Northwest Naturals issued a voluntary recall for a batch of pet food after a cat died of bird flu in Oregon, officials said.
Testing done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories and the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory confirmed an indoor cat in Oregon’s Washington County contracted bird flu and died after eating the pet food.
“We are confident that this cat contracted H5N1 by eating the Northwest Naturals raw and frozen pet food,” Oregon Department of Agriculture State Veterinarian Dr. Ryan Scholz said in a Tuesday release. “This cat was strictly an indoor cat; it was not exposed to the virus in its environment, and results from the genome sequencing confirmed that the virus recovered from the raw pet food and infected cat were exact matches to each other.”
Can pets transmit bird flu to owners?
Oregon officials are monitoring household members who had contact with the cat to see if they develop any flu symptoms, but no human cases of bird flu were identified as of Tuesday and the risk of transmission to humans remains low in the state.