Northwest Naturals just recalled two frozen raw pet food products for Salmonella and Listeria contamination. If you feed your dog raw — a bagged brand or your own DIY batches — don’t file this under “one bad batch.” The numbers say raw format itself is the problem, not the brand.
On August 28, 2026, the Portland-based company pulled 53 cases of its Frozen Chicken Recipe cat food and 19 cases of its Frozen Raw Diet for Dogs Chicken Recipe after FDA testing found Salmonella in the cat food and both Salmonella and Listeria in the dog food. No illnesses were reported. Small comfort if you cook or prep fresh food for a dog at home and are now wondering how safe raw feeding really is.
Here’s the uncomfortable part: this isn’t one bad supplier. An analysis of FDA recall data from 2018 through 2024 found raw diets accounted for 54.2% of all pet food recalls, even though raw makes up only about 10.3% of the market. Kibble and wet food — the other 90% — accounted for the rest. Adjusted for market share, raw food is recalled at more than six times the rate its size would predict.
Raw-feeding advocates will fairly note that no illnesses were reported here, and that a recall means the system caught a problem before it caused harm. True enough. It still doesn’t explain why raw product, at a tenth of the market, keeps generating more than half the recalls year after year. Catching problems only helps if the handling on your end matches the risk — and most raw-feeding advice, commercial or DIY, is heavier on nutrition than on food safety.
Northwest Naturals’ guidance to buyers is the same boilerplate every raw recall carries: stop feeding it, wash your hands, sanitize the surfaces and bowls it touched, watch for lethargy, diarrhea, fever, or vomiting. That’s not the company being overly cautious — it’s the actual protocol raw meat requires, whether it comes from a bag with a lot number or your own cutting board.
That’s the real takeaway for anyone cooking for a dog at home: this recall is the same reminder for you as it is for Northwest Naturals’ customers. Raw or lightly cooked meat needs its own cutting board, a fridge running well under 40°F, and portions used or frozen within days — not the casual handling a bag of kibble gets. If that’s more discipline than you signed up for, a fully cooked, nutritionally balanced homemade recipe gives you the same “I know what’s in this” payoff without the raw-handling risk.
Northwest Naturals will likely weather this the way most of these recalls go — refunds issued, a production run cleaned up, business as usual by winter. The pattern behind it won’t. Until raw pet food closes that recall gap, treat every batch, store-bought or your own, with the discipline a butcher gives raw meat — because right now, the numbers say it needs it.
