It was a rough week for the raw pet food aisle. On August 12, 2026, the FDA posted a company announcement from Oma's Pride of Avon, Connecticut, recalling one lot of frozen raw dog food that is contaminated with Salmonella. Five days earlier, on August 7, the Department of Justice walked into federal court in Seattle on the FDA's behalf and asked a judge to permanently shut down production at one of the best-known raw pet food companies in the country until it cleans up its plant.
Neither story is about your dog specifically. Together, though, they are the clearest signal in years that raw and frozen feeding — one of the fastest-growing corners of the pet food business — is getting real regulatory attention. If there is raw food in your freezer, here is exactly what to check and what to do.
The recall: one lot, 639 bags, 11 states
The recalled product is Oma's Pride Woof Complete Canine Chicken Recipe, 6 lb bag, made by Miller Foods, Inc. The details that matter:
- Lot code: BB012729
- Item number: F-WOOFC-6
- UPC: 8 79384 00145 9
- Manufactured: January 27, 2026 · Best by: January 27, 2029
- Quantity: 639 bags — a 6-pound stand-up pouch holding twelve individually wrapped, vacuum-sealed 8-ounce portions
- Distributed in: Arizona, California, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia — to retail and wholesale accounts and shipped frozen directly to consumers who ordered online
The company says no other Oma's Pride products, sizes or lots are affected.
Two things about this one deserve a closer look. First, the FDA's headline reads "Possible Salmonella Health Risk," but the company's own announcement underneath says the product is contaminated with Salmonella. Somebody cultured the food and grew the bacteria. That is not a maybe.
Second, look at that best-by date: January 2029. A bag bought in the spring could still be sitting in a chest freezer three years from now, which is exactly why long-shelf-life recalls linger. The CDC has warned about this pattern before — its 2023 investigation into Salmonella Kiambu in Victor brand dry dog food noted that recalled pet food "long shelf lives" keep making people sick long after a recall closes. Seven people across seven states got sick in that outbreak, one was hospitalized.
And freezing does not fix it. Freezing is a pause button, not a kill step. As the CDC puts it plainly: freeze-drying, dehydrating and freezing "reduce the amount of germs" but "do not kill all germs."
What to do right now if you have this food
- Go read the bag, not your memory. Check the lot code on the packaging against BB012729. If you already dumped the bag and kept the portions loose, treat them as suspect.
- Don't feed it, and don't just toss it in the kitchen trash. Double-bag it, tie it off, and put it in a covered outdoor receptacle so other pets and wildlife can't get to it — the AVMA's standing advice on any spoiled or recalled pet food.
- Contact the retailer or the company about a refund, and keep a photo of the label with the lot number before you throw it out. That photo is what an investigator will ask for.
- Sanitize everything the food touched. Bowls, scoops, feeding mats, the shelf it thawed on, the sink, the counter. Hot soapy water, then a disinfectant on hard surfaces.
- Watch your dog for 48–72 hours. Then watch yourself and your family.
- Report it. If your dog or anyone in your home got sick, file a report with the FDA's Safety Reporting Portal. Those complaints are literally how the next recall gets triggered.
Symptoms in dogs
Per the FDA announcement: lethargy, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever, vomiting. Some dogs show only decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. Critically, an infected but otherwise healthy-looking dog can be a carrier and shed Salmonella to other animals or to people. If your dog ate the recalled lot and shows any of this, call your vet and say the words "recalled raw food" — it changes what they test for.
Symptoms in people
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever. The FDA also notes Salmonella can lead to arterial infections, endocarditis, arthritis, muscle pain, eye irritation and urinary tract symptoms. The people at highest risk are children under 5, adults over 65, pregnant people, and anyone immunocompromised.
Here is the part that gets under-reported: in raw pet food cases, the humans who get hurt are frequently the ones who never ate a bite. The owner thaws a portion, scoops the bowl, rinses it in the kitchen sink, wipes the counter with a sponge, and then makes a sandwich. Salmonella does not read the label.
The bigger story: DOJ v. Darwin's
On August 7, 2026, DOJ filed a complaint for permanent injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Arrow Reliance Inc., doing business as Darwin's Natural Pet Products, and its president and founder, Gary T. Tashjian (Case No. 2:26-cv-02805).
The government is asking the court to order the company to stop manufacturing, holding and distributing animal food until its facility, methods and controls are brought into conformity with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act "in a manner acceptable to FDA," and to permanently bar the defendants from introducing adulterated animal food into interstate commerce, operating a facility that doesn't comply with preventive-controls requirements, or operating without registering as a food facility. It also asks the court to authorize FDA inspection of the company's records.
A complaint is an allegation, not a finding — nothing has been proven in court, and the company has not had its day yet. But an injunction request against a named owner is the heavy end of FDA's civil enforcement toolkit, not a warning letter. It signals the agency's patience ran out.
What the evidence actually says about raw diets
Raw feeding is a genuinely contested subject, and we are not here to tell you what to put in your dog's bowl. What we can do is separate the settled part from the argued part.
Settled: raw pet food carries more pathogens than cooked. The FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine screened more than a thousand pet food samples over two years and found raw pet food far more likely than any other category to carry Salmonella or Listeria monocytogenes — 38 of 196 raw samples were positive for one or both. In Great Britain, passive surveillance published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science (February 2026) tracked Salmonella isolations from raw meat pet food climbing from 4 isolates of 4 serovars in 2013 to 606 isolates of 39 serovars in 2022, tracking a roughly five-fold increase in raw plants operating. The serovars overlapped with those found in dogs, including S. Typhimurium and S. Infantis — serovars of real public health significance.
Also settled: the major public health bodies have taken a position. The CDC does not recommend feeding raw pet food to dogs or cats. The FDA's guidance is equally blunt: the single best way to avoid these infections is not to feed a raw diet. Cornell's Riney Canine Health Center reviews the evidence and lands in the same place.
Argued: nearly everything else — coat quality, digestion, stool volume, palatability. The published nutritional benefit case for raw is thin, and the people who feed raw and love it usually cite taste preference and ingredient transparency, which are real reasons even if they aren't clinical ones.
Not in dispute: the category is growing fast. The raw, fresh and frozen dog food market is estimated at roughly $19.9 billion in 2026 and projected to reach $25.1 billion by 2030, with North America the largest region. More plants and more volume mean more recalls, mathematically, regardless of what you think of the diet.
A safe-handling framework, whatever you feed
Most of these steps come straight from AVMA and CDC guidance, and they matter for kibble too — the 2023 outbreak above was dry food.
If you feed raw or fresh-frozen
- Thaw in the refrigerator in a sealed, leak-proof container on the bottom shelf — never on a counter, never above produce.
- Use a dedicated scoop. Never use the unwashed bowl as a scoop.
- Wash hands 20 seconds with soap and running water after every handling. Hand sanitizer only when soap isn't an option.
- Wash bowls, scoops and mats after every meal in hot soapy water, not "when they look dirty."
- Feed in a spot you can disinfect — not the living room rug.
- Skip raw entirely if your household includes a child under 5, an adult over 65, someone pregnant, or someone immunocompromised. Same goes if your dog is a young puppy or is immunosuppressed.
- Don't let a raw-fed dog lick faces, and be aware many therapy-dog programs and hospitals exclude raw-fed dogs for exactly this reason.
Questions worth asking any brand
CDC suggests four, and any decent company should answer them without flinching:
- Do you test all final products for Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria?
- What step in your process kills germs?
- How often is the plant cleaned and disinfected?
- Do you employ a veterinary nutritionist?
Build a five-minute recall habit
- Free: bookmark the FDA's animal & veterinary recalls page and the AVMA's recalls/safety alerts search, and check both once a month. Sign up for FDA email alerts.
- Free: photograph the lot number and best-by date of every new bag before you open it. Keep the photos in one album on your phone. This takes ten seconds and it is the single highest-value thing on this list.
- Cheap: keep the original bag inside your storage container, or cut out and save the panel with the product name, manufacture date and lot number.
- Worth it: if you feed a rotating diet, write down what your dog ate and when. When a recall hits with a three-year best-by window, "I think we finished that bag in March" is not an answer.
The bottom line
One lot of one product is a small recall. But it landed in the same week the federal government asked a judge to halt production at a much larger raw manufacturer, and that combination is the actual news: the regulatory floor under fresh and raw pet food is being tested in public. Whatever is in your dog's bowl tonight, the handling habits above cost nothing and cover you for the next recall, too — and there will be a next one.
For more on feeding, health and everything else that comes with living with a dog, browse the rest of Sidewalk Dog — and if you're looking for dog-friendly patios, parks and shops near you, start with our city guides. We chase down the news so you can get back to the walk.
