Everything you need to know about a raw food diet for your pet
Everything You Need to Know About a Raw Food Diet for Your Pet
Finding the perfect diet for your pet can be challenging. As many of us revert to more traditional ways of eating, it’s natural to consider what we feed our furry friends. The growing popularity of raw pet food has some pet owners going back to basics. However, there’s disagreement in the industry about how far back we should go. Is a raw food diet what nature intended, or is it a step too far?
Due to some risks associated with raw feeding, the veterinary industry has traditionally advised against it. However, more holistic vets view it as a solution for many health issues. We asked four professionals from different sides of the debate to weigh in.
Raw Essentials Vet Dr. Rebecca Brown
Dr. Rebecca Brown spends her days consulting with clients about their pets’ health issues and figuring out how she can help them via a species-appropriate raw diet. She’s long had an interest in whole foods and lives by the quote often credited to Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
Rebecca says the company supports those who choose to give their pets raw food to make sure they do it well. “We frequently observe positive, sometimes phenomenal, health benefits and feel happy to extend this to as many pets as possible.”
She has worked as a vet for 25 years and joined Raw Essentials six years ago. The company has 12 stores around the North Island, as well as an online store, selling freeze-dried and frozen meat, bones, and organs for cats and dogs. Meat and seafood are sourced from sustainable, local sources and include salmon, beef, and chicken, as well as wild pest species such as wallabies, rabbits, and possums.
As well as helping to alleviate some disease states, raw diets can help with coat and body condition, energy levels, and even behavioral issues, she says. But she warns that raw diets are not a panacea for all health conditions and won’t suit every pet. “Disease states can be very complex.”
Do Your Research
My own cat has gone from pedigree food to raw meat and is now on prescription biscuits. My experience was that the raw food completely cleared up his asthma and some digestive issues. However, it may have created other digestive issues, so he is now on a prescription high-fiber food, and unfortunately, his asthma has come back. After researching this story, I suspect I may not have been feeding him a complete raw diet with enough cartilage and bones, which are necessary for fiber and are a source of essential minerals such as calcium and phosphorus.
That’s one of the main issues Jennifer Hamlin sees with raw diets. The senior lecturer and program leader at Otago Polytechnic’s School of Veterinary Nursing and chair of the Allied Veterinary Professional Regulatory Council says that while either raw food or a high-quality commercial diet can work, she encourages those feeding raw to research exactly what their pets need and to talk to professionals to ensure they are doing it right.
“Talk to a lot of different people,” she says. “Focus on people who are objective and thinking about science. One of the biggest problems with people who are feeding their pets raw food diets is that there’s a concern that the animals will be unsafe either because of bones that are not fed properly or because of pathogens in the food. But when that’s properly managed in a safe way, then a raw diet can be a very good diet.”
Some animals are at higher risk if you feed them raw food, so one way around that is to cook the raw food before giving it to them to kill off some of the pathogens. Bones need to be the right size for an animal so they don’t choke and should never be cooked. You should also ensure your pets are eating organs as well as bones, as meat alone does not supply all the required nutrients. And don’t feed your pets raw bones in combination with extensive carbohydrates “because the stomach requires quite a lot of acidity to digest bones, and carbohydrates decrease the acidity of the gut.”
Food for Thought
It takes a bit of research to get it right. If you don’t have the time for that, raw feeding may not be for you, says Jennifer. “Most people don’t have time to do a lot of reading and research to try and find the perfect diet. For those people, a very high-quality commercially prepared pet food diet is probably the best solution.”
She says any of the premium brands are safe to feed to your pets since they heavily invest in research to try to ensure their products are safe and effective. However, she cautions against anything that’s too processed. “We do know by looking at human research and human nutrition that processed foods can actually be harmful to health. And that is what most commercial pet food diets are—they’re processed.”
It’s not a one-size-fits-all answer. Unfortunately, we don’t have a perfect nutritional profile for an animal. And it’s the same with humans—there is no perfect diet that humans should adopt.
The Association of American Feed Control Officials, which regulates pet food in the US, sets minimal requirements for product ingredients, but that doesn’t mean those foods are ideal nutritional sources. “The majority of conventional pet food diets are sourced from animals that are not going to be used for human consumption,” says Jennifer. “That means they might have drugs in their system, they might be diseased, they might have been very stressed or ill for a long time before they died. There’s not very good regulation around the source of those animal products.”
There is, however, a growing number of New Zealand brands producing ethically sourced pet food, marrying the demand for raw food with the need for convenience. These products are still processed, albeit not as much as conventional pet foods.
