23/03/2025
It’s a contentious subject: Raw vs Dry dog food, and whilst I agree that raw may not be suitable for every dog, please please please don’t be put off by the misinformation around its safety. This article is very helpful - written by one of the worlds leading canine nutritionists 🥩 🥕🥦🥚
RAW V DRY, WHICH IS SAFER?!! COME ON, YOU'RE NOT STILL ASKING THAT...
There are studies out there showing some raw dog foods can be higher in bacteria you wish weren't in there. No doubt. And those companies should be dealt with the same way as any other food company. Because it's never OK.
Hazardous microbiological contamination can be avoided with good sourcing, good manufacturing and good storage practices, as the majority of other raw dog food manufacturers are clearly showing us.
Yes, fresh food can harbour nasties - carrots and leafy greens lay out 100's of us a year - it's not a reason to avoid them in favour of.....what's a nutritious food product made by Mars or Nestle for humans?!! Answers on a postcard....it's a reason to clean up the food chain.
And remember, as ever, you have to choose your monster. Vets, if you're going to scare folk away from fresh food, where are you sending them to? Do dry food?! On what basis would that be?!!
To recap where dry food is in the debate:
A recent study of healthy dry-fed dogs found they house MORE species of E.coli and in greater abundance in their faeces and around their a**s than raw-fed dogs.
This stands to reason - studies show raw feeding promotes gut health. It feeds a more healthy gut biome, reducing gut dysbiosis and Clostridium species.
I mean, did you know that, unlike raw dog food, authors have isolated the same species of drug-resistant Campylobacter jejuni from a dog fed a commercial dry diet as detected in a girl infected with the same species.
And as ever, recalls for Salmonella in dry dog food dwarf those in raw. From 2020-2023, dry food accounted for 99% of the pet food recalled (by weight) for Salmonella in the US, despite it only being 59% of the market.
A study in 2022 analysed 162 dry and canned pet foods and found Salmonella in 41% of brands (and 64% contained Listeria!).
Worse again, just a year later, a study in 2023 analysed 35 EU dry pet foods and found that 100% of the dry dog foods were contaminated with pathogenic bacteria. The presence of Coliform bacteria is one measure of a product's quality. You don't want too much of them. Coliform bacteria were present in 52% of the grain-free dry foods analysed and 67% of the grain-containing dry foods! Staphylococcus spp. were found in >9% of both types of dry food. 17% of dry foods tested positive for Clostridium. And E.coli? Well, 43% of grain free pet foods and 33% of the grain-containing foods failed for that too.
One third.
So, I can say with some surety, dry dog food too has some MAJOR microbiological concerns and with not so much as a dickie bird from the likes of the BVA or RCVS, people are going to get harmed by these products.
In fact, in the US alone (as they're the only ones really trying to record it...), from 2006-2016, dry-fed dogs poisoned 140 people, half of them TODDLERS under two years of age.
Never mentioned by vets or mainstream media that one.
In that time exactly ZERO people were harmed by raw dog food.
Just last year the CDC said another 7 cases of humans getting food poisoned across 6 states - all dry dog food again, all toddlers.
And lest we forget, our side has the retrospective safety studies in our pockets, not dry dog food supporters. The most important work in that regard found 3 potential cases of food poisoning across 16,750 households (that is over their lifetime, thus millions of dog meals). In other words, that is a vanishing small risk, smaller than say, the risk of consuming raw carrots in the UK
A similar work containing more than 2000 homes in New York verified these figures almost exactly. That is a vanishingly rare instance of cross-contamination. No such safety analysis has ever been conducted on dry dog food.
And this is just the microbiology.
Can we talk about excess mineral toxicity events? Do you know how rife aflatoxin is in cereal-based pet food?! Did you hear that concentrations above the MAXIMUM TOLERABLE LIMIT for aluminum (32% of dog foods tested, 11% of cat foods), mercury (100% of dog foods, 86% of cat foods), lead (81% of dog food, 32% of cat food), uranium (96% of dog food, 86% of cat food), and vanadium (75% of dog food, 29% of cat food) has been found in many brands?
On and on and on.
And, as ever, why is nobody talking about the fact tens of thousands of pets have died eating the stuff over the last few decades alone? Complete raw has killed less than 10.
Looking forward to hitting South Africa next week to set the record straight.
