BARF — a sober look

At a freezer cabinet in a Wiesbaden pet store stands the owner of a two-year-old Australian Shepherd. She pulls a portion-pack out of the freezer: Pure turkey, 1,000 g, BARF-ready. Next to it sits a second product — Complete menu with bone meal, vegetables, algae. The owner is trying to protect her allergy-prone dog from “the toxins of industry”. She knows that her dog school advises against it. She knows that her veterinarian called a “come to me when the dog has diarrhoea” after her. What she does not know is which of the two positions has the weight of peer-reviewed research behind it.

The short answer: neither, entirely. The longer answer takes a bit more patience than is usually mustered in forum threads — but it produces a workable recommendation.

The man who coined the term

The international literature associates the term BARF — Bones and Raw Food, in some sources also Biologically Appropriate Raw Food — with a single name: Dr. Ian Billinghurst, BVSc (Hons), BScAgr Dip Ed, an Australian veterinarian, BVSc graduate of the University of Sydney in 1976, in veterinary practice from the same year. In the late 1980s Billinghurst formulated a provocative thesis: the commercial pet-food industry was partly responsible for a wave of chronic illnesses that could be reversed by returning to an evolutionarily adapted diet. His book Give Your Dog a Bone (first edition 1993) became the founding text of the worldwide raw-feeding movement, followed by Grow Your Pups with Bones (1998) and The BARF Diet (2001); international lecture tours spread the idea further.¹

His central argument: dogs and wolves are physiologically close enough that a mix of raw meat, bones and vegetables is closer to the natural diet than an extruded kibble. Empirical evidence at the time of his formulation was scarce; the evolutionary argument carried the movement through its first growth phase.

The scientist who has objected for two decades

The most prominent named opposing voice comes from Massachusetts. Dr. Lisa M. Freeman, DACVIM (Nutrition), professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, published in 2001 in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association one of the first systematic evaluations of commercially available BARF rations. Result: substantial nutrient imbalances, in several products clinically relevant deficiencies.²

In a public Tufts Now statement in 2014, Freeman condensed her position into the sentence picked up by the article’s title: the existing research shows that the risks outweigh any minimal benefits. The recommendation for owners who want to avoid industrially processed food is more cautious than the BARF scene tends to paint it: Freeman advises consulting a veterinary nutritionist board-certified by the American College of Veterinary Nutrition (ACVN) and points out in the same breath that home-prepared rations — raw or cooked — systematically carry nutrient imbalances without expert ration design.³

Between Billinghurst’s evolutionary argument and Freeman’s risk-analytical position lies the substantive body of what has appeared in peer-reviewed literature since. The following studies work along the spectrum without collapsing it onto one side.

What the data actually show

A systematic comparison of study quality, published in 2019 in the Journal of Small Animal Practice under lead author Rachel Davies, reaches an uncomfortable methodological finding: investigations into the risks of raw feeding outnumber and outweigh investigations into its benefits in both volume and methodological rigour.⁴ The often cited “vitality boost” is widely documented anecdotally but under-represented in controlled designs.

What is documented are changes in the microbiome. A PLOS ONE study in 2018 compared stool samples from 27 dogs on BARF diets with 19 dogs on commercial dry food. Gut-flora composition differed markedly; BARF-fed animals showed significantly elevated proportions of Clostridium perfringens and E. coli, and reduced proportions of the beneficial Faecalibacterium — Fusobacterium signals were method-dependent (positive on LEfSe, no significant difference on qPCR).⁵ Whether this shift is health-positive, -negative or -neutral is explicitly left open by the study. It documents the difference, not its evaluation — a point that both BARF critics and BARF advocates frequently overlook.

The pathogen problem is real

Where the data are unambiguous, they concern pathogen contamination. A Canadian study by Joffe and Schlesinger (Canadian Veterinary Journal, 2002) found Salmonella-positive stool cultures in 30 percent of dogs on raw-poultry diets versus 0 percent in the commercial-diet control group; given the small sample the authors explicitly label the work preliminary, but consider the difference clinically relevant — also for the humans in the household.⁶ In 2019 a Swiss group around Nüesch-Inderbinen (Royal Society Open Science) examined 51 commercial raw-meat products: 72.5 percent failed the EU minimum Enterobacteriaceae standard, Salmonella was detected in 3.9 percent, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 62.7 percent — predominantly ESBL producers (CTX-M-1, CTX-M-15) against third-generation cephalosporins. An epidemiologically relevant problem that reaches far beyond the single dog-owner relationship.⁷

A peer-reviewed review in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) holds: any raw meat — whether sold for human consumption, included in commercial raw-meat-based products, or incorporated into extruded dry foods — may be contaminated with a spectrum of pathogens; Salmonella spp. in poultry are the most prominent, but not the only, candidate.⁸

In immunocompetent, adult dogs this does not automatically lead to clinical disease. In puppies, old dogs, in pregnant bitches, or among housemates undergoing chemotherapy, on immunosuppressive medication, or with small children, the risk-benefit calculation shifts markedly. This is where Freeman’s “the risks outweigh” carries the most weight.

The completeness question

A further point at which the mythology of “natural feeding” collides with reality is the nutrient balance of industrially prepared BARF menus. A 2025 Scientific Reports (Nature group) study analysed the mineral composition of several products on the German and European market labelled as complete. The range was substantial; in several products individual essential minerals fell clearly below FEDIAF guidelines for the corresponding life stage.⁹

The result confirms a long-standing practitioner observation by veterinary nutritionists: a balanced ration design for BARF requires nutritional knowledge or consultation. Anyone reaching into the freezer and reading complete should at least have the declared values spot-checked — also because the FEDIAF recommendations for puppies, adults and seniors differ, and a complete label on the packet does not automatically match the right life phase.

The middle ground — and why it is often the most honest answer

Between “commercial extruded” and “classical BARF” a spectrum of options has emerged in the last decade that the debate often overlooks:

• Gently cooked: an ingredient list resembling a BARF menu, but cooked at moderate temperatures — sufficient to inactivate most relevant pathogens without reaching the processing intensity of an extruded standard dry food.
• Freeze-dried: preserves nutrient profiles close to the raw source while reducing water content drastically and making storage pathogen-poor. Future Market Insights puts the global freeze-dried pet-food segment for 2025 at around USD 19.1 billion with a forecast of USD 31.0 billion by 2035 (CAGR 5.0 percent; dog share around 62 percent); Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing region at 5.6 percent.¹⁰
• Partial BARF: one meal per day raw, the second as commercial dry food or a wet menu. Reduces the pathogen load while keeping microbiological diversity in the raw component.

None of these options is the answer. They are proposals for owners looking for a workable path between Billinghurst’s evolutionary argument and Freeman’s risk balance.

What the market shows

The dimensions help to place the heat of the debate. Business Research Insights values the global raw pet food market (dogs and cats including BARF) for 2026 at around USD 4.38 billion with a forecast of USD 12.31 billion by 2035 — CAGR of about 12.2 percent across the forecast horizon.¹¹ The growth rate is among the highest in the overall pet-food market.

The economic weight explains two things: why the marketing messages are phrased so clearly (“natural”, “species-appropriate”, “as nature intended”) — and why a sober discussion in this environment is hard to conduct. On one side lie billions of investment in freezer infrastructure, distribution chains and brand-building. On the other stand veterinary-medical faculties with other third-party funders and institutional caution. Both sides have interests. Both sides deserve scepticism.

Minimum standards for practice

From the sum of the research and clinical experience, five points emerge that stand up in practice:

1. Hygiene at industrial-kitchen level. Separate cutting boards, stainless-steel surfaces, immediate cleaning, separate utensils for preparation. Children in the household sharply increase the risk; immunocompromised housemates are a medical exclusion criterion.
2. Source selection. Meat from supply chains intended for human consumption clearly ahead of pet-grade product with reduced cold-chain standards. For commercial frozen menus: pick manufacturers with transparent microbiological testing protocols.
3. Ration design. When planning a BARF transition, an initial ration calculation by a veterinarian specialised in nutrition is advisable — Freeman recommends a DACVIM (Nutrition) qualification; in German-speaking Europe the European College of Veterinary Comparative Nutrition (ECVCN) maintains a list of equivalently qualified specialists.
4. Risk-group exclusion. Puppies, old dogs, immunosuppressed animals and pregnant bitches are treated in the literature as risk groups for which raw feeding fares worse than cooked or mixed variants. Anyone who wants to BARF there cannot do without veterinary guidance.
5. Take the middle ground seriously. Gently cooked, freeze-dried and partial BARF are not compromises for the indecisive; they are, for many owners, the quantitatively more reasonable solution with the lowest risk profile.

Balance

BARF is neither the medical miracle some see in it, nor the inevitable hazard the other side warns about. It is a feeding approach with a documented risk profile that can be managed — if hygiene, source choice and ration design are in order. Where any one of these three fields is neglected, the perfectly real risks weigh all the more.

The probably most honest sentence on the matter comes from Lisa Freeman: the existing research shows that the risks outweigh any minimal benefits. Anyone who nonetheless wants to put together a home ration should do so in consultation with an ACVN-board-certified veterinary nutritionist — the advice applies to raw and cooked rations alike on her reading. It is the position of a scientist, not of an industry lobbyist; and it acknowledges the concern of the BARF movement without going along with its main path. Owners caught between the camps will find here an answer that does without ideology.

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