If you have Viva Raw duck in your freezer, skip to the lot number below, then come back.
The recall itself is straightforward. In late January 2024, Viva Raw voluntarily pulled one production lot of its duck recipes after FDA testing found Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes. What is worth sitting with is how the FDA came to test it at all. Not a routine inspection. Not a plant audit. One customer complained.
That is the detection system for a fresh, direct-to-consumer raw pet food. It is worth knowing what it can and cannot catch.
What was recalled
The affected products, all from Lot 22853:
- Viva Duck for Dogs (Ground)
- Viva Duck for Dogs (Chunked)
- Viva Duck for Cats
- Viva Pure Duck
The food shipped as frozen one-pound bricks in clear vacuum packaging. Viva began shipping this lot on October 24, 2023, and the last units went out on December 6. The company said it reached more than 1,500 customers.
If you have any of it, do not feed it, and do not thaw it to inspect it. Contact the company: info@vivarawpets.com, or call or text 919-371-8882, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday.
The company’s own statement, published while the situation was still developing, was unusually candid about how little they knew: they acknowledged there was a great deal they were still working to understand themselves, and that things had moved very fast. They said they had heard from a single customer about a problem with the food and had received no further complaints since. That is worth taking at face value, and it is also the whole issue.
The complaint is the smoke detector
Here is the sequence. A customer noticed something and reported it. The FDA obtained samples of the chunked duck from Lot 22853 and tested them. The samples came back positive for both Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes. The recall followed.
Reverse it and you get the uncomfortable version. Without that one person, there is no sample. Without a sample, there is no test. Without a test, the lot finishes moving through 1,500 freezers and nobody ever knows.
Raw pet food is not tested batch-by-batch by a federal agency before it ships. FDA surveillance is reactive by design: the agency responds to complaints, illness clusters, and targeted sampling. For a small direct-to-consumer brand, the loop that catches contamination usually starts with a customer who says something out loud.
This is not an argument that raw food is uniquely villainous, and it is not an argument that Viva behaved badly here; a voluntary recall on a single complaint is the company doing the right thing quickly. It is an argument that if you feed raw, you are part of the safety system, and your willingness to report a problem is load-bearing.
“When people ask me whether raw food is safe, the honest answer is that safety is not a property of the food, it is a property of the whole chain,” says Dr. Lena Park, DVM. “The freezer, the counter, the bowl, and the person who calls the company when something smells wrong are all part of it. Nobody upstream is testing the brick you are about to open.”
The symptoms that matter, in pets and in you
Both organisms can sicken the animal eating the food, and both can sicken the humans handling it. In practice, the human risk is the one people underrate.
In pets, watch for the early signs of intestinal illness: loss of appetite, diarrhea, vomiting, fever, lethargy, and abdominal pain. More severely affected animals can show signs of shock, including pale gums, low blood pressure, and collapse, driven by toxins the bacteria produce. Any of that after a recalled food means a call to your vet, and tell them what your pet has been eating.
Two additional wrinkles worth knowing. A pet can shed Salmonella in their stool while looking perfectly healthy, which means a well-looking dog is not proof the food was fine. And Listeria is the more dangerous of the two for people: healthy adults may get away with a bad few days, but pregnant people are highly susceptible, and listeriosis in pregnancy can cause miscarriage. In a household with a pregnant person, an immunocompromised person, a very young child, or an older adult, raw pet food is not a neutral choice, and this recall is a good moment to say so plainly.
In people, Salmonella shows up as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping, and fever.
Handling raw food like it might be contaminated
Because sometimes it is, and you will not be able to tell.
- Wash your hands with soap and water immediately after touching raw pet food, the packaging, the bowl, or your pet’s face after a meal.
- Thaw in the refrigerator or in a sealed container, never on the counter.
- Treat every surface that touched the food, including the sink, as contaminated. Clean it, then disinfect it.
- Wash the bowl after every meal. A rinse is not enough.
- Pick up stool promptly, and be especially careful about a pet who has been eating recalled food licking a child’s face or hands.
- Keep raw pet food away from the food you are preparing for yourself, and use separate cutting boards and utensils.
None of that is fussy. It is exactly what you would do with raw chicken from the grocery store, and it is exactly what does not happen when a frozen brick of duck comes out of the freezer at 6:45 in the morning.
If something seems off, say something
The lesson of this recall is not to be afraid of your freezer. It is that the person who noticed something and told the company was doing a job that nobody else in the chain was positioned to do. If your pet’s food smells wrong, looks wrong, or makes an animal sick, report it: to the manufacturer, and to the FDA’s Safety Reporting Portal, which takes reports on pet food directly from the public.
One complaint pulled a contaminated lot out of 1,500 homes. That is a good return on a phone call.
References
- “Viva Raw Issues Voluntary Recall of One Lot of Duck Recipes Due to Potential Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes Contamination.” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, recall notice, January 2024. fda.gov
- “Get Healthy Pets: Pet Food Safety.” U.S. Food and Drug Administration. fda.gov
- “Listeria (Listeriosis): People at Risk — Pregnant Women and Newborns.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. cdc.gov
- “Salmonella: Symptoms.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. cdc.gov
