What was recalled
The Stella & Chewy’s 2015 recall was a series of expanding voluntary actions over June and July 2015, beginning with the company’s Chewy’s Chicken Dinner for Dogs and Chewy’s Beef Dinner for Dogs frozen raw patty products. Subsequent expansion added Duck Duck Goose Dinner for Dogs and several additional poultry-based recipes. The recall ultimately covered multiple lot codes spanning April and May 2015 production runs, distributed nationally through pet specialty retailers and the company’s direct-ship channels. Specific UPCs, lot codes, and Best By dates are listed at the FDA recall archive.
The trigger was routine FDA sample-testing of raw pet food products at retail distribution — part of an FDA enforcement push that ran from 2014 through 2017, focused specifically on Listeria monocytogenes in commercial raw pet food. Stella & Chewy’s recalled product as each new sample tested positive rather than recalling broadly upfront, which is why the action expanded multiple times over the two-month window.
Why it was recalled
Listeria monocytogenes is a gram-positive bacterium that can grow at refrigerator temperatures (a notable difference from Salmonella, which is suppressed by cold storage). In raw pet food production, Listeria contamination typically arises from environmental persistence on production equipment surfaces — biofilm formation in cooling lines, packaging-zone surfaces, or transfer points. The Stella & Chewy’s investigation traced contamination to environmental persistence at the company’s Wisconsin production facility. The company subsequently invested in expanded environmental swab monitoring, increased frequency of sanitation cycles, and adoption of high-pressure processing (HPP) — a non-thermal pathogen-reduction step that became standard across the premium-raw segment in the years following this event. The FDA’s 2018 review of raw pet food safety cited the Stella & Chewy’s HPP adoption as part of the industry-level remediation that followed.
Health risks for your pet
Listeria infection in dogs and cats is uncommon — healthy adult animals are generally resistant. The primary public-health concern with Listeria in raw pet food is human transmission: people handling contaminated raw pet food can develop listeriosis, a serious infection that causes fever, muscle aches, nausea, and diarrhea; pregnant women, newborns, elderly, and immunocompromised individuals are at risk of severe outcomes including bloodstream infection, meningitis, and miscarriage. The CDC notes pregnant women are 10 times more likely than the general population to contract listeriosis. The 2015 Stella & Chewy’s recall reported zero confirmed pet or human illnesses — the recall was driven entirely by FDA sample detection rather than by reported illness clusters. This is a meaningfully different severity profile from the 2007 Menu Foods event or the 2017–2018 pentobarbital events.
What to do if you bought affected product
All affected lots have Best By dates that expired in 2015–2016; no household freezer should still contain recalled product. Stella & Chewy’s processed full refunds at the time of recall. The company’s subsequent investment in HPP and environmental monitoring is the structural response to the contamination pattern that triggered the recall. Current Stella & Chewy’s product runs through the HPP pathogen-reduction step and the brand has had no major Listeria events since 2015. For all raw pet food — including current Stella & Chewy’s product — the CDC recommends standard handling practices: wash hands after handling, keep raw pet food separated from human food in refrigerator and freezer, and disinfect feeding bowls and surfaces. These recommendations apply to all raw pet food regardless of brand or recall history.
How this affects KibbleIQ’s grade
Stella & Chewy’s is in the KibbleIQ scored database with detailed analysis at our current Stella & Chewy’s review. Our rubric (v15) scores Stella & Chewy’s using the fresh-food / freeze-dried sub-rubric, and the brand earns A-tier grades on ingredient quality — high named-meat content, no fillers, minimal processing. The 2015 Listeria event is not a scoring input under v15. Recall-history scoring under methodology v2 will weigh this event as a pre-HPP-adoption manufacturing-environment incident with documented industry-leading corrective action. The brand’s HPP investment in 2015–2016 set a quality-systems standard that the broader premium-raw segment subsequently followed. Raw pet food carries inherent surface-contamination risk that no production system fully eliminates; HPP meaningfully reduces but does not zero out Listeria and Salmonella risk, which is why standard handling practices remain important regardless of brand. For now, our recommendation: read both our current Stella & Chewy’s review AND this recall page when evaluating the brand.