Hopefully other RAW feeders with more insight will be along, but from my uneducated perspective:
"
These (high carb dry food) diets also encourage over-growth of the bacterium Clostridia perfringens"
coupled with the raw meats which the dog
would normally process before the Samonella & bacteria have a chance to settle and wreak havoc, is double jeopardy. It makes sense, IMO.
As far as scientific studies, we'd have to survey Raw feeding veterinarians, for their patients are the largest unbiased studies we'll ever see.
Meanwhile the closest we're going to get is from books, and input from Veterinarians with the personal experience, such as this one, as
everything is funded by the commercial PFI.
Going Raw - by Linda Aronson, DVM
...
There have been several important “aha” moments that have led me to raw feeding....
Dr. van Kruningen (Van Kruningen, et al. The influence of diet and feeding frequency on gastric function in the dog. J Am Anim Hosp Assoc 10:294-324, 1974) had linked the disease to bacterial fermentation of high carbohydrate commercial dog foods. The incidence was particularly high in dogs fed once vs. twice a day. The stomachs of dogs fed a commercial diet were substantially larger than those fed on a raw meat and bones diet, and bigger in dogs fed once a day vs. 2 or 3 times a day on commercial diets but not on raw diets.
It takes a dog 15 hours to digest a kibble meal, but only 4 to 6 hours to digest one of meat and bones. He then studied the contents of the gastrointestinal tracts of wild canids that had died of natural causes in the national parks. As he said (please imagine German accent here), “not one of them had Purina dog chow.” Nor did they have any grains or soybeans. Similarly, monkeys and marmosets fed commercial pelleted diets were the ones that developed gastric dilatation (in humans beer, certain vegetables and soup have been incriminated).
These diets also encourage over-growth of the bacterium Clostridia perfringens and this is thought to be a contributing factor. The worst diets are those that derive the majority of their protein from soybean meal and are high in
fermentable carbohydrate – but basically to be formed into kibbles a diet must contain ~ 60% carbohydrate....
http://www.kincurranbeardedcollie.com/Going%20Raw.pdfI don't have dogs anymore but should I ever relocate and adopt, getting to the bottom of all this info will be crucial.