These are beef chews or treats. Merrick definitely has had a real problem with salmonella in their beef treat manufacturing in the past year. Texas Taffy chews/treats were recalled voluntarily.
This reminds me off the bad ole' melamine days of 2007--they always did recalls on a Friday, and nothing went up over the weekend on the manufacturers sites.
Links to both FDA recall and the nothing on Merrick site are on this site.
http://petsblogs.com/2011/01/pet-food-recall-merrick-pet-care-recalls-jr-texas-taffy-pet-treat/

Note that the Feds can't type. The recall notice has the wrong year, although this RSS feed has the correct and current one.
While we're at it, we can see issues at Keebler, GSK, Pfizer, etc. Today has a potentially fatal horse feed recall, in the West, too!
feed://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ContactFDA/StayInformed/RSSFeeds/Recalls/rss.xml