Is raw dog food worth it?

The benefit side of the ledger is mostly empty

Start where the marketing is loudest. Raw is sold on outcomes: a glossier coat, firmer stool, fewer allergies, a stronger immune system, cleaner teeth. The honest problem is that almost none of that has been tested in a way that would survive scrutiny. A critical review in the Canadian Veterinary Journal put it plainly: there are no published level 1, 2, or 3 studies of the nutritional risk or benefit of raw feeding for dogs or cats. In plain English, no randomized trials and no strong cohort studies, in either direction. The strongest claim the wider literature will support is that some raw diets may be more digestible, and even that is tentative and may owe more to the ingredients than to the food being raw.

That does not mean raw is worthless. It means the reasons people switch are, so far, testimonial rather than demonstrated. Limited evidence is not the same as evidence of nothing, but it is a thin foundation for a diet that carries a cost the next section describes.

The risk side is not hypothetical

When the US Food and Drug Administration tested pet food for bacteria, the split between raw and conventional was stark. In its published survey (Nemser and colleagues, Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, 2014), 8% of raw pet-food samples carried Salmonella and 16% carried Listeria monocytogenes. Of 480 dry and semi-moist samples, exactly one was positive for Salmonella and none for L. monocytogenes. Every pathogen positive in the study came from a raw product. That is not a marketing talking point; it is the regulator’s own data.

It is why the major bodies land where they do. The American Veterinary Medical Association discourages feeding raw or undercooked animal-source protein because of the risk to both animal and human health, and the FDA recommends against it. These are not anti-raw activists; they are the same institutions that set the nutrient standards the whole industry runs on.

It does not stay in the bowl

The part that turns a pet-diet choice into a household one is transmission. A dog eating contaminated raw food can shed bacteria while looking perfectly healthy, and people in the home are the ones who get sick. In 2025, a Quebec investigation (Bernaquez and colleagues, Communications Medicine) traced a cluster of 20 human cases of extensively drug-resistant Salmonella to dogs fed raw meat-based diets. Half the cases were children under two, six were under one year old, and most of those hospitalized stayed in the hospital. The bacteria from the dogs and the people were near-identical at the genetic level. No one died, and it is one regional outbreak rather than proof of a nationwide pattern, but it is exactly the mechanism the warnings describe, happening to real families.

Freeze-dried and “high-pressure” are not the loophole

The common workaround is to reach for freeze-dried raw or a brand that advertises high-pressure processing, on the assumption that those steps clean the food up. They do not, reliably. Freeze-drying is, mechanically, a way to preserve microorganisms, not kill them; it is literally how laboratories store live bacteria. A 2025 Cornell analysis of commercial pet foods grew dangerous bacteria from raw products, including shelf-stable ones, and none from cooked products. High-pressure processing does reduce Salmonella, but the published work shows it does not reliably eliminate Listeria monocytogenesacross formulations. “High-pressure pasteurized” is not a synonym for “pathogen-free,” and freeze-dried raw should be handled as the raw food it is.

What this means for how we score, and for you

PetScored is format-neutral on purpose. We do not credit a recipe for being raw, and we do not dock it for being raw either; a freeze-dried raw food is scored on the same five sub-scores as a kibble, on what its label and the public record prove. The contamination question lives outside the label, in your kitchen, which is why it shapes this editorial rather than the score.

So the practical read is this. If you are drawn to raw for the promised health benefits, know that you are buying a claim the evidence has not backed. If you choose it anyway, the job that actually protects your household is handling: treat it like the raw meat it is, clean surfaces and hands, and be especially careful if anyone in the home is very young, elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised. And because a diet change can matter for a specific dog’s specific needs, run it past a vet who knows your dog rather than the front of the bag.

- The PetScored desk. For how we weigh the label instead of the format, see the dog food methodology, and the companion piece on whether fresh food beats kibble.