SF Cat’s Death Highlights the Dangers of Raw Food Pet Diets, Expert Says

Federal health officials are warning pet owners that some raw cat food contaminated with a variant of the bird flu has been linked to the death of one pet cat in San Francisco.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that certain batches of the RAWR brand Raw Cat Food Chicken Eats are responsible for one cat being euthanized in July after allegedly contracting avian flu, also known as bird flu.

The Raw Cat Food Chicken Eats is the company’s “most popular meal option, and a great introduction for novice raw feeders,” according to its website, which said the chickens are sourced in California. The food is sold frozen across the country and pet owners are instructed to allow the one-ounce “sliders” to thaw before feeding their cats.

The FDA said confirmed affected lots are CCS 25 077 with a sell-by date of Sept. 18, 2026, and CCS 25 093 with a sell-by date of Oct. 3, 2026.

Sabrina Simmons founded RAWR in 2010 in Oakland before moving production out to Grass Valley, California. She said in an undated statement on the company’s website that the food in question was removed from circulation “weeks ago,” and chided the FDA for not sharing information with them earlier throughout the process.

RAWR’s website said the company sends its chicken, turkey and duck out for testing for the avian flu, but its testing results page was down Thursday.

The FDA said the raw chicken treats are responsible for the San Francisco cat’s death because laboratory testing of a food sample collected from the pet owner by employees of the San Francisco Department of Public Health showed the strain of the H5N1 virus found in its body is no longer circulating in the wild. It has also been found in other brands of raw poultry-based pet foods linked to other dead cats, according to the FDA.

San Francisco public health officials said it was first notified of the bird flu in the cat on July 17, after it showed “respiratory and neurologic symptoms.” A local vet tested the cat for influenza A, which came back positive. The California Department of Public Health confirmed the infection on July 31.

SFDPH said there are no additional suspected or confirmed cases in San Francisco, no evidence of person-to-person transmission and the health risk to the general public remains low.

Jane Sykes, an epidemiology professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said bird flu is particularly dangerous to cats because it’s neurotropic, meaning it affects the nervous system, causing symptoms beyond breathing difficulty. And it’s quickly deadly in two-thirds of infections in cats.

“They start showing signs of a fever, having trouble breathing and twitching or seizuring and then they’re dead within days of that happening, and there’s no treatment,” Sykes said. “That can also make cats look like they have rabies.”

The American Veterinary Medical Association said recent investigations have found that cats are most likely to be infected with the avian flu through unpasteurized milk and raw or undercooked meat, like poultry.

The FDA said that while no human cases of avian influenza have been found in humans through pet food, it does recommend that people wash their hands adequately after handling pet food.

While the FDA has issued a product safety alert, no recall has been announced as of Thursday. RAWR recommends that people who are concerned about “potential” virus in their food to cook it to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit or return it for a full refund or exchange.

Sykes — a self-described “cat and dog person” — said while raw pet food diets are trendy, they can unnecessarily put a cat’s health at risk.

“The risk of infectious diseases in general can be reduced by feeding cats and dogs properly cooked meat, pasteurized dairy products or a commercial diet that’s been processed using high temperatures, which is most canned and dry pet food diets in large grocery or pet stores,” she said.

What’s more, Sykes said, is that cats are good “mixing pots” for viruses, so feeding them raw meat actually increases the risk of the bird flu virus mutating in a cat and then making it infectious to people.

“We’ve got this particular strain of influenza virus that seems to be very, if you like, promiscuous; it’s very good at mixing with other viruses,” Sykes said. “It’s a real worry that with feeding of raw food diets, that we’re going to increase the opportunity for one of these mixing events to occur that could generate a new virus that could be like one of these pandemic flu strains that basically does to humans what this virus does to cats.”

That’s particularly concerning, Sykes said, because bird flu is currently deadly in 67% of cats who show symptoms.

“Can you imagine if there was an influenza virus that had a more-than 67% mortality rate that got into people?” she said. “That would just be terrible if we were faced with a pandemic like that.”