Can Dogs Eat Beef? Lean and Fatty Are Two Different Foods

Home > Blog > Can Dogs Eat Beef? Lean and Fatty Are Two Different Foods

Quick Facts

This is our own research, not veterinary advice. For nearly every food there are many sources, and they do not always agree with each other. We check each claim against the veterinary and poison control sources, and we say plainly where they disagree. Even so, if you are in any doubt, contact a vet and do your own research before you feed anything to an animal in your care.

Beef is safe for dogs and one of the better meats you can give, provided you know which beef you have. A lean sirloin carries about 5g of fat per 100 grams. The 85% lean mince most people buy carries three times that, and the fat trimmed off it is 78g per 100g. So the job is not deciding whether beef is safe. It is deciding which beef is in the bowl, and trimming the fat off it either way.

Beef is the meat we give most often, because when an owner prefers a raw diet it is usually beef. Chunks of it, out of the freezer, and the animals go mad for it. The cat here in Portugal gets a portion every Sunday and loses its mind over it, which is genuinely lovely to watch.

The thing I have learned from doing that is that "beef" covers an enormous range. The lean cut and the cheap mince are not the same food with a different price tag, and the gap between them is the difference between a lean treat and a fat load.

The rest of what is safe is on the safe food list, and the turkey page covers the other bird-shaped version of this argument.

If you are interested in getting into house sitting, our book Travel More for Less puts the whole process in one place: clear, step by step guidance from your first questions to your first confirmed sit, and the reviews that open the door to the next one.

Can Dogs Eat Beef? Yes, Cooked and Plain

Beef is safe for dogs, and it is genuinely good food: high-quality protein for muscle, plus iron, zinc and B vitamins. A lean cut is one of the better things you can put in a bowl.

The preparation rules are the usual ones. Cook it through, add nothing, cut it small, and only give a piece or two at a time. If you are cooking a steak, the guidance is an internal temperature of 63°C for the cut and 71°C for mince, which is the difference between a steak and a burger patty in food-safety terms.

Beef allergy exists, though it is not common. The signs are the usual ones: itching, paw biting, skin trouble, or vomiting. If a dog reacts to beef the first time, that is the answer, and it does not need a second trial.

It is also a rich food, and the same caution that applies to dairy applies here for the same reason: a dog with a delicate gut is the one who pays for a new food.

Lean and Fatty Are Different Foods

This is the number that decides everything. Cooked lean sirloin, trimmed, comes in at about 177 calories and 5g of fat per 100g, with 31g of protein. An 85% lean ground beef patty is 250 calories and 15.4g of fat. And the subcutaneous fat trimmed off a cut of beef is 731 calories and 78.3g of fat per 100g.

So the same word covers a food that is 5g of fat and a food that is 15g of fat, and a third thing that is essentially pure fat. A dog eating "some beef" could be getting any of those.

The fat is what causes trouble. In one go it gives a dog vomiting or diarrhoea. Repeated over months it contributes to weight gain, and in a dog that is prone to it, pancreatitis. That is the condition to take seriously: a dog off its food, vomiting or with diarrhoea, a painful abdomen and sometimes a fever. It is a vet visit rather than a wait and see.

The practical answer is to trim the fat before cooking, and to drain the fat off mince rather than serving it in its own juices. Neither takes any effort and both remove most of the risk.

My own experience with mince is more relaxed than that. When you buy mince you get a random amount of fat in it, and I have never found that to be a problem in practice. The dogs have been fine. I am not going to argue with the fat figures, but I would say the everyday version of this is less frightening than the numbers suggest.

How much of it a dog should get is its own question, and feeding the wrong amount on a sit covers the wider version.

Bones: Cooked Is Out

Cooked beef bones are not safe, and that part is uncontested. Cooking makes bone brittle, brittle bone breaks into shards, and shards perforate things. The published guidance goes further and says no bones at all, of any kind, because they are also a choking hazard, an obstruction risk and a way to fracture teeth. Chew toys and dental treats do the same job without the risk.

Where I differ is on raw bones. I would give a raw bone and I would not give a cooked one. There is always some risk in either direction, and I am not going to pretend a raw bone is risk-free, but that is my position and it is a judgement rather than a fact.

What I would not do is make that call for somebody else. If an owner asks me to give their dog a raw bone, I will. If they have not said anything about bones, I will not introduce one, because a fractured tooth or a blockage is not a thing I want to explain on somebody else's behalf.

If a bone has already gone down, what to do when a pet eats something dangerous covers what to do, and it is a phone call rather than an observation.

Raw Beef, and Where I Stand

The guidance on raw beef is clear and I want to give it properly. Raw and undercooked beef can carry salmonella and E. coli, and the food safety authorities specifically warn about it. The recommendation is that steak is at least seared and that mince is cooked through.

My own position is different, and it is opinion rather than science. I feed raw beef, and I have done for years, to my own animals and to dogs whose owners have asked for it. If an animal is getting high-quality raw food with no preservatives in it, my view is that it can handle it, because it evolved to. I would not claim that as proven.

What I would say to anybody starting out is to move slowly. When you switch an animal to raw, do it in small batches and watch how it reacts, rather than changing the whole diet at once. And follow your vet, because they know the individual animal and I do not.

There is also a broader point I believe, which is that high-quality food pays for itself. It costs more, and in exchange you tend to get an animal with fewer illnesses, a better coat, and a healthy wet nose. That is as true for cats as it is for dogs. You spend a little more and you get a healthier animal, likely for longer.

If that sounds like a bigger subject than one food, the sardines page makes the same argument about fish.

The Word Premium Is Doing a Lot of Work

This is the part of the subject I find genuinely strange, and it is worth saying because it frames everything else on the page.

A raw piece of beef for a dog is sold as a premium product. Organic and bio vegetables are the special ones, and everything else is just a vegetable. But the reverse should be true. Organic and bio produce is basic, standard food. The heavily sprayed, chemically produced version is the one that should carry the label, so that a carrot is called a genetically modified sprayed carrot and the other one is simply called a carrot.

Raw meat is not a premium meal for a dog. It was the standard meal for a very long time, and the animal is built for it. Calling it premium, and calling a bowl of oats filled with mince normal, is the naming backwards.

That is an opinion rather than a recommendation, and I am not going to tell anybody how to feed their animal. But it is why I am relaxed about beef in a way I am not about most of what is on this site.

The same argument about processed food appears on the oats page, where the label on a bag of peanuts made the point better than I could.

Burgers, Sausages and the Cannot-Name-It Rule

Burgers and sausages are the beef a dog is most likely to actually meet, and they are the version to refuse. Both are heavily seasoned, and both routinely contain garlic and onion, which are toxic. On top of that they are fatty, and you cannot see what went into them from the outside.

The rule I use is short. If I cannot name everything in the food with complete certainty, I do not give it. That covers burgers, sausages, sausage rolls, meatballs and anything else that has been minced, seasoned and shaped before it reached me.

And on a house sit the bar is higher again. It is not my animal, I do not know its history, and the complication is not worth it. Feed the dog what the owner has been feeding it, and nothing else.

That is the same principle that rules out dried and processed coconut, and it is the one rule that has kept me out of trouble across 20 sits.

How Much Beef

Treats of every kind should stay under about 10% of a dog's daily calorie intake, which is the standard most vets and the literature give. With beef the fat is the constraint before the calories are.

The published portions are counted in small bite-sized pieces of cooked, trimmed meat.

Those calorie figures are our arithmetic on the published energy value of 177 kcal per 100g for lean cooked beef, with a piece assumed to be about 8.5g. The piece counts are our reading of the published guidance.

If a dog needs something plainer while it settles, plain rice is the usual partner, and chicken is the leaner meat most people start with.

On a Sit: The Freezer and the Permission

On a raw-feeding sit the routine is usually simple. Chunks of beef out of the freezer, given as they are, about two centimetres across. When we looked after a Swiss Shepherd in Switzerland that was exactly it: we pulled the meat out, let it soften for a bit, cut it into chunks, and the dog was delighted.

Two things I would say about that routine. The first is that frozen solid meat is hard work for a dog, so letting it come up a little before serving is worth doing. The second is that this is only ever done because the owner asked for it.

I do not experiment on other people's animals. If the owner feeds raw, I feed raw. If they feed a complete dry food, I feed that. The one exception to my caution about beef is somebody else's established routine, and that is not an exception at all, it is just following instructions.

The habit that covers it is asking before you improvise, and the pre-sit question list is where that starts.

Where This Research Comes From

The sources behind this page:

Conclusion

Beef is one of the better meats to share, and which beef you have matters more than whether beef is allowed. Trim the fat, cook it plain, cut it small, and the lean end is excellent.

The fatty end, the burger and the sausage are the versions to leave alone. And on a sit, whatever the owner feeds is what the dog gets, whether that is a chunk of raw beef or a bowl of dry food.

Caro and I have completed 20 house sits across 12 countries, driven 19,000km across Europe in our 1998 VW T4, and saved over $26,500 in accommodation costs over three years of house sitting.

DM us @housesittersguide, we answer everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Can dogs eat beef?

  Yes, plain and in small pieces. Lean cooked beef is about 177 calories and 5g of fat per 100g with 31g of protein, and it is a good source of iron, zinc and B vitamins.

• Is beef too fatty for dogs?

  It depends which beef. Lean sirloin is about 5g of fat per 100g, an 85% lean mince is 15.4g, and trimmed beef fat is 78.3g. Trim the fat and drain the mince and most of the risk goes with it.

• Can dogs eat raw beef?

  The guidance is no, because raw and undercooked beef can carry salmonella and E. coli. I feed raw beef myself and have for years, but that is my opinion rather than the official position, and anyone starting out should move slowly and follow their vet.

• Can dogs eat beef bones?

  Cooked bones are definitely out, because they splinter into shards. The published guidance says no bones at all. I would give a raw bone and not a cooked one, but I would not give one to somebody else's dog without being asked.

• Can dogs eat burgers and sausages?

  No. They are fatty, heavily seasoned, and usually contain garlic and onion, which are toxic. If you cannot name everything in the food, it does not go in the bowl.

• Can dogs eat ground beef?

  Yes, if it is lean, cooked thoroughly to about 71°C, and the fat is drained off. It is fattier than a lean cut, so treat it as an occasional food rather than a staple.

• How much beef can a dog have?

  One small piece for a dog under 9kg up to six to eight pieces for a giant, inside the 10% of daily calories that treats are allowed.

Related Guides