FDA warns pet owners after Salmonella is found again in Darwin's raw cat food

The Food and Drug Administration is warning cat owners not to feed their pets two lots of a frozen raw chicken product made by Darwin's Natural Pet Products, after agency testing found the lots contaminated with Salmonella and linked them to a cat's hospitalization. The advisory, posted October 26, says the manufacturer, Arrow Reliance Inc., has "not initiated an adequate recall" of the affected product, despite the agency's recommendation that it do so.

The warning is narrow on its face, covering a single item sold directly to subscribers online. But it lands nearly three months into a federal lawsuit in which the Justice Department, acting on the FDA's behalf, is trying to stop Arrow Reliance from making pet food at all, citing a decade of recurring contamination findings at the company's Tukwila, Washington, facility.

What the FDA found

The agency says it collected and tested the chicken product after a consumer reported that two cats developed gastrointestinal illness after eating it; one cat was hospitalized before both animals recovered. Two lots tested positive for Salmonella: lot 12731, manufactured July 8, 2026, and lot 12493, manufactured April 2, 2026. The product, Darwin's Natural Selections Chicken Recipe for Cats, is sold frozen in two-pound packages split into four half-pound units, with the lot code printed on the front of the lower-left unit.

Because the packages carry no expiration date and are typically kept frozen, the FDA says affected food could still be sitting in subscribers' freezers. Freezing does not kill Salmonella, a bacterium that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, causes an estimated 1.35 million infections in the United States each year. The agency is advising anyone with the listed lots to throw the food away in a sealed container that pets or wildlife cannot reach, not donate it, and disinfect any bowls, utensils, countertops, bedding or freezer surfaces the food may have touched.

A pattern stretching back years

This is not the first time the FDA has flagged Darwin's raw pet food. The agency issued similar "do not feed" advisories covering various lots in 2019, 2022, 2023 and again in September 2025, each time after its own sampling turned up Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes or both. In several of those instances, the company disputed the findings or took only partial action, such as notifying customers about one pathogen while omitting mention of a second, rather than issuing the recall the FDA sought. The food-safety newsletter eFoodAlert described the latest episode as "Groundhog Day" for the company.

The food-safety blog Food Poison Journal, which tracks FDA advisories closely, flagged the new warning the same day it was posted. That history is now at the center of a civil complaint the Justice Department filed on behalf of the FDA against Arrow Reliance and its founder, Gary T. Tashjian, on August 7 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, case number 2:26-cv-02805. The 24-page complaint lays out, year by year, FDA sampling at the company's Tukwila facility going back to 2017 that repeatedly turned up Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes or Shiga toxin-producing E. coli in finished product, alongside warning letters in 2018 and 2023 that the government says went largely unheeded; of 18 FDA samples collected since 2023 alone, 12 came back positive. In 2022, after the agency recommended a recall over sickened kittens, Darwin's instead sued the FDA seeking to block it from notifying the public — a request a federal judge denied, both on an emergency basis and, later, permanently. The complaint also describes a four-year-old child hospitalized in August 2024 with a Shiga toxin E. coli infection and the kidney complication hemolytic uremic syndrome, after the family's dog was fed Arrow Reliance product; FDA says genomic sequencing showed an exact match between the bacteria in the child's stool and in leftover pet food from the home, and that the child continues to face chronic kidney disease. Separately, the government says it fielded 49 consumer complaints from 2016 through January 2026 involving 34 sickened dogs, five of which reportedly died, and 35 sickened cats, four of which reportedly died. The suit seeks a court order permanently barring the company from manufacturing or distributing pet food until its facility, methods and controls satisfy the FDA, and a sixth count targets marketing claims on Darwin's website suggesting raw food can ease arthritis, diabetes or urinary tract disease in pets, which the government argues amount to unapproved animal-drug claims.

Who is affected

Darwin's sells its raw diets nationwide through an online subscription model rather than retail stores, which means the company, not a grocery chain, controls who gets notified when a lot is flagged. Pet owners who have not actively checked the FDA's advisory page or Arrow Reliance's own communications may be unaware their freezer contains an affected lot. The FDA notes that Salmonella-contaminated pet food poses a risk not only to the animal eating it but to people in the household: infected pets can shed the bacteria in feces and saliva without appearing ill, and cross-contamination in kitchens where raw pet food is handled is a recognized route of human infection, particularly for young children, older adults and people with weakened immune systems.

Reaction

In announcing its lawsuit against the company in August, Timothy Schell, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said, as reported at the time, that "despite repeated FDA warnings, this company continues to manufacture and distribute products contaminated with harmful bacteria," adding that "every American pet owner deserves confidence that the food they feed their animals is safe and will not pose health risks to their families."

"When a company does not take responsibility for product safety, FDA will intervene to protect public health," Schell said.

Tashjian has pushed back on the government's case. "We strongly disagree with the FDA's recent claims and intend to vigorously defend our ability to continue making safe, high-quality raw pet food," he said when the lawsuit was filed, adding that the company remains focused on "the health and wellbeing of the pets we serve." Tashjian has long argued that raw pet food is treated unfairly compared with raw meat sold for human consumption, telling CBS News in 2019 that consumers could buy the same chicken at a grocery store and feed it to a dog without triggering regulatory action, and that Darwin's packaging carries the same handling instructions grocery meat does.

What happens next

For now, Darwin's remains in business and its products remain for sale; no court has ordered a shutdown, and the company has not issued a formal recall of the two flagged lots. The injunction case remains in litigation, and the FDA's advisory carries no legal force beyond the recommendation itself unless the agency escalates to a mandatory recall order, an authority it uses sparingly. Consumers who have the two lots are directed to the FDA's Safety Reporting Portal if a pet becomes ill, and to a veterinarian in the meantime. People exposed to Salmonella typically develop diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps within a few days; most recover without treatment, though severe cases can require hospitalization.