You may want to reconsider your dog’s raw food diet: According to a study recently published online in the International Journal of Food Microbiology, raw dog food commercially available in Europe contains drug-resistant Enterococcus bacteria. Scientists from the University of Porto and the Instituto Universitário de Ciências da Saúde (IUCS) in Portugal 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 single raw sample.
Dr. Ana R. Freitas, the lead author of the study, published a research letter in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Disease journal in which the results of the raw samples are discussed in detail. To put it nicely, 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 a last resort antibiotic, and half of the strains of bacteria from these raw dog food samples are resistant to it.
Dr. Freitas and her team also found that some of the dog food bacteria are closely related to Enterococcus strains found in pigs, chickens, sewage and even in human hospital patients across Europe – so we know they can infect multiple species. Dr. Freitas closes the letter by saying, “Our data suggest that raw dog food may be a guardian of new antimicrobial resistance traits …
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Should You Put Your Dog On A Raw Food Diet?
How badly you should freak out now depends on where you live and what you are feeding your dog. This study only tested brands of dog food available in Portugal (and Europe), but unfortunately the authors did not reveal any names. You just said they tested two brands of raw dog food, one in Europe and one in the UK. If your brand is from one of these places, then consider throwing it away and switching your dog to dry or regular wet food.
But even if your preferred brand is produced elsewhere, this study should give you a break from the whole “raw dog food” thing. The results are pretty terrifying, but given what we already know about raw pet diets, they aren’t surprising either. The CDC does not recommend them mainly because raw meat contains bacteria that can make both pets and humans sick. A 2019 literature review in the Journal of Small Animal Practice weighed the proposed benefits of raw food against the risks and concluded that “the advice of various professional associations against raw feeding seems justified”, especially for those particularly susceptible to bacterial infections. The “increased frequency and number of antimicrobial drug-resistant bacteria in raw food” is even cited as evidence for this conclusion.
The bottom line is that raw foods for pets and humans are far more risky than anything that has been heat treated. Listeria and salmonella are one thing, but drug-resistant Enterococcus are serious, life-threatening things. With antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance already on the rise, you can’t be too careful here.
