What was recalled
Between August 2019 and February 2020, the FDA issued two separate public cautions on Aunt Jeni’s Home Made frozen raw pet food. The first August 2019 caution covered two product varieties: Aunt Jeni’s Home Made Turkey (tested positive for Salmonella Infantis) and Aunt Jeni’s Home Made Chicken (tested positive for both Salmonella Infantis and Listeria monocytogenes). The samples were collected during a routine FDA inspection of the manufacturing facility.
The February 2020 caution covered a specific lot of Aunt Jeni’s Home Made frozen raw pet food: Lot 175331, NOV2020, tested positive for Salmonella Infantis. FDA specifically noted that the 2020 isolate was resistant to multiple antibiotic drugs — an emerging concern in raw pet food microbial surveillance because antibiotic-resistant Salmonella infections in humans are more difficult to treat. FDA published both alerts at its Animal & Veterinary Outbreaks & Advisories archive. FDA chose the caution-alert mechanism rather than a formal recall because frozen product was likely already in consumer freezers, and the agency’s priority was reaching consumers directly rather than triggering retail-level returns.
Why it was recalled
Salmonella Infantis is one of the more common Salmonella serotypes in poultry and pet food sampling, and it has shown an increasing pattern of antibiotic resistance over the past decade — particularly resistance to fluoroquinolones and beta-lactams. Aunt Jeni’s Home Made operates as a small-batch raw pet food producer based in Maryland, marketing primarily to specialty raw-feeding consumers. Raw poultry sourcing carries inherent Salmonella exposure (USDA-inspected poultry routinely carries Salmonella at low levels), and Aunt Jeni’s production model did not include high-pressure processing (HPP) or other post-mixing pathogen-inactivation steps. The Listeria monocytogenes detection in the chicken variety reflects the environmental-harborage challenge typical of small-batch raw processing facilities: Listeria grows in cold, wet environments and can persist in drains, cooling surfaces, and prep areas. The recurring 2019-2020 alerts (two events within 6 months) suggest the production model carried ongoing pathogen-exposure risk that single-event corrective actions did not fully resolve.
Health risks for your pet
The animal-level health risk follows standard Salmonella enteritis pattern in dogs and cats: diarrhea, vomiting, lethargy, fever, anorexia, typically self-limited in healthy adult animals but more severe in puppies, seniors, or immunocompromised pets. The antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Infantis strain in the 2020 alert is a heightened concern: humans infected with multidrug-resistant Salmonella have fewer effective antibiotic options if disease is severe enough to require treatment. CDC has documented increasing rates of multidrug-resistant Salmonella in U.S. surveillance over the past decade, with poultry and pet food sources contributing meaningfully to the resistance pool. Listeria infection in humans (from cross-contamination during handling) is rare but serious in pregnant women, infants, older adults, and immunocompromised individuals. No specific animal or human illnesses were definitively tied to the recalled Aunt Jeni’s lots, though FDA noted the surveillance-only detection mechanism likely undercount actual exposures.
What to do if you bought affected product
The 2019 and 2020 affected lots have expired use-by dates; no household freezer should still contain affected product. If you currently feed Aunt Jeni’s Home Made or any other small-batch raw pet food, follow strict handling hygiene: separate prep surfaces, wash hands and surfaces immediately with hot soapy water, refrigerate or freeze upon purchase, dispose of uneaten raw food after meal time. Avoid raw feeding in households with pregnant women, infants, young children, older adults, or immunocompromised members. CDC and FDA both explicitly discourage raw feeding given the elevated zoonotic risk profile. Small-batch raw producers without HPP or other documented pathogen-inactivation steps carry higher exposure surface than HPP-treated raw or freeze-dried alternatives.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
Aunt Jeni’s Home Made is not in the KibbleIQ scored database — the brand operates as a small-batch specialty raw producer outside our standard coverage of commercial dry kibble and fresh cooked formats. The 2019-2020 FDA caution alerts reflect category-level raw-pet-food pathogen exposure risk rather than a brand-specific quality-systems failure, though the recurring nature of the alerts (two events in 6 months including a multidrug-resistant Salmonella isolate) is a flag for owners considering this brand. Pet owners committed to raw feeding should look for brands with documented HPP or other pathogen-inactivation steps, explicit incoming-ingredient and finished-product testing protocols, and antibiotic-stewardship sourcing claims. Per our published methodology, the KibbleIQ rubric does not yet specifically score raw frozen products; future methodology v2 work will address raw-format pathogen-exposure scoring.