Mary's question from yesterday actually had a second part that I'm discussing today.
My dog is mostly Boxer, and I have been reading a lot about the breed. I have been reading some about something called "the raw diet." Do you know much about it, and would you recommend this diet to your patients if it were done correctly?
Sometimes called the "BARF" (Bones And Raw Food) diet, this is something gaining a little popularity in the last few years. You can go online and find many sites promoting the wonders of feeding raw foods. They talk about the great benefits of no processed and manufactured foods, no artificial ingredients and preservatives, and how these diets more closely duplicate a wild canine's natural diet. By reading these sources, you could easily get the feel that anyone feeding commercial pet foods is doing their pet more harm than good, and only by feeding a BARF diet will your pet live long and healthy to its full potential.
Hogwash. Complete and utter hogwash. I could be more blunt, but there may be youngsters reading. But if I may be blunt....."male bovine excrement".
Proponents of raw foods are on the fringes of veterinary medicine and animal care, and are far from being mainstream. You will be hard-pressed to find any veterinary college faculty who are big proponents of this kind of diet. And I have never heard of any board-certified veterinary nutritionists that are fans of raw diets. Though I don't have hard numbers, I would venture to say that well over 90% of veterinarians would be against raw diets. And there are some very good reasons for this.
Saying that this is closer to a canine's natural diet is completely true. However, this ignores many important facts. A dog's digestive tract is not the same as a wolf's or wild dog's. Dogs have been domesticated for about 15,000 years, and have been selectively bred by humans during this time. Our modern species do have some significant differences from their wild ancestors. Even among dog breeds, there are subtle differences in the digestive systems of certain breeds, as well as their nutritional needs. Visit a pet specialty store such as PETsMART or PetCo some time and look at the breed-specialized diets of many manufacturers. What this means is that you can't assume that a wolf's natural diet would be beneficial for your shih tzu, lab, or boxer.
Second, wild canines live far shorter lives than pet dogs, sometimes as much as half the life-span. Part of this is due to the improved nutrition and health of pet dogs. There has been considerable research and studies about dog and cat nutrition. Modern foods, especially high-quality ones, have a lot of scientific data behind them. The quality of this nutrition is far superior to putting together a raw diet.
Third, think about whether or not you would eat raw food yourself. Forgetting the fact that raw chicken would be a bit disgusting to most people, consider why we cook our food, and why some states have laws preventing beef from being cooked rare. Raw foods have the potential of having hidden microscopic parasites in the meat. There can also be considerable amounts of bacteria contaminating the meat. Eating these foods raw leaves your pet at risk for serious diseases such as salmonella or trichinosis. These diseases can be fatal, or at a minimum cause very serious illness that can be expensive to treat (if even possible). Even handling the meat could put yourself or your human family at risk for contracting these diseases. That's why physicians tell us to avoid using cutting boards after putting raw meat on them until we have washed the board.
I can't deny that the proponents of BARF diets can point to certain benefits of their recommended diets. However, in my professional medical opinion, and having read discussions about this topic in veterinary journals by nutritional specialists, I strongly believe that the risks and problems far outweigh any benefits.
So to answer the last part of your question, Mary....I would never recommend these diets to any of my clients under any circumstances, and would never feed them to my own pets.
2 comments:
Dr. Bern DVM,
The comments you made in the first paragraph are exactly how I feel about feeding a raw food diet. I couldn’t have said it better. I find several of your other comments however, lacking sufficient justification and supportive evidence to support the statements.
We all have the freedom to be able to voice our opinions. The recent elections have verified that fact.
I feel the need to challenge you on several of your comments in the article.
Your comments are what I call typical vet responses that I usually get from vets that have only been educated from one perspective. (That being from classes taught by the dry food manufacturers.)
On the contrary, raw feeders are mostly concerned about the health and well being of their pets. That is why they have decided to switch, because they have experienced serious problems on heat processed foods. Your comment about faculty at vet schools being hard pressed to being proponents of raw feeding-- this is changing. We re getting asked to teach classes at vet schools on the benefits and comparisons to feeding heat processed diets. Maybe the light is being turned on to the new students that represent our future health advocates.
You mention that over 90% of vets would be against raw feeding. This would be a tough statistic to support. Some of our very best distributors are converted traditional vets that have seen dramatic success on the tougher cases that traditional medicine has not been able to cure. The pendulum is swinging the other way and you may find yourself as the contrarian vet.
I question your logic on your comments regarding the digestive comparison to the wolf. Since when did the dog adapt to eating grains as an appropriate choice of nourishment?
Also, hog wash prevails regarding the need for variations in the diets for different breeds. How do they accomplish that in the wild. It is all marketing hog wash as you put it to get the public to accept this marketing blitz. It sells food- that is all it does. The vet prescribed prescription diets are another rip off. If dogs and cats were fed correctly from the start there would be no need to alter their feeding formulas.
The amount of research and money spent by manufacturers making heat processed food has convinced the public that because of that they must be safe and adequate to feed. Wrong!- the recent Menu Foods recall and several other major recalls have convinced the public that pet food in general needs to be better scrutinized before making that choice for your pet. We are all subjected to possible bacteria and pathogen contamination. To make a statement that the risks and problems of feeding a raw meat diet far outweighs the benefits is EXACTLY the way I feel about feeding my dog a heat processed food. Why would I want to feed my dog a food that is loaded with chemicals, preservatives, fat sprays, palatability enhancers, low quality ingredients, and laced with high levels of soluble carbohydrates. Haven’t we learned that feeding a natural, fresh array of high quality ingredients that are free of all the harmful elements in dry food is a better way to go?
Can you support your concerns about raw food causing serious injury from bacteria and pathogens? I have made raw food formulas for 32 years without having a recall, or serious food borne injury in the file. I hear the comments often but I never hear the supportive evidence to back up the allegation.
You claim that you would never recommend a raw meat diet to your clients. I FEEL THE SAME WAY-I would NEVER recommend feeding a heat processed kibble diet to my dog or any client’s dog. So I guess we agree to disagree.
Wow, what a reply. I will have to respectfully disagree with you, and point to the lack of scientific data supporting raw food diets over prepared foods. Raw foods are not necessarily better quality diets. By the same arguments that you present, we as humans should be eating raw foods because that's what every other primate eats. According to this line of reasoning we should not be eating pre-cooked, processed foods. And I doubt that you yourself eat unprocessed grains, uncooked meat, and never eat cooked vegetables. Cooking and processing foods can reduce some nutrients, so you do have to be careful about it. But the science behind processed pet foods is well-established though decades of research, including long-term and lifetime studies of pets.
I do realize that proponents of raw food diets are truly and honestly doing what they feel is best for pets. However, I strongly believe that this is based on incorrect information. Because of this sincere belief, I doubt that I will be able convince you otherwise. However,to address your specific points...
Faculty in veterinary colleges are still predominantly opposed to raw diets. That is a fact. Whether or not this is changing will be seen. I also severely doubt that the veterinary community will whole-heartedly embrace raw foods at any point. I have been in the field for 24 years, and have seen no tendencies in this direction.
My points of the digestive systems of wolves versus dogs are completely valid. True, dogs do not have evolved abilities (naturally or artificially) to digest processed grains. However, they are also not harmful. And I do disagree regarding breed differences. There are significant though subtle physiological differences between many breeds. For example, Labrador retrievers have a different type of coat than a poodle, requiring different considerations. The digestive tract of a small breed dog is proportionally much larger than a large breed dog's. And there are numerous breed tendencies for various health problems. There are no breed differences in the wild, because there are no breeds in the wild. All current breeds are completely created by humans. So that argument is invalid, and not supported by scientific data.
I can also absolutely say that veterinary prescription diets are completely valid, and have dozens upon dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies to support their benefit. These are independent of the food manufacturers, and have stood up to decades of scrutiny. There is no solid data to support the idea that medical problems would be solved by feeding a "natural" diet, or that specialized formulations are not helpful. We know in human medicine that certain diets can be beneficial in certain medical conditions (such as heart disease). The same is true in pets. As an example, several studies have shown that low protein diets prolong the life of dogs and cats in renal failure. You cannot get this kind of diet from raw or other "natural" foods. Do you really think that a "natural", raw diet is equally beneficial for pets with cardiac, liver, or kidney disease? Such a belief would be contrary to current medical knowledge.
There is undoubtedly a risk of bacterial or parasitic contamination with raw diets. This is incontrovertible, and to deny it ignores fact. The fact you have had no problems is more a factor of careful preparation and handling, with a bit of luck. If you feel that such risks or minimal, then I would encourage you to eat the raw food yourself. You can easily look at current and past societies that have eaten raw and/or undercooked meat to see the great increase in the rates of bacterial infection and parasitism. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean that there is no risk. Denying that there are health risks of raw meat flies in the face of well-accepted principles in both human and veterinary medicine.
In the end I will again fall back on scientific data and the opinion of hundreds of specialists and nutritionists. There have been articles in veterinary journals that have reviewed this topic, and none have found that the benefits outweigh the risks.
When presented with scientific evidence to support raw foods over commercially processed foods, I will be willing to revise my opinion. Until then I will stand by my beliefs, as they are supported by the overwhelming majority of the veterinary profession for the last 40+ years. Let's both line up the numbers of unbiased, peer-reviewed articles, and medical specialists on either side, and see which has the greater numbers. I doubt that even you could deny that the weight of evidence and opinion falls solidly against BARF diets.
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