cod, product of China* and *feed use only*, and which he has written about in *Consortium News* and *CovertAction Magazine*.[3][1]

## Taco night

Taco night was Tuesday. Kiriakou says he did once throw away his dinner on a taco night, and that his experience of the so-called Mexican food in prison was bad enough that he has never eaten Mexican food since.[4]

The warden happened to be standing there, and told him he was supposed to eat everything on his plate. Kiriakou answered with a deliberate obscenity and dared him to impose [solitary confinement](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/solitary-confinement) for refusing to eat animal-grade food. In his account the warden knew Kiriakou would go directly to CNN or the *Washington Post*, and backed off, a case, Kiriakou says, of the institution's corruption working in his favour.[4][5]

## See also

- [Sewer trout](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/sewer-trout)
- [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Solitary confinement](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/solitary-confinement)

## Sources

1. S2E3 Circle Of Friends (2026-06-01), at 09:20. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a1cae87f7ef77595849152c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-dead-drop-s2e3-circle-of-friends/
2. S2E3 Circle Of Friends (2026-06-01), at 09:57. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a1cae87f7ef77595849152c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-dead-drop-s2e3-circle-of-friends/
3. S2E3 Circle Of Friends (2026-06-01), at 08:13. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a1cae87f7ef77595849152c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-dead-drop-s2e3-circle-of-friends/
4. S2E3 Circle Of Friends (2026-06-01), at 10:28. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a1cae87f7ef77595849152c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-dead-drop-s2e3-circle-of-friends/
5. S2E3 Circle Of Friends (2026-06-01), at 10:59. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a1cae87f7ef77595849152c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-01-dead-drop-s2e3-circle-of-friends/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dog-food-memo/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt