Raw dog food: the risks, the benefits, and what the research really says

Few dog topics start more fights than raw feeding. One side calls it dangerous. The other calls it the diet dogs were built for.

The honest answer is more useful than either. The risks are well proven. The benefits are real but weaker. And the two camps agree on more than they admit.

Here is what the evidence actually says.

The two views

What the research says about the risks

This is the strongest, cleanest evidence in the whole debate.

• Pathogens. An FDA study found Salmonella and Listeria in commercial raw pet food far more often than in processed food.3 A European review found Listeria in 54% of raw products.5
• Antibiotic resistance. The UK Groat 2022 study is the standout: raw-fed dogs carried resistant E. coli at 6 to 15 times the odds of non-raw-fed dogs, even after accounting for households.4 This matters for human medicine, not just dogs.

The honest caveat: most of this is contamination and carriage data, not proof that your specific dog will get sick. But the risk is documented and consistent across countries.

What the research says about the benefits

Weaker than advocates claim, stronger than skeptics admit.

• Digestibility and stool: the firm ground. Multiple controlled feeding trials show raw and fresh diets are more digestible than kibble, with 1.5 to 2.9 times less stool.6 Real and repeated, but these are small studies, and digestibility is an input, not a proven health outcome.
• Allergy and gut disease: a consistent signal. Finland’s DogRisk studies link early raw feeding to less atopy7 and less chronic gut disease.8 Peer-reviewed and pointing the same way across thousands of dogs, but observational and owner-reported, so association, not cause.
• Dental. Raw meaty bones mechanically cut tartar in a small study,9 and early unprocessed diets are associated with less calculus. Weak evidence, and only raw bones, never cooked or hardened ones.
• Metabolic. A 2025 intervention found raw improved glucose and insulin-resistance markers versus kibble, though in one breed and on surrogate markers.10

Where the raw camp overreaches: stating those associations as cause, treating a changed microbiome as proven health, and the “ancestral wolf diet” framing. Dogs are not wolves; they are adapted to digest starch. A published critique flags recall bias and other limits in the survey data.11

Where both sides actually agree

This is the part the shouting hides.

• No long-term study with hard health outcomes exists for any diet, raw or kibble.
• Homemade raw is often nutritionally unbalanced and needs a board-certified nutritionist to formulate.
• Raw can carry pathogens. Even the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society concedes this.12
• Cooked or hardened bones are dangerous. Only raw.
• Raw is a poor choice for immunocompromised dogs, and for homes with infants, elderly, or immunocompromised people.

Who should not feed raw

• Households with babies, elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised members.
• Dogs that are immunosuppressed or on chemotherapy.
• Anyone who cannot handle and store raw meat with strict kitchen hygiene.
• Anyone feeding homemade raw without a nutritionist-formulated recipe.

Questions to ask your vet

• Given my dog and my household, do the proven risks of raw outweigh the possible benefits?
• If I want raw’s digestibility, is a gently cooked, nutritionist-formulated fresh diet a lower-risk middle path?
• How would we handle hygiene to protect the people in my home?
• If my dog has allergies or gut issues, what does the evidence support trying first?

The goal is not to win the raw argument. It is to weigh proven risk against possible benefit for your dog, with your vet, eyes open.

Sources

1. WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee — Statement on the Risks of Raw Meat-Based Diets Tier 1 ↩
2. AVMA — Raw or Undercooked Animal-Source Protein in Cat and Dog Diets (policy, revised 2024) Tier 1 ↩
3. FDA — Get the Facts: Raw Pet Food Diets Can Be Dangerous to You and Your Pet Tier 1 ↩
4. Groat et al. 2022 (UK) — Raw feeding and antimicrobial-resistant E. coli carriage in dogs Tier 1 ↩
5. Davies et al. 2019 — Review of raw pet food pathogen prevalence (incl. Netherlands data) Tier 1 ↩
6. Algya et al. 2018, J Anim Sci — Digestibility of raw vs extruded diets (PMID 30535325) Tier 1 ↩
7. Hemida et al. 2021, JVIM (Helsinki DogRisk) — Puppyhood diet and adult atopy (PMID 34258795) Tier 1 ↩
8. Vuori et al. 2023, Sci Rep (DogRisk) — Early diet and chronic enteropathy (PMID 36759678) Tier 1 ↩
9. Marx et al. 2016, Aust Vet J — Raw bones and dental calculus (PMID 26814157) Tier 1 ↩
10. Holm et al. 2025, Vet J — Raw diet and metabolic markers (PMID 41046069) Tier 1 ↩
11. McKenzie & Larsen — Critique of the DogRisk diet-association studies (PMC9511089) Tier 1 ↩
12. Raw Feeding Veterinary Society — Position Statement (concedes pathogen risk; same-standard argument) Tier 2 ↩