Northwest Naturals Recall Marks Raw Food's Third FDA Pathogen Hit Since June

Three times since June, a lab test run by the Food and Drug Administration, not a company's own quality check, has caught pathogens in raw pet food before it reached a customer's freezer. Northwest Naturals is the latest name on that list: the Portland, Oregon company pulled two frozen chicken products from stores nationwide on August 28th after federal sampling turned up Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.

Northwest Naturals recalls two chicken products nationwide

The recall covers 53 cases (1,272 pounds) of Frozen Chicken Recipe cat food in 2-pound bags and 19 cases (684 pounds) of Frozen Raw Diet for Dogs Chicken Recipe in 6-pound bags. Northwest Naturals shipped both nationwide to retail stores before pulling them.

Lot B-5 of the cat food, best-by January 26, 2028, tested positive for Salmonella. Lot B-19 of the dog food, best-by January 25, 2028, tested positive for both Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes. The company didn't catch either result on its own: the FDA did, through its own product sampling.

No illnesses in pets or people have been reported so far. Both bacteria can sicken anyone who handles contaminated raw food, and the agency's advisory repeats the same handling guidance that follows nearly every raw-food recall: wash hands, sanitize surfaces and utensils, keep raw pet food away from human food, and don't feed the recalled lots to pets.

Both best-by dates run to January 2028, meaning the affected lots were produced recently and could still be sitting in a freezer case rather than a customer's home. That timing is what makes a nationwide recall with zero confirmed illnesses worth watching rather than dismissing: the product has barely had time to move through the supply chain.

What FDA's raw food crackdown means for retailers

Northwest Naturals is at least the third raw or minimally processed pet food maker to get caught by FDA pathogen sampling since June. Steve's Real Food recalled freeze-dried product for the same reason that month. Oma's Pride followed in August. Now Northwest Naturals makes three, putting 2026 on pace to challenge 2025's record year for the category.

The share of the market at risk is small; the share of the recalls is not. Raw and minimally processed formats make up less than 10 percent of pet food sold, but they account for roughly two-thirds of pathogen-linked recalls tracked so far this year, a gap that keeps widening even as the format grows 15 to 20 percent annually.

The sharper edge of that scrutiny landed three weeks earlier, when the Department of Justice sued Arrow Reliance, maker of Darwin's Natural Pet Products, seeking to halt production until its Tukwila, Washington facility passes federal inspection. The complaint cites FDA sampling that found pathogens in 12 of 18 recent product tests, about two-thirds, the same detection method that flagged Northwest Naturals' chicken lines.

That distinction matters for anyone stocking raw SKUs. The primary safety check on this category increasingly comes from a federal agency's own lab work rather than a supplier's testing regime, which makes the recall cadence a live liability question, not just a supply one. A retailer that treats a clean label and a familiar name as sufficient diligence is relying on a testing gap the FDA itself is now actively closing.

Northwest Naturals isn't a first-time name here either: it recalled a cat food line in December 2024 after bird flu contamination linked to a cat's death. Two recalls in under two years, both pathogen or contamination driven, reads as a pattern at the company level, not just the category's. Insurers and distributors underwriting raw-food shelf space have two separate risk lines to track now: the brand's own record, and the category's.

Whether the Darwin's case sets a new safety bar

The Arrow Reliance suit is a civil case, not a criminal one, but the remedy the DOJ is asking for goes further than a recall: a court order stopping production entirely until the facility complies. If a judge grants it, that becomes a template regulators can reach for against other repeat-recall raw makers, instead of the current cycle of voluntary pulls and clean handling reminders.

For Northwest Naturals, the near-term question is whether this stays a single, contained event or draws the kind of sustained FDA sampling attention that preceded the Darwin's suit. A third recall in under two years, two of them pathogen or contamination linked, puts it inside the range regulators appear to be watching.

For the category, the number to track is whether FDA sampling frequency in raw and freeze-dried lines keeps climbing into next year, and whether any major retailer responds to the recall pace by tightening what it carries, right as raw and fresh formats head into their strongest buying season of the year. A fourth pathogen-driven recall before year-end would erase any doubt that this is a cluster rather than a coincidence.

Source: Northwest Naturals via FDA