These are the ingredients in a food called Hubbard Life Happy Hound, that someone I know is feeding their dogs and having health problems... do you see anything in the ingredients that would make you think it would cause any kind of organ failure??

Ingredients
Meat and bone meal, ground yellow corn, ground wheat, corn gluten meal, animal fat (preserved with BHT and citric acid), dried beet pulp, natural flavors, salt, potassium chloride, yeast culture, flaxseed meal, calcium propionate (preservative), minerals (zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate monohydrate, copper sulfate, manganese sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite), vitamins (choline chloride, vitamin A supplement, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, niacin, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, thiamine mononitrate, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of vitamin K activity), folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement).

That brand appears to be part of the Pro Pet recall for Salmonella, which doesn't really answer your question. Link is below, and also clickable in Website link. I do find it odd that they were recalling product that was probably produced a year ago or so, as the best by dates are in a few weeks, only a few months after the mid-February recall.

The recalled brands include 40-pound bags of Hubbard Life Happy Hound Dog Food and Hubbard Life maintenance Dog Food; 18-pound bags of Hubbard Life Cat Stars Cat Food; 40-pound and 15-pound bags of Joy Combo Cat Food; and 40-pound and 20-pound bags of QC Plus Adult Dog Food. The recalled products all have “Best By” dates of 05/06/14 or 05/07/14 and lot codes of “096 13 SM L2 1A,” “096 13 SM L2 2A,” “097 13 SM L2 1A,” or “097 13 SM L2 2A.”

What organs are failing? What age dogs? How is your water? What does your vet suggest that you feed? Have you considered using a named meat source food instead of "meat and bone meal" as the main ingredient? ANY dead animal can fit that description, including perhaps euthanized pets and the drugs they would contain.


http://www.webpronews.com/hubbard-life-joy-combo-pet-food-recalled-2014-02

from the manufacturer
https://www.hubbardlife.com/news-and-events/default.aspx

Hope that you find an answer and can help your dogs.

Here is one vet's take on rendering of meat and bone meal, etc.
http://www.petmd.com/blogs/fullyvetted/2010/oct/rendered_barbiturates-10474

included in a 2004 report to Congress on the rendering industry, is how it happens at the level of the independent rendering plant:
These plants (estimated by NRA at 165 in the United States and Canada) usually collect material from other sites using specially designed trucks. They pick up and process fat and bone trimmings, inedible meat scraps, blood, feathers, and dead animals from meat and poultry slaughterhouses and processors (usually smaller ones without their own rendering operations), farms, ranches, feedlots, animal shelters, restaurants, butchers, and markets. As a result, the majority of independents are likely to be handling "mixed species." Almost all of the resulting ingredients are destined for nonhuman consumption (e.g., animal feeds, industrial products). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates animal feed ingredients, but its continuous presence in rendering plants, or in feed mills that buy rendered ingredients, is not a legal requirement.
(My bolding, btw.)
So how has this continued to pass under our radar? Those generic, unspecified proteins and fats included in your pet's food? They may well — legally — include canine and feline bodies. This may seem shocking to us . . . but this is business as ususal for the rendering industry.
If it’s always been done, why wring our hands over it now?

Would be one thing I would suspect if the dogs have been on the food for a while. It is a poor choice of preservative.

I also agree with not knowing what the meat source is in the food.

It could also be a bad bag of dog food.

Kidney or Liver failure, particularly

Terrible food, doesn't get much worse than that.

Salmonella has been implicated in some renal and liver failures in dogs, although prevailing buzz is that Salmonella is killed by doggy digestive tracts if the dogs are healthy enough. That being said, kibble is usually fed day after day, with no change of diet as there would be in a wild dog. Here is one link on liver failure:
http://www.petmd.com/dog/conditions/endocrine/c_dg_cholangitis_cholangiohepatitis_syndrome

Jerky treats also have been implicated in organ failure in pets eating them.

A food that looks that bad could probably cause serious issues long term on it's own merit without salmonella. The digestible protein is probably way low and lacking in some amino acids. People shouldn't have dogs if they can't feed them properly.