The following story by Mollie Morrissette first appeared on Pet Food Safety News and is reposted here with the author’s permission.

If you have any interest in the safety of food for animals, Pet Food Safety News is a “must follow” blog to add to your reading list. Mollie does her homework, and her posts are accurate and often insightful.

Chef’s Pure Pet Food tested positive for Listeria in November 2025. FDA’s warning letter, made public in August 2026, shows a company that couldn’t prove its safety claims held up, and product categories it never tests at all. There is still no recall.

Waves & Wine, Inc. manufactures raw and gently cooked pet food sold under the brand Chef’s Pure Pet Food, out of a facility in Mendota, California. FDA’s July 6, 2026 warning letter, made public August 18, documents that finished Cat Beef Sliders and Dog Beef Patties, manufactured in November 2025, tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes. There is no public recall for those products. There is no recall notice on the company’s own website.

FDA Keeps Failing to Protect Consumers From Contaminated Pet Food

Just weeks before this letter became public, FDA and the Department of Justice finally sued Darwin’s Natural Pet Products, after nearly a decade of documented Salmonella, Listeria, and E. coli findings and a four-year-old child left on dialysis. Noah Ruiz’s family dog, fed exclusively on Darwin’s food, began vomiting the day before Noah fell ill; FDA never tested for the connection itself, attorney Bill Marler did, and the genetic match was exact. Darwin’s founder Gary Tashjian refused FDA’s recall request for years, publicly insisting the food was safe. DOJ’s complaint documents 49 consumer complaints since 2016, nine reported animal deaths. Even now, DOJ isn’t seeking to shut Darwin’s down permanently, just a conditional path back into business once it cleans up, despite having the legal authority to seek an unconditional injunction.

At the exact same time FDA and DOJ were finally acting on Darwin’s, that same agency was sitting on this case. Chef’s Pure Pet Food’s Listeria-positive lots were made in November 2025, while Darwin’s was already under two separate FDA advisories for the same reason: no proof contaminated product had been kept off shelves. FDA got the identical non-answer from Waves & Wine months later. One company eventually got a lawsuit. The other got a warning letter, quietly posted six weeks after it was written, and nothing since. There’s no visible, consistent standard for which case gets escalated and which one sits. Marion Nestle has made the point for years: pet food is part of the same food supply that feeds the people living in the house. Contaminated pet food doesn’t stay in the bowl. Here’s what happened this time.

What FDA actually found

The company’s own hazard analysis correctly names Salmonella, Listeria, and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli as risks. That wasn’t the problem. When the Listeria-positive results came back, the company’s own explanation was: “This product is a RAW process pet food and carries inherent risks as it does not undergo a kill step.” Its fix, adjusting an ingredient amount, came with no documentation showing it worked. FDA states directly the company “did not adequately evaluate affected animal food for safety to ensure the animal food is safe prior to entering commerce.”

Two details make it worse. The company tried to justify its pathogen-control method using a study that tested a different process and protein entirely. And FDA found at least two product categories the company doesn’t microbially test at all. Supplier oversight was just as thin: one expired Letter of Guarantee, no onsite audits, despite Salmonella, H5N1, and nutrient toxicity all being hazards that legally require them.

Inspectors also documented employees handling raw protein without changing gloves, raw and cooked product stored together before patty formation, condensation dripping onto unpackaged finished food, and unsanitized equipment reassembled before production. As of the warning letter’s date, the company hadn’t even responded to FDA’s original inspection report.

Is it still on shelves?

Confirmed directly on Lucky Supermarkets’ own site: at least three Chef’s Pure Pet products are currently listed for sale. The company says it’s also sold at Save Mart, independent feed stores, and Food Max, up and down California from Chico to Bakersfield, and in Nevada. This is not a small operation. I found no evidence it’s sold through Chewy, Amazon, or PetSmart.

The company’s marketing states “Every batch is tested before it ships” and “No product leaves our facility without passing quality checks.” Testing did catch this Listeria positive, but FDA found entire product categories with zero testing, which is hard to square with either claim. Those claims may also carry separate legal exposure: the FD&C Act’s misbranding provisions extend to promotional material and websites, not just physical labels, a distinct legal problem from the adulteration violations already documented.

The company also markets its “USDA-certified facility” as a safety credential. It isn’t one. USDA’s own Food Safety and Inspection Service has stated directly that this certification is “offered for marketing purposes, and not for food safety.” Once meat becomes pet food, FDA has the safety authority, not USDA.

A separate safety error, for customers who cook the food

The company’s own instructions tell customers who don’t feed raw to cook beef patties to 145°F. USDA’s actual minimum for ground beef is 160°F; 145°F only applies to whole cuts like steaks, since grinding spreads surface bacteria throughout the meat. A company already found to have an unvalidated pathogen-control process is telling safety-conscious customers to stop 15 degrees short of safe.

What we still don’t know

• What happened to the November 2025 Listeria-positive lots — were they shipped, and were retailers or consumers notified?
• Why did six months pass between the January 2026 inspection and the July warning letter, and another six weeks before it was made public?
• Which of the company’s products receive no microbial testing at all?
• Is this product on shelves right now?

The bottom line

FDA issued this warning letter July 6, 2026. It didn’t make it public until August 18 — six weeks during which the product kept selling and nobody outside the agency and the company knew the letter existed. That’s not a bureaucratic delay. It’s the same pattern as Darwin’s, happening in real time, in the same weeks FDA was being praised for finally acting on that case.

I have long advised against feeding raw pet food to companion animals, for the reasons laid out in Raw Pet Food: The Problem That Won’t Go Away. FDA should tell the public what happened to this food. Until it does, the honest answer is that nobody outside the company, and possibly nobody inside it either, actually knows.

Sources

FDA Warning Letter, Waves & Wine, Inc., MARCS-CMS 724861, July 6, 2026.
Waves & Wine Inc / dba Chef’s Pure Pet, company job listing.
21 CFR Part 507, Preventive Controls for Food for Animals.
FD&C Act § 403(a), misbranded food.
FSIS response, petition 18-03, pet food certification.
USDA, “Ground Beef and Food Safety.”
DOJ complaint, U.S. v. Arrow Reliance Inc., Case No. 2:26-cv-02805.
Marler Blog.
Marion Nestle, foodpolitics.com.