Savage Cat Food

March 15, 2025

The New York City Department of Health is advising cat owners not to feed Savage Cat Food to their cats after the bird flu virus was confirmed in two cats. A third cat also was suspected of being infected with the virus.

Two of the three cats had eaten Savage Cat Food, poultry packets lot number 11152026. The third cat had not been fed this product, but had come into contact with one of the other sick cats.

Both cats with confirmed infections died; the third cat became ill with symptoms consistent with bird flu, but survived and was not tested.

Cat A became ill earlier this month, and was hospitalized with fever, loss of appetite and severe respiratory disease and died as a result of its infection. Testing for the H5 bird flu virus was conducted by the Cornell Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Confirmatory H5N1 testing by the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) is pending.

Cat B became ill in February 2025 with fever and severe respiratory and liver disease and also died as a result of infection. The cat was confirmed by the NVSL to be infected with the H5N1 virus. Additional testing recently performed at NVSL suggests the cat was infected with an H5N1 strain related to that found in Savage Cat food, lot 11152026. Cat B did not consume the Savage Cat Food, but had come into contact with Cat C.

Cat C became ill with fever after consuming Savage Cat Food lot number 11152026, but survived. The cat was not tested for bird flu at the time of its illness, and cannot be tested now as too much time has elapsed.

The chain of events

On February 17, 2025, Savage Cat Food posted a notice on the company’s website advising its customers that a cat in Colorado had developed bird flu after consuming Lot 11152026 of the company’s raw poultry cat food.

Colorado State University tested a sealed package of the food and detected the H5 virus using PCR technology. The company initiated a “market withdrawal” while awaiting virus viability test results from the National Veterinary Services Laboratory.

The NVSL was unable to recover live H5N1 virus from the sample.

Upon learning that the New York City cats had been exposed to the same batch code of raw cat food as the Colorado cat, the company announced it would convert its “market withdrawal” to a voluntary product recall.

The recall covers product with lot code/best buy date of 11152026 which was sold in Large and Small Chicken Boxes in November 2024.

As the product has been shipped across state lines, we can expect a recall notice to be posted on the FDA’s website in the next few days.

How can “negative” product cause infection?

Savage Cat Food is not the first example of a raw pet food that tested positive by PCR for the H5 bird flu virus, but tested “negative” for live virus. A similar situation occurred with Northwest Naturals raw frozen pet food in December 2024.

Microbiologists know well that microbes—whether bacteria or viruses—are not uniformly distributed in a solid food. Especially if contamination is low, a pathogen might be present in only one or two packages out of a hundred, possibly less. And a contaminated package might only harbor the pathogen in one small zone within the box.

It is not unusual in foodborne disease outbreak investigations for the source of the outbreak to be identified based on epidemiology (eating patterns), without the outbreak strain ever being recovered from a sample of the implicated food.

That is what occurred with Northwest Naturals, and that is what has happened (so far) with Savage Cat Food.

What cat owners should know

The New York City Department of Health strongly encourages New Yorkers whose cats are experiencing illness after consuming Savage Cat Food products or other raw meat or dairy products to contact their veterinarian.

Symptoms of H5N1 bird flu virus infections in cats may include:

Fever
Lethargy
Low appetite
Reddened or inflamed eyes
Discharge from the eyes and nose
Difficulty breathing
Neurologic signs, like tremors, seizures, incoordination, or blindness

The New York City Department of Health offers the following tips for pet owners:

Avoid feeding pets raw food or raw milk
If you pet has eaten raw food and shows sign of sickness, call your vet immediately and isolate from other pets
Keep your cats indoors
If you are walking your dog, avoid dead or sick animals

“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

Order TOXIC now from your preferred on-line retailer

Add a third pet food company to the growing list of manufacturers whose raw cat food is suspected of having infected one or more cats with the highly pathogenic influenza virus, usually referred to as HPAI or H5N1.

On February 17, 2025, Savage Pet Inc., a California-based company, notified its customers that Colorado State University Laboratory has tested sealed packets of Savage Cat Food, and had found evidence of HPAI in one of the three lot codes tested. The state lab reported the result as “non-negative.”

The state’s action was triggered by a complaint from a pet owner, whose cat contracted HPAI and recovered.

Lot #11152026 (chicken packets) was reported by Colorado as “non-negative” and the sample was sent to the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) for further analysis, including testing for live H5N1 virus.

Wild Coast Raw

Just three days earlier, the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WADoA), in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA), alerted pet owners that several cats had contracted H5N1 infections in early February. Due to the severity of the illnesses, the owners of the cats opted to euthanize the animals.

The ODA collected samples from the cats before and after euthanization and recovered H5N1 virus from the animals, all of which were fed Wild Coast Raw pet food before becoming ill.

The Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and the NVSL confirmed the presence of H5N1 in the animals and in opened packages of the cat food.

Subsequent testing by the WADoA detected evidence of HPAI in sealed packages of one lot of Wild Coast pet food. Samples from this lot, reported by the state as “non-negative,” have been submitted to the NVSL for more detailed analysis.

A “stop sale” order has been issued in the state of Washington for two lots of Wild Coast LLC – Boneless Free Range Chicken Formula (Lots #22660 and #22664; Best by date of 12/2025).

Northwest Naturals

On December 24, 2024, Northwest Naturals recalled one production lot of its Feline Turkey Recipe raw frozen pet food after the Oregon Department of Agriculture detected highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus in a opened package of the product.

The testing was carried out after a cat that had been fed the product died of bird flu.

According to an update released by the company, Northwest Naturals’ co-manufacturer was subjected to an FDA investigation that began in late December and concluded on February 7, 2025. The FDA was unable to identify the source of the H5N1 virus that had been found in the company’s raw cat food.

What’s with the ‘non-negative’ results?

eFoodAlert reached out to the WADoA for clarification of the meaning of a ‘non-negative’ result (versus a ‘positive’ result), and an explanation as to why the state acted as it did without having a fully confirmed lab result in hand.

A spokesperson for the WADoA provided the following explanation:

“Our state laboratory (WADDL) detected HPAI through PCR testing in the unopened pet food samples. Non negative results indicate the presence of H5. These samples have been forwarded to the National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) for H5N1 confirmation. As a result of Oregon’s results and our results, we’ve issued a public health alert and a stop-sale on affected product lots as a precaution.”

How is the virus getting into the pet food?

This is the $64,000 question.

All three of these companies claim to use only USDA-inspected poultry meat in their raw pet foods. Indeed, Northwest Naturals’ products are manufactured in a USDA-inspected facility, according to the company.

The USDA states clearly that HPAI-infected birds do not enter the food supply. If that’s the case, the virus must be coming from somewhere else.

Two possibilities come to mind:

The virus might be introduced into the production facility by wild birds roosting or flying about in the plant
The virus might be introduced by infected rodents—rats or mice—entering the plant

Either one of these can, and should, be controlled through proper building maintenance and an appropriate pest-control program.

Why did these recalls not make it onto the FDA’s radar screen?

Of all the outstanding questions, this is the one I find the most worrisome.

All three of these companies appear to have shipped their products across state lines. This puts them under the jurisdiction of the FDA.

Under normal conditions, recalls initiated by FDA-regulated companies are listed in the weekly FDA Enforcement Reports, and recall effectiveness is—at least in theory—monitored by the agency.

Why have none of these three recalls shown up in the FDA Enforcement Reports?