Raw Food

The term complete and balanced means that a food will provide all the nutrients required for the pet’s lifestage in the correct amounts. It is very important to make sure that any food you are feeding is complete and balanced.

It is very difficult to balance a home-made diet properly, especially for growing puppies and kittens that have very specific needs for certain fatty acids for brain and retina development and specific levels of calcium and phosphorous to help prevent growth and joint problems.

Some people supplement raw diets or home-made diets with human vitamin and mineral tablets. Human vitamin tablets, especially in Northern Europe have high levels of vitamin D because of the lack of sunlight. This can cause big problems for animals, especially growing ones, because of the effect it has on calcium balance.

Studies have shown that even some raw foods that claim to be complete and balanced are deficient in some essential components such as calcium, iron, selenium and zinc.

These deficiencies and excesses of minerals and vitamins in some raw and home-made diets can be catastrophic, especially in growing animals.

There is also a current trend for feeding grain-free food to dogs. This has arisen mainly due to caregivers worrying about grains being a cause of adverse food reactions and certain parties claiming they are just poor quality ‘fillers’ in pet food.

Grains are an excellent source of fibre and vitamins. They are a source of what’s called prebiotic fibres. These fibres are digested by the ‘good bacteria’ in the gut. By nourishing these bacteria, they keep the microbiome healthy and suppress the growth of bad bacteria. The digestion of these fibres nourishes the bacteria, and this digestion produces fatty acids that help to keep gut cells healthy.

The incidence of true grain intolerance is low in dogs. There have also been a number of cases of a type of heart failure associated with some of these diets called DCM or dilated cardiomyopathy. Research is ongoing into the cause of this.

There is still very little good evidence that shows any of the claimed benefits of raw feeding. However, there are multiple high-level studies that show unequivocally that raw food feeding is associated with health risks both to the animals themselves and the general public.

One of the main reasons that humans cook food is to kill harmful organisms such as parasites, protozoa and bacteria. Raw meats carry a much higher risk of being contaminated with these, especially potentially dangerous bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and campylobacter, all of which can cause severe food poisoning and even death in both humans and animals. While it’s true that some animals may show no signs of disease when eating these foods, they can still shed these bacteria into the environment. This poses a genuine risk for young, old and immune-suppressed people and animals.

Even with good hygiene and care, bacteria can remain viable on bowls and surfaces for many days as well as being shed in the stools of the animals. In fact, in many veterinary hospitals nowadays, dogs and cats that are fed raw food diets will be quarantined and hospitalised, at the owner’s cost, in different areas of the hospital because of the risk they pose to the other animals in the clinic.

Food intake is all linked to calorie requirements. Wolves need to eat around 3-4 times more than domestic dogs every day as their energy expenditure for hunting, especially in a cold climate, is enormous. Because they are eating much higher volumes of meaty food than your domestic dog, their vitamin and mineral intake is adequate. If you feed a dog like a wolf, you will either kill them through morbid obesity or you are at real risk of malnourishing them for some essential nutrients.

Many people say that vets like me only recommend premium pet foods because we make money from it. The fact is that the margin on pet foods that vets sell is a drop in the ocean and vets can’t compete with large pet retailers, so many vets hardly sell any pet food at all apart from medical, therapeutic diets. Therapeutic diets make huge differences to many disease conditions such as skin and gastrointestinal disease to name a few and improve animal welfare. In some diseases, they are the main means of increasing longevity.

I recommend for my clients’ animals what I do for my own; they are vaccinated, treated appropriately for parasites and fed premium pet foods. I can assure you that the vets and companies promoting raw feeding are not doing it for free.

Yes, there are occasional issues with pet foods and product recalls. This is because they must meet extremely exacting controls and monitoring so they can identify issues and respond quickly.

Animals and humans all over the world get by on poor, unbalanced nutrition but some of the stark deficiencies associated with raw and home-cooked diets can mean the difference between life and death for your pet. Even if these numbers are low, for those individuals it can be tragic. If you are going to go down this road, please think carefully. If you are suspicious of the large companies, speak to a veterinary, certified nutritionist so that they can help you formulate a complete and balanced home-made diet properly.