Can dogs eat raw meat from the supermarket?

Yes. Beef, lamb, pork, turkey and chicken from a supermarket are all safe for a dog to eat raw. What a tray of mince is not is a complete meal, and the processed meats on the next shelf along are a different matter. Here is what to buy, what to skip, and how to turn supermarket meat into a balanced raw diet.

Updated 31 October 2026
7 min read
Checked against APHA and FSA guidance

80% of a raw diet is muscle meat

The short answer

Plain raw meat is fine for dogs. The things to avoid are cured and processed meats (bacon, ham, sausages), anything seasoned with onion or garlic, cooked bones, and relying on muscle meat alone. The reason that last one matters is arithmetic: muscle meat is 80 percent of a raw diet, not 100 percent. The other 20 percent is bone and organ, and without them the diet is short of calcium, vitamin A, copper and several other things within a few weeks. The 80/10/10 guide explains what each part does.

Supermarket meats: yes, no or freeze first

Meat	Raw?	Notes
Beef mince	Yes	Muscle meat only. Supermarket 20% fat mince is rich; 5% is lean. No bone, no organ, so not a diet by itself.
Beef steak, braising steak	Yes	Fine, just expensive. Trim heavy fat for dogs that are overweight or have had pancreatitis.
Lamb mince, lamb neck, lamb breast	Yes	The fattiest common meat. Good for dogs that need weight on, loose stools in dogs that do not.
Pork shoulder, pork mince, pork belly	Yes, freeze first	UK pork is safe raw for dogs. Freeze for 3 weeks as a belt and braces step against parasites. Belly is very fatty.
Turkey mince, thigh, neck	Yes	Lean, cheap and well tolerated. Turkey necks are a good large bone for big dogs.
Chicken	Yes	The usual starter protein. Has its own page: can dogs eat raw chicken.
Venison, game	Yes, freeze first	Lean and a useful novel protein. Freeze wild meat for 3 weeks before feeding to deal with parasites.
Rabbit	Yes	Very lean, usually sold whole or minced with bone by raw suppliers. Good for elimination diets.
Liver, kidney, heart	Yes, in the right share	Liver 5 percent and other organs 5 percent of the diet. Heart counts as muscle meat. More liver than that means loose stools.
Bacon, gammon, ham	No	Cured with salt and nitrites, very fatty. Pancreatitis and salt load. Not a treat either.
Sausages, burgers, meatballs	No	Seasoned with salt and usually onion or garlic, padded with rusk. The onion alone rules them out.
Cooked bones of any meat	No	Cooking makes bone brittle and sharp. This includes the roast chicken carcass and the lamb chop bone.
Meat past its date, or that smells off	No	Dogs tolerate more than people, but spoiled meat is spoiled meat. If you would bin it for yourself, bin it.

Why mince alone is not a diet

A tray of beef mince is muscle meat. Fed on its own it has a calcium to phosphorus ratio of about 1 to 15, when a dog needs something near 1 to 1. The body makes up the shortfall by drawing calcium from bone. In an adult that takes months to show; in a puppy it can cause skeletal problems in weeks. Mince also has no liver, which is where most of a raw diet's vitamin A, copper and folate come from.

Three ways to fix it, in order of effort.

Buy complete instead. A complete raw product has the bone and organ ground in. Nutriment and Durham Animal Feeds completes cost £4.38 to £4.49 a kg, roughly the price of supermarket mince. The brand comparison lists them.
Add bone and organ yourself. For every 400 g of mince, add about 110 g of chicken wings (which gives 50 g of bone), 25 g of liver and 25 g of kidney. That is the 80/10/5/5 split for a 500 g day. The calculator does the sums for your dog's weight.
Add a calcium source if you will not feed bone. Ground eggshell (about 2 g of calcium per shell) or a bone meal supplement, dosed properly. Boneless feeding is workable but it is the version most likely to go wrong, so weigh it rather than guess.

Fat content matters

Supermarket mince is labelled by fat. Standard beef mince is around 20 percent fat, lean is 5 percent, and the difference is large for a dog. Raw diets run higher in fat than kibble anyway, so most adult dogs do well on 10 to 15 percent fat mince. Use lean mince, turkey or skinless chicken for a dog that is overweight or has had pancreatitis, and the fattier cuts for a working dog or one that needs condition. Lamb is the fattiest common meat and the one most likely to loosen stools in a dog that is new to it. The proteins guide compares them.

Freezing: what it does and does not do

Freezing at domestic temperatures (minus 18°C) for 3 weeks kills the parasites that matter in meat, including Toxoplasma, Sarcocystis and Trichinella. That is why the advice for pork, game and anything wild is to freeze before feeding. Freezing does not kill bacteria. Salmonella and Campylobacter survive the freezer and are active again when the meat thaws, so frozen meat still needs the handling routine. The storing and defrosting guide covers times and methods.

Supermarket, butcher or raw supplier?

	Supermarket	Butcher	Raw supplier or pet shop freezer
Beef or lamb mince	£4 to £6 a kg	£5 to £8 a kg, often better fat choice	£3 to £5 a kg, sometimes with bone and organ included
Chicken with bone	Wings £2.50 to £4 a kg	Carcasses often free or £1 a kg if you ask	Carcasses £1.50 to £2.50 a kg, mince with bone £2 to £3.50
Offal	Liver and kidney £2 to £4 a kg, limited range	Wider range, can order spleen, pancreas, tripe	Offal mixes designed for the 10 percent share
Bacterial testing	None for pet use	None	Registered producers test batches for Salmonella
Convenience	Highest	Ask and order	Freezer space needed, bulk packs

Most long term raw feeders end up using a raw supplier for the base and the supermarket for variety or when they run out. The budget guide costs a month of each approach for a 10, 20 and 30 kg dog.

What to do with a dog that has just eaten something it should not

A pack of bacon or sausages: watch for vomiting, a hunched posture and lethargy over 48 hours, which can mean pancreatitis. Call the vet if any appear.
Anything with onion or garlic: call the vet the same day. Damage to red blood cells shows up over 3 to 5 days, so do not wait for symptoms.
A cooked bone: do not make the dog sick. Feed a bulky meal (bread, plain rice, pumpkin) and watch for vomiting, straining, blood or lethargy. Any of those is a vet visit.
Raw meat gone off: most dogs vomit it up and are fine. Withhold food for 12 hours, offer water, call the vet if vomiting or diarrhoea lasts beyond 24 hours.

Sources

GOV.UK, Aujeszky's disease: how to spot and report it, which records the last outbreak in Great Britain as 1989
GOV.UK, raw pet food: handling and hygiene guidance
Food Standards Agency, cooking and freezing food safely
Dillitzer, Becker and Kienzle, 2011. Intake of minerals, trace elements and vitamins in bone and raw food rations in adult dogs. British Journal of Nutrition. doi:10.1017/S0007114511002765

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Can I feed my dog raw meat from the supermarket?

Yes. Supermarket meat is sold for people to eat and is perfectly good for a dog raw. The two things it is not are cheap and complete. Beef mince at £5 a kg is double what a raw supplier charges for a chicken mince with bone, and it contains no bone and no organ, so a dog fed only supermarket mince is short of calcium within weeks. Use it as the muscle meat share, add bone and organ, or buy a complete.

Is raw meat better for dogs than cooked?

Raw muscle meat and cooked muscle meat are nutritionally close. Cooking loses some B vitamins and taurine and changes the texture. The parts of a raw diet that do not survive cooking are the bones, which become dangerous, and the enzymes, whose benefit to dogs is not established. If you prefer to cook, cook boneless meat and add a calcium source. The evidence page covers what raw does and does not do.

Why can dogs eat raw meat but people cannot?

People can, as steak tartare shows. The difference is tolerance. A dog's stomach is more acidic and food passes through faster, so bacteria get less chance to multiply. Dogs still pick up Salmonella and Campylobacter from raw meat, usually without symptoms, and shed them for days afterwards. The hygiene routine in the handling guide is about protecting the people in the house as much as the dog.

Can dogs eat raw pork in the UK?

Yes. The old advice against pork comes from two parasites, Trichinella and the Aujeszky's disease virus. Great Britain has had no outbreak of Aujeszky's since 1989 and is recognised as free of it, and Trichinella has not been found in UK commercially reared pigs for decades. Several UK raw brands sell pork recipes. Freezing for 3 weeks is a sensible extra step, especially for wild boar or imported pork.

Can dogs eat raw steak?

Yes. It is muscle meat like any other, just dearer. Cut it into pieces a dog can chew rather than swallow whole, and trim the fat cap for a dog that is overweight. Marinated or seasoned steak is out because of salt, garlic and onion.

How much raw meat should a dog eat a day?

2 to 3 percent of body weight for an adult dog, so a 20 kg dog eats about 500 g a day, of which 400 g is muscle meat, 50 g bone and 50 g organ. The feeding guide has the full table and the calculator gives your dog's figure.

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