Can You Keep Opened Wet Pet Food After an Outage?

Once a can or pouch of wet pet food is open, it is no longer the same storage decision as an unopened shelf-stable package. If an outage interrupted refrigeration and you cannot establish that the opened food stayed cold, discard it rather than using it to make up the next bowl.

The FDA’s pet food handling advice says to refrigerate or discard unused canned or pouched food promptly and keep the refrigerator at or below 40°F. Check the exact package, too: the manufacturer may give instructions about how long an opened item can be kept even under normal refrigeration.

Use the time and temperature you actually know

Note the outage start and end if you know them, whether the door was repeatedly opened and any thermometer readings you took before the appliance cooled down again. A thermometer reading after the power returns cannot tell you the maximum temperature earlier. If the food was left on the counter before the outage, add that fact instead of treating the refrigerator as the start of the storage history.

The FDA’s general household outage guidance uses a closed-door refrigerator’s roughly four-hour window for perishable human food. Use it as context for how quickly an unpowered refrigerator loses cooling, not as a new shelf-life claim for the can in your hand. A longer or unknown interruption, with no reliable temperature information, is a good reason to use a fresh portion. A normal smell is not a substitute for a known storage history.

Make the next meal from something you can identify

If you have a sealed, shelf-stable replacement with intact packaging and appropriate storage, open a fresh one. Measure the usual amount for that pet instead of adding the abandoned portion to the day’s ration. Follow the food’s preparation and leftover directions from the new opening.

When a pet has a prescribed food, tightly timed meals or medication linked to eating, call the clinic or follow its existing written backup plan rather than improvising a substitution. Our emergency food kit guide covers supplies to keep on hand. For this outage, the most useful item to add afterward may be a refrigerator thermometer you can read without guessing.

Written by PARTNER Editorial Team for general education. Contact your veterinary team for advice about your pet’s individual health and feeding needs.