On May 8, 2026, a small raw pet food company in Fort Wayne, Indiana issued the kind of notice that has become depressingly routine: one of its lots had tested positive for Salmonella, and dogs across the country may have been eating it.
The brand is Albright's Raw Pet Food, and the affected product is its Chicken Recipe for Dogs Complete and Balanced. The lot in question, C001730, was sold as one-pound frozen bricks (distributed in 30-pound cases) with a Best By date of April 28, 2027. According to the FDA recall notice, the lot was distributed nationwide direct to consumers and to retailers in Massachusetts, California, South Carolina, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and New York.
No illnesses in pets or humans have been reported. But the Albright's recall doesn't land in a vacuum — it lands in a long, growing pile of raw pet food recalls. The pile got significantly taller in 2025, and the math underneath it tells a story most raw feeders haven't seen.
What's in the recall, and what to do if you bought it
The contamination was caught during routine FDA sampling, not because dogs got sick. Inspectors pulled samples and tested them for Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, and E. coli. The composite sample came back positive for Salmonella; Listeria and E. coli were also identified during testing.
If you have one-pound Albright's chicken bricks in your freezer, the steps are straightforward:
- Check the lot number. Only Lot #C001730 with a Best By date of April 28, 2027 is part of the recall.
- Do not feed it to your dog. Bag the product and throw it away in a sealed container so children, other pets, and wildlife can't reach it.
- Refund through the company. Albright's is offering refunds at [email protected] — submit a receipt and a photo of the product. The customer line is 866-729-4738.
- Clean the freezer and prep surfaces. Wash any bowls, scoops, or counters that touched the food with hot soapy water, then sanitize. Wash your hands and your dog's bowl daily.
This is not Albright's first recall. The same brand recalled 67 cases of Chicken Recipe for Dogs in November 2020 for the same reason — possible Salmonella contamination — with one reported animal illness at the time. That history is worth knowing if you're weighing whether to keep buying from the brand once the affected lot clears.
What Salmonella actually does — to dogs and to you
Dogs that get sick from Salmonella usually develop diarrhea (sometimes bloody), vomiting, fever, lethargy, decreased appetite, and abdominal pain. Most cases resolve, but Salmonellosis can become serious in puppies, senior dogs, and dogs with underlying conditions. Call your vet if you see any of these signs in a dog who ate a recalled product.
The trickier risk is the one you can't see. Healthy dogs can eat Salmonella-contaminated food, never look sick, and still shed the bacteria in their stool and saliva for up to a week — sometimes longer. Dogs that develop full-blown infections can shed for four to six weeks after the fact. That matters because every face-lick, slobbered tennis ball, and indoor accident becomes a potential vector for human illness.
A Penn State study published in 2024 identified 77 suspected zoonotic Salmonella cases involving dogs across 17 U.S. states between 2017 and 2023, including strains that were antimicrobial-resistant. As one of the researchers put it, "We don't let cows sleep in our beds or lick our faces, but we do dogs." Kids, older adults, pregnant women, and anyone immunocompromised face the highest risk of human Salmonellosis from a contaminated household.
The bigger pattern: raw food keeps showing up on recall lists
Raw pet food is a small slice of the U.S. pet food market — most American dogs eat extruded kibble or canned wet food. But raw products are showing up on FDA recall pages at a rate that's wildly disproportionate to that market share. According to industry tracking, raw diets accounted for roughly 84,000 of the 166,071 pounds of pet food recalled in 2025 — more than half by weight.
The past year alone has logged a steady drumbeat of raw recalls:
- June 2025 — Answers Pet Food: nationwide recall of multiple raw beef and chicken products after lab results came back positive for Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.
- August 2025 — Viva Raw: recall of several raw dog and cat varieties for Salmonella and Listeria, covering products sold over a roughly seven-week window.
- January 2026 — Raaw Energy: FDA advisory after eight samples tested positive for Listeria, Salmonella, E. coli O157, and Campylobacter — a four-pathogen sweep.
- May 2026 — Albright's: the recall we're talking about now.
None of this is a coincidence. Raw food, by definition, skips the kill step that kibble and canned food rely on — the heat treatment that inactivates bacteria and viruses. The American Veterinary Medical Association's policy on raw diets is blunt: the AVMA "discourages feeding any raw or undercooked animal-sourced proteins" to dogs and cats because of the risk to both pets and people. Published contamination rates for commercial raw meat-based diets have run as high as 20% to 48% in peer-reviewed studies.
H5N1 added a new pathogen to the raw-food risk list
Salmonella isn't the only worry. In early 2025, the FDA told raw pet food manufacturers they were required to revisit their food safety plans to include H5N1 — bird flu — as a known, reasonably foreseeable hazard. The trigger was a cat illness linked to a specific lot of raw cat food, RAWR Chicken Eats, which tested positive for H5N1.
Dogs tend to weather H5N1 infections better than cats, but they're not immune, and a household with both species feeding raw poultry is now navigating a layered risk: bacterial contamination plus the chance of avian influenza in the raw ingredient itself. The FDA's guidance for manufacturers is to source from healthy flocks and add processing steps that inactivate viruses — guidance that, by design, conflicts with the unprocessed selling point of raw feeding.
If you feed raw, here's what reduces the risk
Plenty of dog owners feed raw for reasons that matter to them — palatability, allergy management, ingredient transparency. Nothing here is a directive to switch. But a recall this fresh is a useful prompt to revisit handling habits:
- Cook it, or use a pasteurized product. Lightly cooking raw meat eliminates Salmonella, Listeria, and most other bacterial concerns. High-pressure processed (HPP) raw products have been pasteurized without heat and are a step safer than truly raw.
- Treat the prep zone like a chicken cutting board. Separate utensils, dedicated surfaces, hot soapy wash, sanitizer rinse. Don't thaw raw food on the same counter where you make sandwiches.
- Wash hands and bowls daily. A raw food bowl that sits on the floor for a week is a Salmonella reservoir. Daily dishwasher run, or hand-wash hot.
- Skip face-licks during raw weeks. A dog actively eating raw food may shed Salmonella in saliva, even if the dog seems fine. Keep mouths away from kids' faces for a few days after a new bag.
- Track recalls. The FDA's pet food recall page updates throughout the year. Bookmark it.
Why the math matters more than this one recall
Lot #C001730 will get pulled. Albright's will issue refunds. By next month the news cycle will have moved on. What won't move is the underlying pattern: raw pet food's share of recall pounds keeps drifting upward, even as the category's market share stays modest. That's the part worth paying attention to. The Albright's recall isn't the story — it's the dot at the end of a much longer line.
At Sidewalk Dog, we track these recalls so you don't have to refresh the FDA site every morning. If you want recall alerts and other dog-safety news delivered the day they break, subscribe to our newsletter — and check our recent coverage of seasonal dog hazards and the rising cost of veterinary care for more on what's worth your attention this spring.
