Bacteria on Bully Sticks: What the Two Studies Found

Neither published study that tested bully sticks for bacteria found Salmonella on one — not the 26 sticks cultured in 2013, not the 505 pet treats sampled in 2025. What they did find is worth knowing.

One 2013 paper cut up 26 sticks and cultured them. A 2025 paper bought 505 pet treats off US shelves, co-written with the FDA's veterinary research office. What grew got the coverage. What didn't grow is the answer you came for, and it's in both papers.

The whole file is two papers

A bully stick is beef pizzle, dried whole, with nothing added. That holds across every bully stick we sell, in any length. One ingredient is why this ends up a handling question and not an ingredients question.

The first paper is Freeman, Janecko and Weese, in the Canadian Veterinary Journal. Its published method is a convenience sample of 26 sticks bought at retail, 16 in the US and 10 in Canada. Nobody swabbed a surface. They cut roughly 10-gram samples off the sticks and grew them in broth, so these numbers came out of the stick, not off it.

The second is Parker and colleagues at Ohio State, in Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 2025. They bought 505 pet treats over sixteen months, from pet and farm supply stores, groceries and online sellers.

Neither followed a dog. Both tested product off a shelf. Whatever these bacteria do to a chewing dog, neither paper measured it.

What the 2013 cultures grew

Four results, as published. One of them isn't what it looks like.

The seven and the one overlap. That tetracycline-resistant Escherichia coli is one of the seven, not an eighth stick, and a page that adds them together has invented a stick. It's the first figure to check when someone quotes this study at you.

The 2025 study found its Salmonella somewhere else

Four of the 505 treats came back positive for Salmonella, across four different serotypes. All four were pig ear treats imported from Brazil. Not one of them was a bully stick.

Two papers, twelve years apart, 531 products between them, and the Salmonella turned up on a different chew entirely. That's the cleanest answer to the question you typed into a search box.

One bully stick still carried something serious. The team pulled a carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli off one, carrying two resistance genes at once. Carbapenems are a last-line human antibiotic. One sample out of 505 isn't zero, and we'd rather print it than round it away.

Two recalls, both closed

Shelves are a separate question, and the FDA answers that one in public. Redbarn pulled a single lot of bully sticks in February 2018, after the Colorado Department of Agriculture found Salmonella in a sample taken at a store. Weeks later the recall widened to 24 SKUs across four brand names, all traced to one raw-material supplier.

The second is small and recent, and its shape is the point. FDA staff collected samples on 11 September 2025, they came back positive, and Best Buy Bones recalled four lots of a Nature's Own bully-bite treat: 34 bags, out of Minnesota, sold in Wisconsin. Neither notice reports an illness in a dog. The FDA has closed both.

So the honest sentence isn't that bully sticks never carry Salmonella. It's that no study has found it on one, and that when it appears it appears as a lot code, a supplier and a date range. Whether the chew is a good idea at all is the wider question in are bully sticks safe for dogs. And if your dog ate from a recalled lot and turns lethargic or feverish, call your vet the same day.

The risk lands on your hands

Scott Weese co-wrote the 2013 study, then put its point plainly in his own write-up: none of this means dog owners need to avoid bully sticks. It means washing your hands after handling dog treats of any kind, and keeping them away from high-risk people.

Who counts as high risk. The study's lead author spells the group out: very young, elderly, pregnant or immunocompromised people should avoid all contact with raw animal-based treats. If that describes someone in your house, ask their doctor where the line sits.

The 2025 team ends in the same place: hand hygiene when you feed and handle pets. Both recall notices say it too. The risk to people comes from the product, and from the surfaces it touched, where hands weren't washed.

Twenty seconds, before and after

The half that settles this is federal, and it's four lines long. The FDA's handling tips for pet food and treats cover every organism above.

• Wash your hands at least 20 seconds with soap and hot water, both before and after handling treats.
• Wash bowls, scoops and measuring cups with soap and hot water after every use.
• Never use your dog's food bowl as a scoop.
• Buy packaging in good condition: no dents, tears or discoloration.

Before is the half everyone skips. Washing afterwards protects you. Washing first keeps whatever was on your hands out of the bag your dog eats from all month.

What you buy moves this less than people hope. Our 6-inch bully sticks are slow oven-dried beef and nothing else, and they still get the same twenty seconds at the sink. Drying is not sterilizing. We'd rather say so than let a single-ingredient label do work it can't do.

Where the stick lives between chews

Storage is where a clean stick becomes a dirty one — the open bag on the fridge, in July. The FDA's number is written for dry pet food: below 80°F, cool and dry, in the original bag with the top folded tightly down. A bag of dried chews is the same physics.

A white bloom is usually not mold. We've never had that film tested, so we won't tell you what it is, but white film or mold on a bully stick shows you how to tell drying from the real thing. Fuzzy, colored and wrong-smelling goes in the trash. The container question gets worked through in how to store bully sticks.

The stub, and the stick under the couch

Retire the stick at about three inches, or as soon as the piece would fit whole inside your dog's mouth. That rule exists for swallowing, not for bacteria. It happens to solve both.

A chewed stub is wet animal protein that's been in a mouth and then on your floor. It doesn't go back in the bag. Out of sight for a day means the trash, and that's the cheapest decision in this article.

Time is the other variable. A stick left with an unsupervised dog gets shorter and wetter than you planned, which is the argument in leaving a dog alone with a chew. Supervision isn't only about choking.

Bully stick bacteria FAQ

Can bully sticks give my dog Salmonella?

No published study has found Salmonella on a bully stick, across 531 products tested in 2013 and 2025. The shelf is a different matter. The FDA has posted two bully stick recalls for possible Salmonella, in 2018 and 2025, and closed both. If your dog ate a recalled lot and turns lethargic or feverish, or has bloody diarrhea, call your vet. Those are the signs both notices name.

Do I need to wash my hands after touching a bully stick?

Yes, and before as well. The FDA asks for at least 20 seconds with soap and hot water, both before and after handling any pet food or treat. Treat a dried chew the way you'd treat raw meat on a counter. Wash whatever the stick touched, too, because the wiped surface is the step people skip.

Are bully sticks safe around a baby or someone immunocompromised?

Keep them apart. The 2013 study recommends that very young, elderly, pregnant and immunocompromised people avoid all contact with raw animal-product treats. One of its authors puts it more bluntly: a bully stick is not a teething toy. Store the bag out of reach, pick the stub up, and wash the floor where your dog chewed. Ask their doctor where the line sits.

A bully stick is dried beef, not a sterile object, and the whole file on it is two papers in twelve years. The routine that settles it costs twenty seconds at the sink and one trip to the trash with the stub.