Lewis Sausage – eFoodAlert

USDA-inspected company received FDA Warning Letter

Lewis Sausage Company Inc. (Burgaw, NC) is a small meat and poultry processing company that falls under USDA jurisdiction. It has been producing smoked sausages since the 1950s, and has never issued a product recall for any USDA-inspected food.

The company also performs contract manufacturing for Viva Raw LLC, a Hillsborough, NC, pet food company that falls under FDA jurisdiction.

And therein hangs the story.

The backstory

On January 23, 2024, Viva Raw recalled four of its pet foods after being notified by the FDA that the products had tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella. No public recall notice was ever published, but the products were listed in the FDA’s Enforcement Report as:

VIVA for cats duck, Lot 22853
VIVA for dogs Chunked duck, Lot 22853 11:04 1
VIVA for dogs GROUND duck, Lot 22853
VIVA PURE duck PETFOODMIXER, Lot 22853

On May 15, 2024, the FDA, together with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDACS), completed an inspection of Lewis Sausage Company’s processing facilities, including collecting finished product samples. Five Viva Raw products, all manufactured under Lot 21244, were found to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

On June 12, 2024, Viva Raw initiated a recall of the five products, including Viva Turkey for Dogs Ground, Viva Turkey for Dogs Chunked, Viva Turkey for Cats, Viva Pure Turkey, and Viva Beef & Turkey for Puppies, according to FDA Enforcement Report files. The company issued a public recall notice on July 1, 2024.

The FDA classified the results of its May 2024 inspection as Official Action Indicated, citing deficiencies in Lewis Sausage’s Hazard Analysis and Preventive Controls actions. The agency issued an Untitled Letter on March 14, 2025, and performed a follow-up inspection on August 25 through August 29, 2025. Once again, the inspection was carried out jointly with the NCDACS.

On August 25, 2025, the day the inspection began, Viva Raw announced yet another recall. This time, the company recalled six varieties of raw dog and cat foods, comprising two lot codes. The company’s recall notice explained that routine testing by the NCDACS had found Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes in samples of the products.

In January 2026, Viva Raw announced on its website that the company had adopted high pressure processing to enhance the safety of its raw pet food products.

Finally, on August 5, 2026, the FDA issued a Warning Letter to Viva Raw and a separate Warning Letter to Lewis Sausage. In those letters the agency reviewed the issues raised as a result of the inspection conducted the previous year and listed the items that required additional documentation to confirm correction of issues that were outstanding.

When competing philosophy’s intersect

Lewis Sausage is a USDA-inspected facility. But this means very little when the subject is microbiological safety of raw pet foods.

It is true that using USDA-inspected meat and poultry exclusively provides assurance that the finished pet food does not contain any 4D meat (denatured meat from dying, disabled, diseased or dead animals). However, the USDA have very different criteria for the presence of pathogenic bacteria in meat and poultry.

USDA, which has authority over meat and poultry for human consumption, considers raw beef that contains shiga toxin-producing E. coli to be adulterated and subject to recall. On the other hand, raw meat and poultry that is contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes or Salmonella is not treated as adulterated on the principle that the meat will be subject to further processing (including cooking in the home kitchen) before being consumed.

The FDA has authority over all food for animals, whether companion animals or livestock. It considers any product—even raw pet foods—that is sold as ready-to-eat to be adulterated if it contains ANY foodborne pathogen, regardless of the level of contamination.

Following the bread crumbs

My curiosity was piqued when I read the FDA Warning Letter to Lewis Sausage and realized that I had never seen a recall notice for the products listed as contaminated, so I started checking pet food recalls around the timeframe when the company had been inspected. When I found the August 2025 Viva Raw recall notice, I did some additional cross-checking and confirmed the relationship.

Viva Raw is very open on its website about employing a contract manufacturer to produce its raw pet foods, but does not reveal the company’s name.

The FDA considers information such as the identity of a company’s clients or the name of a company’s contract manufacturer to be confidential commercial information. That information was redacted from the Warning Letters issued to Viva Raw and Lewis Sausage.

My take on raw pet food

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed eFoodAlert over the years, or who has read my book on pet food safety, that I am not a fan of commercial raw pet food. There are some companies out there who try hard to produce and supply high-quality, safe products.

There are others that hide behind a philosophy that dogs and cats have a different digestive system and are not susceptible to foodborne pathogens like Salmonella. Some of these bad actors give short shrift to sanitation and cross-contamination in their production facilities, choosing to spend their time complaining about being targeted “unfairly” by the FDA instead of working to meet federal guidelines for producing safe pet food.

I have fed raw meat to our dog at times during her eleven-year lifespan. But I have always done so with full control over the preparation and storage, buying whole cuts of beef or lamb at the supermarket, searing the outside to kill most of the bacteria (which tend to be on the surface and not in the depths of the muscle), and grinding it myself before freezing individual portions.

In my opinion, the convenience of commercial raw pet food is not worth the risks associated with it.

“A complete and compelling account of the hidden and not-so-hidden ways the food we give our beloved pets can be contaminated.” – JoNel Aleccia, Health Reporter, Food & Nutrition, The Associated Press.

“An invaluable resource for busy pet owners” – Food Safety News

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Lewis Sausage Co., Inc. (Lewis), a meat and poultry processor that also manufactures raw pet food under contract, failed two FDA inspections during an eleven-month period.

The company manufactures a range of raw dog food and raw cat food products on behalf of Viva Raw, LLC.

Viva Raw does not carry out any manufacturing at its location of record. The company’s address of record, as listed by the North Carolina Secretary of State, belongs to a single-family home in a residential area of Durham, North Carolina.

At the completion of a June 2023 inspection of Lewis’ operations, FDA investigators reported that the company “…did not take adequate measures to significantly minimize or prevent the growth of undesirable microorganisms in [its] animal food,” according to information contained in the FDA Form 483 Inspectional Observations obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Lewis was reinspected in May 2024. In the FDA Form 483 issued upon completion of inspection, investigators highlighted several areas of concern, including:

validation studies did not confirm that the process used to reduce or control pathogens was sufficiently effective to eliminate Salmonella, E. coli, or Listeria monocytogenes from the finished products
monitoring for pathogens during production was not carried out according to the written monitoring procedure
environmental monitoring was not carried out with adequate frequency, given the size, scope, and production volume
finished product sampling program for Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria monocytogenes was inadequate
hazard analysis document did not include nutrient toxicity or nutrient deficiency as hazards likely to occur, even though some of the finished products carry the statement, “Complete and Balanced” on the product label.

The fall-out

On December 26, 2023, the FDA received a consumer complaint alerting the agency to the death of a dog that had been fed Viva For Dogs brand Chunked Duck (Product code 17BVD02).

The affected dog vomited the entire day, experienced seizure-like activity and was taken to a veterinary emergency facility. The dog was found to have severe thrombocytopenia (low platelet counts) and did not survive.

A second dog in the same household, ate a much smaller quantity of the product, vomited just once, and recovered.

The FDA received a second consumer complaint on January 31, 2024. The consumer reported that their cats had developed gastrointestinal illness (vomiting) after being fed Viva Raw brand Pure Rabbit Raw Cat Food. The cats recovered when their diet was switched to a Viva Raw chicken product.

The FDA took no immediate action on this complaint, indicating that it would be raised at the next establishment inspection.

On January 23, 2024, after receiving notification the FDA had found both Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes in a sample of the product, the company initiated a recall of four products that contained the duck meat used the implicated production lot of the Chunked Duck.

The recall, which was communicated to consignees by email rather than via a public recall notice, including the following four products bearing lot number 22853:

VIVA for dogs Chunked duck
VIVA for cats duck
VIVA for dogs GROUND duck
VIVA PURE duck PETFOODMIXER

During the May 2024 inspection at Lewis Sausage, the FDA collected finished product for testing, and found Listeria monocytogenes in a sample.

On June 12, 2024, Lewis Sausage initiated a recall of five products carrying the same lot code (Lot #21244) in which the FDA had found the pathogen.

On July 1, 2024, Viva Raw issued a press release announcing a recall of the five products, which included:

VIVA for cats turkey (1 lb (454g); Lot #21244)
VIVA for dogs CHUNKED turkey (1 lb (454g); Lot #21244)
VIVA for dogs GROUND turkey (1 lb (454g); Lot #21244)
VIVA for puppies beef & turkey GROUND (1 lb (454g); Lot #21244)
VIVA PURE turkey for cats & dogs (1 lb (454g); Lot #21244)

The take-aways

A pet food company’s claim that its products have been manufactured using “human-grade” ingredients or in a USDA-inspected facility is no guarantee that the products are safe.
Viva Raw LLC is just one of many smaller pet food suppliers that do not manufacture their own products. They rely on third-party manufacturers to produce their formulas.
Not all product recalls are announced via a news release on the FDA’s website. Many recalls—whether of pet foods or people foods—are only made public through the FDA’s Enforcement Reports.

Reporting a pet food problem

The FDA relies heavily on reports from pet owners and veterinarians to alert them to safety issues with pet foods. Especially useful are reports that include veterinary information and details on the suspect food (brand, variety, batch codes, et cetera).

The following links will help you to make your report to the FDA. Just click anywhere on the blue to be taken directly to the appropriate FDA web page.

How to Report a Pet Food Complaint. Read this web page before beginning to file your complaint. It provides a list of the information you should try to have at hand before you begin to file. If you are missing some information, do not despair. Even partial information will be helpful.

Consumer Complaint Coordinators. This FDA page supplies the telephone number for the agency’s Consumer Complaint Coordinator in each state. Use this approach if you wish to make your complaint by telephone. If you do not reach a live voice, please leave a detailed message so that the coordinator can return your call.

Safety Reporting Portal. Use this FDA page if you prefer to file your report on-line with the agency. Begin by clicking on the button “Report as Guest” and continue by answering each question as it is presented to you.