Sunday, April 08, 2007

Pet food recall, raw diet, dog nutrition, etc.

Everyone has heard of the pet food recall by now.
It's bigger then you think.
(Keeps growing too, 22 brands of dry dog biscuits have just been added, mostly carried by Walmart who kisses China's butt for cheap crap so that American consumerbots can buy lots and lots of cheap crap but I digress.)
Someone in my advanced agility class lost a lovely, healthy dog. She was feeding him one of the tainted pouch foods because she had a bitch in heat and her Dennis was off his food as a result; like people, dogs enjoy junk food. He got really sick. She took him to the vet and he pulled through. So she took him home and fed him more of the pouch foods. He got very sick again. Back to the vet and he died at the beginning of March. Dennis is now a statistic, reported to the FDA.
Of course Menu Foods and their corporate consumers were already killing dogs and cats in their laboratories because they knew there was something wrong. But they didn't want to let anyone know. Bad for business, you see. Maybe they thought it was just a few lots of bad food and nobody would notice?
Anyhow so Dennis's owner and her vet had no clue about the food, nobody did at the beginning of March. Menu Foods and their associates let people keep on poisoning their pets because, well because they didn't want to lose money or see their stock drop.
According to a news story I heard yesterday, some Chinese official is saying they've never exported wheat gluten to Canada or the US. Liars.
In fact, check the rest of the Blog Pound site, Leigh-Ann has written several comprehensive articles, as have many others.
Royal Canin has been hit with a class action lawsuit recently for having excessive amounts of vitamin D in the food, causing harm to an undetermined number of pets.
Last year, of course there was the big Diamond Foods recall for toxic mold, which also caused death and organ damage in many animals.
And the FDA recently issued yet another alert about salmonella in commercially sold pet chews and rawhides.
So pphhhhttt to any vet who tells you that feeding raw or homecooked to your pets is unsafe and not balanced and blah blah blah. If pet food was safe and balanced, why does it keep getting "new and improved" with new and different ingredients?
Take a look at animals fed a PROPER raw or cooked diet and you will see healthy, shiny coat and skin, strong clean teeth, great muscle tone and overall excellent condition. Is diet a miracle cure? Of course not. But it does make one hell of a difference.
A goodly percentage of people I know with show and performance dogs either feed raw, or very good quality kibble, or some combination. No serious dog person I know of feeds crap food like Pedigree or Iams. I can usually tell a dog fed a monotonous inferior pellet diet with a glance. Especially when they're a few years old and poor care has taken its toll.

Y'all know I don't bother feeding processed pellets to my pets and haven't for many years. I find it utterly bizzare, really. I feed raw and I wrote this book which is still doing extremely well, thank y'all very much! Four years after publication and I'm a top ranked Amazon.com book, cool.
Here's the official book site.
So. I have a yahoogroup for those interested in feeding raw, or generally discussing canine nutrition, health and stuff like that. Margot and I have seen a big upswing in new members in the last few weeks - people who are willing to try feeding non-commercial processed diets because they've been scared by all the news.
Mary has a home cooking group.
Tons of information in the archives and files of each group for anyone curious....there's a TON of bad advice on animal nutrition out there so beware!
I know I just tossed a bunch of information and links out here and in the grand scheme of things, what you feed your dog or cat isn't really that important.
Except when it is.

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10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Carina,

The deer thing? You'd think I would have thought it was cool, cuz my dogs eat animal parts and all, but it wasn't. It honestly was the worst day of my life. The deer screamed and screamed and I heard bones crunching and breaking (because I was right there getting kicked by the deer because I was trying to pull my dog off.) In the end, after the deer died, we had to rush my dog to the ER because he had been kicked in the face so many times on one side of his head, and he was bleeding out of an eye and it was swollen shut. So he had to be sedated and his eye flushed out and his face shaved and cleaned and he had a concussion (sp?). He was fine after that, but I wasn't. I didn't sleep for weeks because anytime I closed my eyes all I could see and hear was that friggen deer! I ended up having to go to the Dr to get anxiety pills to help me sleep. I now sleep normally without them since this happened about a year ago, but I CAN'T look at deer anymore. I'm mad they are so stupid (the damn thing jumped a fence INTO a horse pasture and practically landed on top of my dog. Idiot.)

So there you have it. :)

Btw, after that happened? I really found out how stupid people are too. Like the people who then told me my dog would kill me in my sleep because he had a taste for blood or that he would go after kids and was aggressive. Although honestly, most of them were women, because all the guys I told thought it was the coolest thing ever and wanted to meet my dog. So whatever. I always asked the people who thought my dog would eat me, "So umm, does your dog chase rabbits or squirrels?" There response would be yes, and I was like, "Ok, so my dog is just bigger and so therefore so is his prey." For some reason they still didn't buy it.

Anyway, Happy Easter. Thanks for posting about the pet food recall.

12:17 PM  
Blogger yellowdoggranny said...

oh man carina..I didn't know the dogs had brought the deer down..I just thought it was a shot deer and you let the dogs have it..how awful for you and the deer...but you're right..they are stupid..
I am trying to find a good raw diet cook book for cats...I can't get Annie to eat organ meat at all..and I have tried everything..she won't eat anything raw except for birds she catches..but loves cooked chicken and turkey..doesn't like beef...so it's hard to find something she will eat ..she's picky even with canned food...little winch..for someone who was eating out of the garbage when I found her..she sure is picky....
congrats on your book..how cool is that...yudungud

2:31 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Granny,
I can't answer for Carina, but as far as I know, Coop and Daphne didn't bring the deer down. She got it from someone.

8:44 PM  
Blogger threecollie said...

Thanks for this post. Very informative, so I linked to you and to the story about the scope of the problem.

9:06 PM  
Blogger Semavi Lady said...

egads GDA, what a story. People do get weird about dogs getting aggressive if they have raw meat. And we read another version where people that eat meat are said to be more violent than vegans. (Anyone heard of ALF?)

Carina, great rant! I'm not a raw feeder but I do feed raw a few times a month. I actually raised and kept Anatolians on Pedigree Mealtime and my oldest Pedigree Anatolian died 2 months short of his 15th birthday, in his sleep. No chronic illness other than slowly increasing dementia, some incontinence and some arthritis in his last two/three years. Maybe the raw food helped keep Aslan going. He was an awsome dog... (sigh... tear...) I am feeding Kirkland's Chicken and Rice right now since I'm getting worried about GMO corn. It had been found in some people food (mexican corn products) and was a cause of low fertility. I have also noticed lots of dog breeders and losing hundreds of dollars due to missed pregnancies in their females.

I don't know what is going on. :(

We had a few breeding misses too. Kinda spendy considering progesterone tests to get the timing right, chilled or frozen semen shipments(we rarely have the right male for a pairing), and TCI or surgical implant depending on age of female and the quality of semen... ugh!

Oh, this comment is too sad and angsty. Bah...

Wanted to thank you for sharing the Easter doggie pic. Had a great laugh from it. I ran it through PSP and used it for an Easter Card. I guess I'm sitting there right next to YDG with a wicked grin. ;)

And about what time of the year is Carina going to Turkey?

2:44 AM  
Blogger Carina said...

Yikes Diana!
JS - yah what Charles said. The deer I got was hit by a car, humanely dispatched by a cop and brought to a wildlife rehabber friend. She took the legs & back meat and offered me the rest.
3Collie - thanks!
SL - Well, see I knew a Serious Dog Person was going to show up and say they fed store brand kibble LOL! I shouldn't be a food snob, really. The longest lived dog I've ever known personally was a feisty little yellow mutt named Chester who lived to be 23 years old on Alpo kibble...
Come to that I have read that some breeders say a raw diet produces smaller litters.
My mother just got back from Turkey yesterday. :)

11:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very informative, very convincing post. I've known I had to make some changes and you have given me some directions that make sense and that I can handle. Thanks, Carina

1:26 PM  
Blogger Jill Bryant said...

Wow - great info. I don't feed raw because it's just not do-able right now - Honey's on Artemis and I might go back to Solid Gold. I didn't know that about Royal Canin. I just was trying Honey on it but (not to be too graphic but I know I'm with dog people so here goes) I didn't like the look of her stools on it so back to Artemis.

BTW, I did a wimpy new post just 'cause you cared enough to ask :) I'm crazed for one more week but then I have to get back and catch up on everything with yours and Jan's blogs - my window to the bigger dog world. :)

3:38 AM  
Blogger Semavi Lady said...

Carina, thanks. I'm not always so serious but lately I really could use a break. Maybe play with my "The Sims 2" and make a few virtual pets and torture some virtual family with strange experiments. :)

Oh right... when I find time. :p

As to raw food and breeding dogs, there are some long time raw feeders that fed generations of puppies on raw, but began to have some problems later on. The ones that had these problems, I have no idea if they used prey model or veggie/Billinghurst style, or whatever, but the gist of some of the discussions I gained is that while the mom is pregnant, she should be on a kibble food because the raw breeders that had developed issues tried reverting back to kibble just for the duration of the pregnancy and lactation. They found that their puppies were 100% as good as ever. At weaning time, the feeding programs revert to raw. I'm just the messenger. :)

BUT... there are breeders that say they are "still" (how many litters?) going strong. I don't know if they are RMB/prey model or Billinghurst style either. I did see some mention of the need for higher carbohydrate and a food source of folic acid. So the successful ones may be using pasta and greens along with their raw diets for moms in a family way.

I'm glad your mom is back. I thought you were going to Turkey this year but if she brought back some goodies for you, that's all good too. :)

3:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

can I feed a dog raw meat that has been in the freezer since 2001----or is that too long and poses health issues?

9:27 PM  

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