The FDA asked for a recall in January. It came in May. What happened in between is in the record.
January 23, 2026: the FDA publishes an advisory telling pet owners not to feed eight lots of Raaw Energy dog food, and states that it recommended the company recall them.
May 22, 2026: the company announces a recall.
One hundred and nineteen days.
Not with a routine inspection, and not with the company's own testing. It started with a person.
Someone filed a consumer complaint with the Connecticut Department of Agriculture about a sick dog. That complaint prompted follow-up. The Connecticut and New Jersey departments of agriculture collected eight unopened samples of Raaw Energy frozen dog food and tested them.
All eight came back positive for pathogenic bacteria. Every one of the eight carried Listeria monocytogenes. Several also carried Salmonella and Campylobacter jejuni.
The FDA recommended the company recall the eight lots. According to the agency's own advisory, the firm did not take what it considered adequate action.
So the FDA did the only other thing available to it: it published the company's name and told the public not to feed the food.
The original January advisory also described E. coli O157 contamination.
On February 6, further New Jersey laboratory analysis determined that the E. coli found in one sample — Beef Chicken Tripe Medley, date code 12.23.25 — was not a pathogenic strain. The FDA modified its advisory to remove the discussion of pathogenic E. coli, and said so in an update posted on the page.
The recommendation not to feed the products did not change. But the record was corrected in the open, on the same document, and the change was labeled.
New Jersey tested four more samples from the same production period. All four came back positive for Listeria monocytogenes.
Raaw Energy stopped all production on May 21. It announced the expanded recall on May 22.
The recall covers products manufactured between July 17, 2025 and December 23, 2025, plus a Beef and Turkey Medley batch dated March 31, 2026. It grew to more than 180 lots. Affected product had gone to customers in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The company said the action was taken out of an abundance of caution, noted that not all product from the period was tested, and asked customers to treat everything from that window as potentially contaminated.
On the production pause, the company's own announcement says the time is needed to evaluate current issues and take corrective action, including resurfacing key areas to make them smoother, more sanitary and easier to clean.
From the FDA's account: since the January advisory, the agency received additional consumer complaints involving animals that became ill after eating the food.
That is the content of the one hundred and nineteen days. Not an abstraction about regulatory delay — reports of sick animals, arriving after the public had been told the food was contaminated and before the product was pulled.
A recall of this kind is voluntary. The FDA identified the contamination, recommended the action, and then had to wait.
What the agency can do without the company's cooperation is publish — name the firm, list the date codes, and tell people not to feed it. That is what the January advisory was. It is a real tool and it is the reason anyone knew in January at all.
It is also, on this timeline, a tool that worked slowly.
Raaw Energy is ordered through the company's website and picked up in person. Product is sold frozen in 2-pound and 5-pound clear plastic tubes sealed at both ends with a metal clip, packed in brown cardboard boxes holding ten tubes.
The manufacturer does not use conventional lot numbering. Affected batches are identified by a date of manufacture printed on white stickers on both the tubes and the box. The stickers also carry the flavor and the ingredients.
Consumers were advised to discard affected product rather than use or sell it, and to dispose of it securely so it cannot be reached by people or animals.
The FDA also advised disinfecting anything the food or an exposed animal may have touched — bowls, bedding, litter boxes, food preparation surfaces, storage containers, refrigerators, freezers, toys and floors.
Every date, figure and finding in this piece is taken from the FDA advisory published January 23, 2026 and updated February 6, 2026, and from the FDA-published company announcement of May 22, 2026. Reporting by Food Safety News, Pet Food Processing and dvm360 was used to locate the record. Where the agency described the company's response, that characterization is the agency's.