The FDA issued a warning this week after health officials discovered that a cat who became ill and had to be euthanized was likely infected by the same strain of bird flu that was discovered in raw cat food eaten by the household pet. It’s the first documented case of a cat being put down over links to consuming cat food infected with bird flu since the spring, when it was happening more frequently in the U.S.
The FDA identified and tested retail samples of RAWR Raw Cat Food Chicken Eats in San Francisco, California, with a sell-by date of 09/18/26. Both tested positive for Influenza A Virus, and H5N1 bird flu was found in one of the samples, according to a press release from the FDA.
The USDA National Veterinary Services Laboratories tested the deceased cat, confirming it had bird flu, and used subsequent whole genome sequencing (WGS) to determine that the raw pet food “originated from a common source of contamination.”
From the FDA news release:
WGS results also indicated that H5N1 from all three samples were within the same WGS cluster, indicating relatedness. The cluster involves a virus lineage that was detected from about November to December 2024 and is no longer circulating, supporting that the cat became ill from eating Lot CCS 25 093 of the Chicken Eats product.
NVSL testing of the cat, Lot CCS 25 093, and Lot CCS 25 077 identified the H5N1 as genotype B3.13. The B3.13 genotype virus has previously been found in other brands of raw poultry-based pet foods that were associated with the illness or death of cats.
There have been 70 human cases of bird flu in the U.S. since 2024, according to the CDC’s website, which hasn’t been updated in over a month. The CDC also isn’t publicly tracking animal cases anymore, according to Johns Hopkins.
No human has been known to be infected with bird flu from consuming food, and most of the cases have been in farm workers interacting with chickens and cows. But the public has much less visibility into what’s actually happening with bird flu these days, thanks to changes by the Trump administration. The only human death in the U.S. attributed to this current H5N1 outbreak was in Louisiana back in January, shortly before Trump was sworn in.
The bird flu made the leap to dairy cows in the U.S. in 2024, prompting concerns about a mutated version of H5N1 potentially spreading from human to human. But there haven’t been any documented cases of that happening, and much less attention has been focused on H5N1 in recent months, thanks to folks like HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In March of this year, Kennedy gave an interview to Fox Nation where he said that farmers shouldn’t cull flocks of birds when they find H5N1.
“We’ve in fact said to [the U.S. Department of Agriculture] that they should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds and preserve the birds that are immune to it,” Kennedy said at the time.
About a week later, Kennedy reiterated his idea to Sean Hannity of Fox News, insisting, “Most of our scientists are against the culling operation.” It’s not clear to what extent American poultry farmers have taken his advice. Again, the CDC simply isn’t tracking animal cases on farms anymore.
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