FDA Requires Pet Food Manufacturers to Add Bird Flu to Plans

The FDA is requiring that pet food manufacturers must add bird flu to their food safety plans after the virus was found in some raw products. This applies to all manufacturers of cat and dog foods that are covered by the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act Preventive Controls for Animal Food and that use uncooked meat, unpasteurized milk, or unpasteurized eggs in their products.

The FDA is issuing this update to make sure that these manufacturers are aware of information about the new H5N1 hazard that is associated with these types of products.

The FDA is tracking cases of H5N1 in domestic and wild cats in the states of California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington that are associated with eating contaminated food products. At this time, the H5N1 virus can be transmitted to cats and dogs when they eat products from infected poultry or cattle that have not gone through a processing kill step that can inactive the virus, such as pasteurization, cooking, or canning.

Cats can experience severe illness and death from infection from this virus. Dogs can contract the virus, although they usually have only mild clinical symptoms and low mortality compared to cats. The bird flu virus has not yet been detected in dogs in the U.S., but there have been dog fatalities in other countries.

The FDA states, “In this food safety plan, animal food businesses must identify and evaluate known or reasonably foreseeable hazards for each type of animal food manufactured, processed, packed, or held at their facility to determine whether there are any hazards requiring a preventive control. Businesses must identify these hazards based on experience, illness data, scientific reports, and other information. In the hazard evaluation, animal food businesses must assess the severity of the illness or injury to humans or animals if the hazard were to occur and the probability that the hazard will occur in the absence of preventive controls.”

The FDA is encouraging these manufacturers to follow several steps. They should buy ingredients from flocks or herds that are healthy, and take processing steps, like heat treatment, that can inactivate viruses. These manufacturers could also implement a supply chain control to provide assurance that ingredients do not come from H5N1 infected animals.