Why You Shouldn’t Feed Your Dog Raw Meat
You might want to rethink your dog’s raw food diet: According to a recent study published online in the International Journal of Food Microbiology , raw dog food commercially available in Europe contains the drug-resistant Enterococcus bacteria. Scientists from the University of Porto and the Instituto Universitário de Ciências da Saúde (IUCS) in Portugal have tested 55 types of dry, wet and raw dog food for enterococcus, which can cause everything from urinary tract infections to endocarditis in humans. They found it in more than half of the samples, including every untreated one.
Dr. Ana R. Freitas, primary author of the study, published a research letter in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Disease detailing the results of untreated samples. Simply put, they are not “good”:
All samples contained enterococci resistant to erythromycin, streptomycin, chloramphenicol and tetracycline; 93% resistant to ampicillin, ciprofloxacin and quinupristin / dalfopristin; 79% resistant to gentamicin; and 50% resistant to linezolid.
Linezolid is the last antibiotic, and half of the bacteria strains in these raw dog food samples are resistant to it.
Dr. Freitas and her team have also found that several dog food bacteria are closely related to Enterococcus strains found in pigs, chickens, sewage and even hospitalized patients across Europe, so we know they are capable of infecting multiple species. Dr. Freitas ends the letter as follows: “Our evidence suggests that raw dog food may be an indicator of new signs of antimicrobial resistance … adding a new challenge to the global health burden of antimicrobial resistance.”
Should you put your dog on a raw food diet?
The degree to which you should be worried right now depends on where you live and what you feed your dog. This study only tested dog food brands available in Portugal (and Europe), but unfortunately the authors did not reveal any names. They simply said they tested two brands of raw dog food, one made in Europe and the other in the UK. If your brand comes from any of these locations, you should throw it away and switch your dog to dry food or regular wet food.
However, even if your favorite brand is manufactured elsewhere, this research should get you thinking about what “raw dog food” is. The findings are, of course, quite daunting, but given what we already know about raw food diets for pets, they are also not surprising. The CDC discourages them mainly because raw meat contains bacteria that can cause disease in both pets and humans. A 2019 literature review published in the Journal of Small Animal Practice weighed the purported benefits of a raw diet with the risks and concluded that “recommendations against raw feeding published by various professional organizations seem to be warranted,” especially for those who are particularly vulnerable. to a bacterial infection. In fact, one piece of evidence to support this finding is “an increase in the frequency and number of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in raw food.”
The bottom line is that raw foods are much more dangerous to pets and people than anything that has been cooked. Listeria and Salmonella are one thing, but drug-resistant Enterococcus is a serious and life-threatening thing. As antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance is already growing, you cannot be too careful here.