http://web.archive.org/web/20030502044857/http://members.shaw.ca/petlife/rawpaper.htmThe Truth About Raw Foods For Our Dogs and Cats
John Peloza, Pet Life Inc.
This paper was inspired by the vast amount of misinformation that is given to professionals responsible for animal care, by professionals in the pet food industry, friends and family, and the guy down at the off leash park. It was also inspired by a deep love of animals.
The information in this paper provides what detractors of a raw diet have been demanding proof. In this article you will find independent studies, and studies done by pet food manufacturers themselves, demonstrating that diets including raw ingredients are superior. You will also find direct quotes from the veterinary bodies in both Canada and the U.S., and the organizations that are tasking with policing the pet food industry. The body of proof in this article demonstrates two things. First, it shows that the food many people take for granted as complete and balanced is, in fact, potentially dangerous to your pets health. Second, it shows conclusively that a raw diet is a healthy option for your dog or cat.
Be Careful Who You Ask For Nutritional Advice
The sales and marketing efforts of various pet food companies are sophisticated. So sophisticated, in fact, that they have manipulated our most trusted partners in pet care our veterinarians.
When looking for answers regarding pets health, most people turn to their veterinarian for advice. While vets are a critical partner in the overall well-being of our pets, they are just that a partner. Why does this matter? Many vets make recommendations on nutritional matters for our pets with little grounding or education in the subject. And what education does exist is biased as it is largely funded and conducted by pet food manufacturers.
Hill's, for example, funds professorships and scholarships at each of the 27 veterinary schools in the U.S. It writes textbooks and provides them free to students, and helps fund students� educations by providing what is essentially free pet food while they are in school. Hill's sends practicing vets on seminars on wringing more profit from clinics and offer its own nutrition certification program.[1]
But what's worse is that much of the teaching itself is done by representatives of manufacturers. Dr. Corinne Chapman, a graduate of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon explains. My clearest recollection of Small Animal Nutrition was evening seminars put on by Iams, Hills & Science Diet, Medi-Cal, Waltham, and Purina. They fed us pop and pizza, then bored us to death with chemical analysis� Sadly, a lack of knowledge concerning nutrition has become the basis for recommending processed pet food. I have yet to go to a veterinary seminar on nutrition that wasn't hosted by a multimillion dollar pet food company.� Dr. Ian Buffett, another veterinarian, spoke about the problem on the November 7, 2001 episode of Marketplace on CBC: "The clinical nutrition that we got was provided by actually a representative of one of the pet food companies, so there certainly was a bias there, and I don't remember any mention of homemade diets." According to the host of that same CBC show, the veterinary colleges they contacted said that there's often no one qualified on staff, so they ask nutritionists from the pet food companies to teach. Since the companies aren't interested in raw diets, the students don't learn about them.
Decisions we make on behalf of our pets should be made carefully, by weighing facts from a variety of sources. One of those sources should definitely be your veterinarian. There is a lot of misinformation about feeding raw foods to our pets, both promoting and attacking the practice. As guardians to our pets, it's up to us to make informed decisions and to make those decisions for ourselves.
An Inherent Conflict Of Interest
If you go to a doctor for yourself, and he tells you that you should be eating only one type of food, and that you can pick up a bag in the waiting room, how would you feel? The majority of vets have their clients best interests at heart. But they are put in a dangerous situation (by the sales and marketing pitches from pet food companies) by receiving money for medical advice, and receiving money from the sales of recommended/prescribed products.
The power and influence of our veterinarians has been exploited by pet food manufacturers. John Steel, retired VP of Global Marketing and Sales explains: It's just like taking drugs: You go to the doctor and he prescribes something for you and you don't much question what the doctor says. It's the same with animals."[2]
It's this conflict of interest that can lead to disaster. The Wall Street Journal reported that the marketing and sales activities of Hill's Pet Foods include a bounty on the pets in a given veterinary clinic. For each pet that was put on a special diet, the clinic received a kickback. The clinic would have a quota of pets to get on the diet each day, and then use that money for it's own purpose (a party, etc.).[3] The recommendation of the food may or may not have been the best thing for the pet. This shocking report even featured direct quotes from sales reps and vets who obviously saw no problem with this practice. If this were ever to come to light in the human health industry, the company and doctor would both be disgraced and the doctor would surely lose his license and be banished from the community. So why are our pets deserving of any less?
The above is not to suggest that every vet has a quota based on a bounty he/she will receive from a pet food company. But obviously some do. It's a situation that is unregulated, and consumers should not be subjected to a system that is subject to such alarming abuse.
It doesn't make it any easier on vets when they have pet food manufacturers coaching them on how to sell their product. Medi-Cal, for example, tells vets to focus on veterinary-exclusive products because they encourage people to visit the clinic more often resulting in increased revenue and compliance. They also coach vets to limit customer choice, and to lower the markup of puppy/kitten food so customers will be more likely to start their pets on the Medi-Cal brand.[4]
Pet Foods Are Manufactured Using Guesswork
The people responsible for producing food for your pet, and even worse, the people responsible for policing the manufacturers, really have no idea what the optimal diet is for your dog or cat. In the U.S., where the majority of the manufacturing for North America is done, the FDA governs the industry. It operates through a group known as AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials). This group sets the standards for ingredients and nutritional guidelines for pet food.
The need to question the standards becomes apparent when you listen to the industry regulators:
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Dr. David Dzanis, FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine: The formulation method does not account for palatability or availability of nutrients. Yet a feeding trial can miss some chronic deficiencies or toxicities.
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Animalhealthcare.ca (the official site of the veterinary profession in Canada): Despite advances in nutrition research, little remains known about what exactly constitutes an optimal diet for the cat. While guidelines do exist regarding the minimum and maximum requirements for a feline diet, much still needs to be done to determine the effects of various excesses and deficiencies on feline nutrition.[5]
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Dr. Quinton Rogers, DVM, PhD, one of the AAFCO panel experts: Although the AAFCO profiles are better than nothing, they provide false securities. I don't know of any studies showing their adequacies and inadequacies. Rogers also states that some of the foods which pass AAFCO feeding trials are actually inadequate for long term nutrition, but there is no way of knowing which foods these are under present regulations.[6]
AAFCO regulations, in the words of AAFCO themselves, are not based entirely in knowledge:
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The absence of (nutrient level) maximums should not be interpreted to mean that those nutrients are safe at any level. Rather, it reflects the lack of information on nutrient toxicity in dogs and cats.[7]
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Although a true requirement of crude fat per se has not been established��[8]
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Sodium minimum level was more a matter of convention than as was supported by data.[9]
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Levels of copper, iron, and zinc for dogs are set based on tolerance in swine.[10]
Even the science that AAFCO does have isn't used to create useable guidelines for pet food manufacturers. The recommended calcium/phosphorus ratio is between 1.2:1 and 1.4:1. Yet the maximum limit is set at 2:1.[11] Why such a wide range? The ranges for specific vitamins are even wider. The maximum allowable levels for vitamins A, D and E respectively are 50, 10 and 20 times the minimum amounts. In cats, the ranges are the same except for vitamin A which is 150 times the minimum allowable limit.[12]
The "studies" carried out by pet food manufacturers are little more than exercises in marketing and public relations. Take a recent result quoted by Hill's about their Science Diet product. "The double-masked, randomized, two-year study of 38 dogs concluded that dogs fed Prescription Diet k/d live twice as long as dogs fed a composite grocery dog food brand. At the study's conclusion, four times as many dogs fed Prescription Dietk/d� were still living."[13]
The study above proves nothing. First, what exactly is a "composite grocery store food brand"? And why on earth would Hill's choose to test against it? Second, when it says their dogs live twice as long, how long is that exactly? Third, what kind of an endorsement is "... four times as many dogs were still living"? All this study shows is that their product kills fewer dogs than the composite grocery store brand.
Companies like Hill's are quick to denounce raw diets (although many high quality kibble manufacturers do in fact recommend that their food be supplemented with raw products). But ask yourself why, with all the resources at their disposal to conduct ridiculous studies against grocery store composite brands, they never test their products against raw diets.
The standards that govern the pet food industry are always evolving, and manufacturers constantly learn more about what is essential. In the 60�s, we saw sick Alpo Dogs; dogs that were fed an all-meat diet promoted by pet food companies as being complete and balanced. In the 60s and 70s we saw sick cats until manufacturers realized that taurine was an essential amino acid. In the pet food regulations in 1978, the vitamin A minimum level for cats was 10,000 IU/kg. In 1985 it was 3,333 IU/kg. Now it�s 5,000 IU/kg.[14] Science is a continuum. Are we so arrogant to assume that we have now learned everything there is to learn, that we can learn nothing new?
Nutritionists recommend switching among two or three different pet food products every few months. The FDA Centre for Veterinary Medicine, in their newsletter to consumers, says nutritional advice for people to eat a wide variety of foods also applies to pets. Doing so helps ensure that a deficiency doesn't develop for some as yet unknown nutrient required for good health. [15] But then later in the exact same article, the following appears: The nutritional adequacy statement assures consumers that a product meets all of a pet's nutritional needs. What is missing is the statement as far as we know, which may be very little.
What is credible science today was laughable yesterday. For 100 years doctors scoffed at the idea that ulcers could be caused by bacteria, and cured by simple antibiotics. Meanwhile, millions of people suffered. Of course we now know that the majority of ulcers are caused by bacteria, and can easily be cured in the course of 10-14 days. This learning shows us the importance of ensuring that we continually learn with an open mind. We don't know everything, and we likely never will.