You, your dog, and yes, raw ingredients all have bacteria, good and bad. It’s just a fact of life. But there’s zero possibility freeze-dried raw pet foods will. Within the US, no shelf-stable pet food is allowed to contain bacteria–a requirement to keep both humans and pets safe. That is one of the many many benefits of feeding freeze-dried raw pet food.
To meet these requirements, every company uses a different process to rid their food of bacteria since the freeze-drying and sublimation process alone doesn’t kill all pathogens.
Some use HPP. Read the pros and cons of that here.
Some cook their ingredients before freeze-drying, so it’s really not comparable to the benefits of freeze-dried raw.
Others develop innovative, proprietary steps like Dr. Bessent, who created her own pasteurization step in her freeze-drying process.