Can Raw Meat Cure Illness?

No. When an improvement in a previous condition is seen after feeding raw meat to a dog, it is more likely due to the absence of some offending agent in the food they were eating before.

Some people see what they perceive to be immediate results from the barf diet...a shiny coat, or some type of condition has cleared up. Raw meat has a high fat content that will sometimes give a dog a shiny coat (at least initially). While coat texture can be a sign of good health, it's not a reliable measure of a dog's health.

The truth is that it's NOT the element of *raw* meat that improves a dog's health. They would see the same results with cooked meat. Often times it's simply the absence of one or more ingredient(s) in the kibble they were feeding. When you go from a low quality kibble to barf, you're basically hopping out of the pot and into the fire.

In other words, you could have taken your dog off their current food and put them on another commercial food, or possibly a vet-supervised homemade diet with small amounts of cooked meat, and seen an improvement in the condition - without the dangers of raw meat. Veterinary Universities believe (and I agree) that better nutrition and veterinary care is extending the average dog's lifespan past what is normal, which is why we see chronic cases such as diabetes or cancer. Overbreeding has resulted in an increase of dysplasia, allergies and skin conditions. These are effected by diet, but caused by genetics (poor genealogy from overbreeding and puppy mills).