22 Jan 2025
Allister Webb
Job TitleA pro-raw diet veterinary group has sought to play down fears following the death of a cat that was said to have contracted avian flu from contaminated food.
The Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (RFVS) has urged pet owners to provide “species appropriate” food, despite calls for tighter restrictions on raw products.
But American food manufacturers have now been ordered to review their safety plans in relation to the virus, amid reports of several other, potentially similar, cases.
Concerns about a potential link between raw food and the spread of avian flu first emerged last month after state vets in Oregon said they were “confident” a cat that died with the H5N1 virus had contracted it from contaminated food.
Although the product linked to the incident was withdrawn from sale, the RFVS argued that further details of the cat’s lifestyle and how the food was stored, together with a lack of further reports linked to other products made in the same unit, cast doubt on that connection.
Its president, Amaya Espindola, said the group recognised pet owners would be concerned but stressed there was no current suspicion of any similar issues in the UK.
She added: “Our current best advice to worried pet owners is to prioritise feeding their pets a species appropriate diet, in order to ensure they have the best possible immune system function, to obtain that diet from an independently audited manufacturer displaying a legally backed certification mark, to observe usual meat hygiene practices when storing, preparing and feeding the diet and to seek veterinary attention should their pet show any signs of ill health.”
Similar messages have also been given by other veterinary and industry groups, as well as Defra, despite critics of raw feeding calling for tighter restrictions to be implemented.
But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed it “necessary” for manufacturers there to revise safety plans to treat the H5N1 virus strain as “a known or reasonably foreseeable hazard”.
Reports in recent days have suggested the agency is aware of up to 13 cases of death or illness in cats that may be linked to uncooked food.
In a statement explaining its order, the FDA said: “Scientific information is evolving, but at this time it is known that H5N1 can be transmitted to cats and dogs when they eat products from infected poultry or cattle that have not undergone a processing step that is capable of inactivating the virus, such as pasteurizing, cooking or canning.
“Cats (domestic and large felids) in particular can experience severe illness or death from infection with H5N1.
“Dogs can also contract H5N1, although they usually exhibit mild clinical signs and low mortality compared to cats. At present, H5N1 has not been detected in dogs in the United States, but there have been fatal cases in other countries.”
