If you visit a developing country, you'll still see people bathing and washing clothes and cookware in rivers. You'll also see outhouses on stilts along the same river. While there's a high incidence of illness among people who live like this, many people clearly tolerate it well. If I were to do that now, I'd get sick, but eventually I'd probably be able to tolerate it as well (assuming I survived).
It's a common misconception that animals don't get sick from tainted meat or water. They do, and when they're weakened enough, they get eaten. Clearly some have a higher tolerance of certain pathogens (e.g. vultures), but many succumb to intestinal bacteria and parasites at alarming rates. We just don't see it.
First, you or I probably could eat raw meat from a freshly killed wild herbivore with very little risk, compared to raw meat from a modern cow, raised in crowded conditions, handled by dozens of other humans, and pushed through various surfaces.
Also, there's a theory that fire and cooking is part of what allowed hominids to develop their superior brains and leave the trees behind for a fully savannah-based lifestyle.
As a species we need to stay in groups and take care of our sick. We traveled vast distances by foot and sought out our own kind.
To equivocate, I did hear about ancient ruins of villages in China where unknown strains of plague were unearthed, before this COVID-19 stuff. I assume these then became cursed villages that no one visited.
Lots of grocery store meat that you buy "fresh" was killed x number of days ago.
If a dog eats raw meat within a few hours of it being killed, it's a big difference.
How did I come to this opinion? Try freezing a super market steak a few days before the "expiration date." Then unfreeze it a few days after the expiration date.
You'll notice a rancid smell immediately upon cooking.
> Lots of grocery store meat that you buy "fresh" was killed x number of days ago.
Most beef, at least that you buy locally from a butcher who got the animal from a local farmer, is dry aged in a cooler for 10 - 14 days after slaughter. [1]
I don't know whether that's true for mass-market meat or not. But it's very common to let meat age before eating it.
Is it just lack of use that means we get sick from tainted meat, and such, when other mammals seem to stay healthy?