Feeding pet dogs and cats on raw, unprocessed food has recently become markedly more popular in the UK and elsewhere in the developed world. There is currently a lack of formal survey data to document this phenomenon, but conversations with clients and a proliferation of raw food marketing and sales outlets attest to growing numbers of pets being fed in this fashion. Sales in the commercial part of this sector may have generated around £90 million in 2018 according to an estimate by Natures Menu, one of the players in this field (Pearce 2018).

Raw meat-based diets (RMBD), sometimes known as ‘Biologically Appropriate Raw Food’ or ‘Bones and Raw Food’ (BARF) diets, include uncooked ingredients from either livestock or wild animals, and may be home-prepared or commercial, with the latter being supplied as fresh, frozen or freeze-dried complete diets, or as premixes intended to be complemented by raw meat (Freeman et al. 2013). Whilst pre-prepared raw diets are convenient, in the manner of traditional processed complete diets, many raw-feeding owners appear to opt for home preparation. A recent Italian study reported that over 80% of (self-selected) raw feeding owners formulated their own diets (Morelli et al. 2019) whilst in 2016 a large formal survey in the USA found 3% of dog owners bought raw pet food but 17% bought raw or cooked human food for their dogs (APPA 2018).