The pattern is not a one-off
FDA's June 18, 2025 warning letter to Answers Pet Food says four sampled retail lots contained Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, or both. The same letter says investigators found Listeria on seven surfaces in the facility, including food-contact surfaces.
That matters because it moves the conversation out of rumor. This was not a social-media scare. It was a federal enforcement document with named findings.
The agency keeps having to warn people
FDA's February 17, 2026 advisory says eight lots of RAAW Energy and related raw diets carried contamination concerns tied to Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, or both. FDA's September 3, 2025 notice also tied two lots of RAWR Raw Cat Food Chicken Eats to H5N1 contamination findings.
These are different products and different hazards, but they point in the same direction: raw pet food keeps generating the kind of events that require urgent public warnings.
FDA has been warning about raw risk for years
FDA's raw-pet-food safety page says the agency tested 196 raw pet-food samples in its study and found contamination rates high enough to warn that raw diets can expose pets and people to pathogens.
That does not mean every raw diet will make an animal sick. It does mean the burden of proof should be on the companies selling the purity story, not on pet owners trying to reverse-engineer what went wrong after an illness.
Why complaint reporting matters
FDA's complaint guidance tells pet owners to preserve the original package, lot code, storage details, and veterinary records. That is because the public record only gets stronger when contaminated products can be traced to the exact lot and manufacturing window.
If readers want more accountability in this industry, the complaint trail matters almost as much as the ingredient list.
