Raw Meaty Bones For Healthy Pets

Cats: Beneficiaries of the Raw-Meaty-Bones Diet

2010-12-31T12:43:00.000-08:00

When the Kona Raw Pet- Food Co-op began, a little more than a year ago, the original members were dog owners. These dog owners may have fed a cat or two, but our focus was clearly on raw-meaty-bones for dogs. The balance is changing now, as more cat owners, without dogs, join the co-op.

From research on pet diets, I knew that even veterinarians, who are tragically opposed to raw-feeding, acknowledge that cats are "Obligate Carnivores". They're taught that phrase in vet school. What that phrase means to misled vets, however, is that commercial cat foods must contain a higher percentage of proteins than dog foods and that cats can't live without some amino acids in their foods that they don't produce themselves (notably taurine, the absence of which in commercial cat foods killed a lot of cats).

I had a memorable conversation with the vet who examined the Maine Coon kitten I imported from Australia in January 2009. Her statement began, "Cats are obligate carnivores, so you must feed her...". I expected the word MEAT to appear in the following phrase, but NO. "... you must feed her a balanced, 100% complete dry cat food." I almost laughed out loud, but managed to restrain myself and change the subject.

Dry foods are bad for cats, whose desert origins incline them not to drink enough water to offset the dehydrating effects of dry foods. Cats need moisture in their food. Further, pet-food manufacturers skirt the margins of sustainable diets with as little animal proteins and fats as they must include to prolong domestic cats' lives for barely half of their natural lifespans. According to cat experts, such as Elizabeth Hodgkins, domestic cats can live into their twenties, but practically none get past their mid-teens, because poor diets make them susceptible to all manner of degenerative diseases. Cats need to eat whole small prey or its best substitute, raw-meaty-bones.

My cat, Daisy, was weaned on raw minced kangaroo meat and Royal Canin Maine Coon Kitten Food (yes, Royal Canin actually produces a food with that name, to their eternal shame). When Daisy arrived at nearly 5 months of age, she was not prepared to chew her food or to accept strange flavors, such as raw chicken and beef. In Hawaii, I could not offer kangaroo meat, and I certainly was not going to feed her Royal Canin Maine Coon Cat Food. Feeding Daisy was a problem from the start, because cats are very attached to the foods on which they are weaned. Problems with changing cats' diets are discussed on the Raw Meaty Bones web site.

Turned out Daisy loved Wysong's raw-dehydrated meats. Mixing raw chicken and beef with Dream Treats or Archetype worked. She became skillful at chewing up raw chicken legs and wings. She liked beef heart and kidney. She didn't starve, but she was underweight for a year. Instead of weighing 15 or 16 pounds, her weight hovered around 12 pounds -- until Wysong came out with their new Epigen.

Epigen is a starch-free dry food for cats and dogs. Epigen is more than 60% meat, more than 60% proteins, and the rest is mostly animal fats -- in other words, a convenient but suitable dry food for carnivorous pets.

For reasons unknown at this time, cats LOVE Epigen. Not just my cat, but all the cats of Kona Raw members. We collect amusing tales of cats running to eat when the Epigen bag is opened for the first time. Must be something in the aroma. Cats gobble up Epigen, fending off the dogs for whom the bowl was intended. Cats don't seem to know this is a new food they should instinctively avoid, as they do other new foods.

Daisy now weighs 16 pounds, on her way to full maturity -- around 18 pounds at three years-of-age. Other skinny and sick cats are similarly being helped by the addition of Epigen to their raw diets.

Several cat owners who recently joined the co-op have sick to very sick cats. There are cats with chronic renal failure, with wide-spread food allergies, with tumors, and other distressing maladies. Owners are feeding raw-meaty-bones to make their pets well or to give them happier lives until the end. So far, owners are reporting good results with cats accepting raw meats and chicken bones. They also find that Epigen is a helpful addition to their cats' diets.

Whereas dogs will eat almost anything (that doesn't eat them first, as one vet told me years ago), cats are much more selective in what they will consume. Some cats won't eat beef liver; other thrive on it. Some cats love green tripe; others sniff and find it as distasteful as most pet owners do. Some cats crunch up chicken bones as well as dogs do; others won't chew up anything harder than an Epigen pellet. It's trial-and-error to devise a good raw diet for cats, and repeated trials at that. By combining raw meats with Epigen, owners feel more secure that their cats are getting nutrients they need to get well and thrive.

I have much to learn from experienced cat owners in the Kona Raw co-op. The canine-o-centric focus of the co-op has changed. Felines rule!

Raw-Fed Dogs Just Look and Act Different

2010-12-31T11:15:00.000-08:00

A member of our Kona Raw Pet Food Co-op was walking with his German shepherd/Husky mix along the shore, south of the Place of Refuge National Historical Park (Pu'uhonua o Honaunau). This is a great spot for dogs to cavort off-lead when park rangers are not looking, or passively assenting to well-behaved dogs having a good run. Dogs love to wade in and explore the tide pools along this stretch of shore.

As Bud ran along the trail with his dog, he encountered a stranger, who said,

"Isn't it great you feed your dog raw!"

Rather stunned by the stranger's accurate assessment, Bud said,

"How do you know I feed him raw?"

The stranger identified himself as a visitor from Canada and explained,

"I can tell from his coat and his attitude."

Amazing but true. Raw-fed dogs do have great coats -- no itches or hot spots, no thin, scraggly fur so common to kibble-fed dogs. But his attitude? Of course! Dogs fed raw-meaty-bones are happy, jaunty, and satisfied. Their behavior brims with satisfaction and self-confidence -- the attitude the Canadian visitor had seen in Bud's dog.

There are profound differences between raw-fed dogs and unfortunate dogs on starchy, pet-food diets. Some of it shows in their coats and behaviors. A lot of it is hidden in their long-term health.

This week I heard another series of fatal cancer, tumor,and kidney-failure stories from prospective puppy buyers, who lost treasured pets to premature deaths. These deaths are caused by long-time, monotonous feeding of inappropriate diets. After some discussion, these pet owners are easy to convert to raw-feeding for their next puppies. They feel guilty for not knowing what is obvious to them now, for not having saved their pets misery and early deaths. They each had spent hundreds and thousands of dollars in veterinary bills to try to save their dogs.

Carnivorous pets require raw meat and meaty bones to maintain health. You'd think that everyone would see this obvious truth. It's hard for pet owners to get past veterinarians, however, who stand squarely in opposition to raw-meaty-bones. How much longer can vets be blind to the health of raw-fed pets and to the many unnecessary illnesses caused by the starchy pet-foods they sell? Will they ever be held accountable for the untold misery and outlandish expenses they cause? Surely, a day-of-reckoning is coming.

Meanwhile, we can look at raw-fed dogs in a different light -- you can tell they're different by their healthy coats and happy attitudes.

Wysong Gets It, But Will They End Their Own Starchy Foods ?

2010-12-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

The new Wysong dry food, Epigen, is a breakthrough in dry food manufacture, because it contains no starches. In a ground-breaking process, Wysong was able to bind little nuggets of dried meats with vegetable and animal proteins, instead of starches. Epigen offers the convenience of dry food that requires no refrigeration in a healthier, high-protein formulation for carnivorous pets.

What, then, does Dr. Wysong say about pet diets to promote Epigen? Here's a quote from the Epigen bag:

Wysong Epigen is a truly new (patent pending) pet food innovation. For the first time, a dry extruded 'kibble' pet food more closely resembles the meat-based, high protein, starchless foods carnivores are genetically designed to eat.

Pets are genetically indistinguishable for their wild carnivorous counterparts. They are designed to eat as carnivores eat. Nowhere in nature do canines and felines consume a steady diet high in starches (a poly-sugar). Yet, contrary to the natural model, pets today eat such foods meal after meal, day after day, year after year.

Not living and eating -- as nature intended has consequences. Research has shown that a steady high starch (sugar) diet can lead to a host of chronic degenerative conditions. These include insulin resistance, diabetes, dental disease, arthritis, immune compromise, cancer, premature aging, and more.

In fairness, Dr. Wysong has always promoted variety in pets diets and decried veterinary advice to feed the same (usually starchy) food, meal after meal, day after day, year after year. Wysong's 100 Pet Health Truths Program condemns sole feeding of any food, especially commercial pet foods. Wysong's advice about variety includes fresh raw meats and meaty bones, but not exclusively. Variety also includes Wysong's own starchy kibbles and cooked canned mush, however. "Nowhere in nature do canines and felines consume" Wysong's starchy kibbles or cooked canned mush, either. Again, from the Epigen bag:

Wysong advises against feeding any one pet food exclusively. Feeding one food fosters the development of ingredient intolerances (allergies) and other health ailments. You would never eat one food exclusively, and neither should your pet.

Augment your pet's diet with other Wysong Diets, such as our canned foods, raw diets like Archetype Diets, Dream Treats, UnCanny and others. Whole fresh grocery foods can and should also be a part of any healthy feeding regime, You need not feed only 'pet' foods.

One wonders where this is all going. Will Wysong cease producing its long-established starchy pet foods and cooked meats? Even granting their Canine Maintenance and Feline Vitality use healthier starches and better supplements than other commercial pet foods, can they really promote these products when they admit how damaging they are for pets' health? Compared to other pet-food manufacturers, Wysong tells the truth about carnivorous pets, even it their corporate behavior is not consistent with the diet information they provide.

Feeding Epigen is not nearly as good for your carnivorous pet as a full raw-meaty-bones diet, but pet owners are fallible. They run out of meaty bones, they can't store enough meaty bones to last the week until they can get more meaty bones, and they forget to order meaty bones. All of the above, and more, compromise pet owners' ability to comply with the best feeding regime.

Kona Raw Pet Fiod Co-op members have eagerly adopted Epigen as part of their raw-meaty-bones diet. Why? Convenience is a major reason, but there are other issues. Some pet owners cannot believe that pets get all the nutrients they need from a simple diet of raw meats and meaty bones. So ingrained are the spurious notions of "balanced" and "100% compete" pet foods, it is very difficult for some to believe that a simple meats and meaty-bones diet will suffice. They feel more confident about their feeding regime when they include a dry food that lists all those good minerals and vitamins on the bag.

Still other pet owners are simply more comfortable feeding a few human-type meats and meaty bones and supplementing with Epigen. These pet owners cannot bring themselves to feed tracheas, lungs, spleens, green tripe and other "Yucky!"meats.that are perfectly suitable for pets. Feeding only meats and meaty bones that are suitable for human consumption is expensive. Epigen is included as a less expensive part of the diet.

My 15 dogs like Epigen, but they prefer any raw meats and meaty bones. Six days a week, I just hand them suitably sized hunks of raw meaty bones. No bowls required. About once a week, I give them a bowl of two raw eggs, messy meats like beef liver and kidneys, a chunk of cheese, any leftover vegetables from my kitchen, a tablespoon of Spirulina and Call of the Wild, and a cup or so of Epigen. This atypical meal of the week gives them some "extras" they may not need, but it makes me feel more confident they are getting "everything" they need..

Now, I have a confession. My cat adores Epigen. Daisy is a two-year-old Maine coon cat. She has been quite skinny on a pure raw-meaty-bones diet. I worried about her being under-weight. She eats chicken drumsticks and thighs (including the bone) and giblets, beef skirt meat, ground green tripe, and other assorted raw meats and bones -- but she never ate enough to weigh more than 12 pounds, which is very slim for a large Maine coon cat.. When I opened a bag of Epigen, Daisy came running. She gobbled it down. Some months later, Daisy eats rmb and Epigen, and her weight has increased to a healthier 16 pounds.

My observation that Daisy loves Epigen is replicated a dozen times among Kona Raw members. Cats that previously would eat only one food (usually a terribly unhealthy kibble or canned mush) eagerly eat Epigen. Many cats turn up their noses at raw meaty bones, if they have been raised on Whiskas or Fancy Feast (both dreadful). Owners may succeed at getting them to accept an rmb diet, but it's a long, slow process. For unknown reasons, cats accept Epigen eagerly. My son's cat, a Humane Society kitty raised on Fancy Feast, would not accept ANY other food. I was present in the kitchen when he opened a bag of Epigen. The cat came running, leaped onto the counter and mewed. Skeptically, he put some Epigen in a small bowl. After Lily gobbled it down, he asked what on earth they put in this food!

Indeed, what do they put in this food? Chicken meal is the biggest component. Although organic chicken is listed first on the label and chicken giblets are third,, fresh chicken is 75% water that is removed in processing. Chicken meal is dry to start; thus, the largest component in Epigen. Chicken meal is cooked, processed left-overs from commercially raised chickens. It does not include feathers, beaks, and feet, but everything else. Actually, chicken meal is pretty nourishing, as dry food ingredients go.

After chicken meal, vegetable proteins from potatoes, rice, corn, and/or wheat are listed. A good guess is this food is about 72% meat proteins and fats and 20% vegetable proteins (rest is 12% moisture and 3.5% fiber). Although it may not be the ideal carnivore food (it's mostly cooked chicken, after all), it's a huge improvement over other dry pet foods.

Two new versions of Epigen -- Venison and Fish -- are due to be produced at any moment. In fact, Wysong is behind schedule in producing the new Epigens, because they are overwhelmed with orders for the original Epigen. The Good News is more pets will be fed a high-protein dry food, and maybe their owners will be nudged to add raw meats and meaty bones to their pets' diets. The Bad News is that Epigen is no substitute for raw-meaty-bones -- the most appropriate diet for carnivorous pets.

Happy Holidays 2010

2010-12-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

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Nestle-Purina's Fraudulent Patent

2010-10-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Suppose you invented a process that enhances nutrition in dry foods for pets? Then, suppose you did not patent it, because you hoped other pet-food manufacturers would adopt it and make their foods healthier as well? Perhaps, this sounds naive, but that's exactly what Dr. Wysong did in the early 1980's with nurtacueticals and probiotic mixes that Wysong sprays on kibbles. Many other pet-food companies adopted the technology and use it to enhance the nutritional value of their dry foods.

Along comes Giant Corporation, Nestle-Purina, whose legal eagles notice that this process, which they don't even use, has not been patented. In 1997, Nestle-Purina applies for and is granted EU and US patents on Wysong's process! Even more outrageously, Nestle-Purina now demands that Wysong pay them licensing fees to use the process Wysong invented!

Wysong hauled out proof that they invented and used the process some 15 years prior to Nestle-Purina's patent. Nestle-Purina lost their EU patent, because the European court agreed that Wysong had invented and long used the process prior to Nestle-Purina's fraudulent patent.

The same battle took place in a US court, where the initial verdict was for Wysong.. Nestle-Purina's legal eagles and billions dollar profits are hard to silence, however. Wysong explains what is happening now (October 2010).

NESTLE/PURINA CONTINUES THEIR SUIT

As you may be aware, Purina sued Wysong in late 2008 for using probiotics on extruded pet foods. This is because in 1997 they were granted a patent for this process. The problem is, Wysong was the inventor of this technology and has used it since the early 1980s -- some 15 plus years PRIOR to the patent. Purina wants Wysong to pay them a licensing fee going back to the date of their patent and Wysong refuses.
Purina hopes to exhaust the financial resources of Wysong in court and force us to pay the licensing fee. If successful in getting Wysong to accede, since we have the strongest proof their patent is not valid, Purina will have a clear path to sue the two dozen or so other manufacturers who have copied Wysong’s probiotic technology and began using it after the patent date.

Although we have been able to get the patent office to overturn their patent, a fleet of Purina attorneys appealed and had key elements of the patent retained. So we remain in the thick of the suit, financing a defense of a technology that brings great health benefits to animals and humans (a technology Purina does not even use on their own products!), while the rest of the industry sits on the sidelines.

Obviously, other pet-food companies are not having to pay legal expenses in this suit. Only Wysong is being financially drained. Nestle-Purina picked on a small, family-owned company that not only invented the process they seek fraudulently to patent but one that can be more easily drained of resources than, say, Proctor & Gamble or Mars.

If they exhaust Wysong's resources and retain this patent, they can bill every other pet-food company that uses Wysong's technology for licensing fees from 1997 to the present -- a nice financial windfall for Nestle-Purina.

What isn't wrong with this picture?.

Pet-Food Tainted AKC Solicits Puppy Registrations from Breeders

2010-10-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

Earlier blog entries detailed the dramatic decline in AKC purebred dog registrations over the past 20 years. The AKC is losing ground to other registries and losing credibility with the general public, who no longer see the AKC as a venerable nonprofit organization. AKC partnerships with commercial pet-food and drug companies have tarnished their once-shining reputation.

Loss of purebred dog registrations is not only a moral blow but a huge financial defeat for the AKC. So, how to turn around their finances? First, they decided to register crossbred dogs (aka mutts) to participate in AKC obedience, agility, and other performance activities -- first in separate classes from purebreds but later accepted into the general fold. Every mutt registration nets AKC at least $20, and every mutt entry into an event, more dollars.

Second, they decided to lean on breeders who register litters of purebred puppies to reveal information on their puppy buyers. Here's their pitch:

Dear Sandra Scarr,

As part of the "front lines" of purebred dogs, we rely on our loyal breeders to communicate the benefits and importance of AKC registration to their puppy buyers. To ensure a strong future for you, your fellow breeders, and all purebred dogs, we need all of our breeders to make a concerted effort to ensure that every puppy in each litter you have bred gets registered with the AKC. We have implemented a new initiative to help you accomplish this goal.

The AKC has begun sending all breeders who register a litter an email asking them to provide us with their new puppy buyers contact information. The email includes information on our new Online Litter Record Service. This service allows breeders to supply AKC with new puppy buyer contact information online in an easy to use format. If the breeder does not want to use the new online service a link to a printable version of the litter record is also available. The new puppy buyers will then receive an e-mail or letter from AKC detailing the benefits and importance of AKC registration.

The new puppy buyers will only be contacted by the AKC. Their names will not be sold or used for any other promotions or marketing when given through this initiative. As you have experienced, puppy buyers tend to be more concerned about caring for their new puppy at the time of purchase, and often forget about one of the most important steps of responsible dog ownership – AKC registration. Our aim is to reinforce their decision of purchasing an AKC puppy and to educate them on the many benefits that they can receive with registration.

The AKC is dedicated to promoting responsible dog ownership and educating new puppy buyers about registration benefits and the important programs that registration supports. Registration dollars help the AKC fund important educational programs, support the research of health issues through donations and continue to subsidize AKC events. Our registration numbers also help us to maintain legislative influence and ensure that like-minded organizations continue to support the AKC through alternative revenue programs and sponsorships.

With your support, and by working together, we will be able to take the necessary steps to ensure AKC's long and healthy future as the nation's preeminent purebred dog registry.
For more information or to use our new Online Litter Record Service please visit us at akc.org/litrec; or e-mail us at dogreg@akc.org (please use "Litter Records" in the subject line). Please note this service can be used for recent or past litters.

Sincerely,

David Roberts
VP, Registration and Customer Service

I did not comply with their request, for reasons stated in my reply to Mr. Roberts.

Hello Dave Roberts,

Let me be painfully honest. I do not promote AKC registration for my puppies, because my puppies are raised on the raw-meaty-bones diet, which puppy buyers pledge to continue. AKC's close connection with (aka financial dependence on) pet-food companies is very disturbing, and I do not wish you to inflict distasteful pet-food advertisements on my puppy buyers.

I am appalled that the venerable, nonprofit AKC sends me blatant advertisements for various kinds of cooked carbohydrates that masquerade as dog food. Surely, the AKC knows dogs are a subspecies of wolves, who evolved to eat whole prey. Surely, the AKC knows that starchy commercial pet foods destroy dogs' health. One can only be appalled that the AKC, whose mission is to promote the interests of purebred dogs and their owners, stoops to endorse Iams, Eukanuba, and their ilk, to the huge detriment of canine health.

I follow the AKC's financial travails with interest. Self-inflicted wounds are painful to watch, and the AKC continues to self-destruct. I offer some unsolicited advice to address AKC's financial decline. I wrote these ideas some months ago on my blog (http://rmb4healthypets.blogspot.com):
I were CEO of the AKC, I would be alarmed (at the large, documented losses of registrations and revenue) and contemplate what changes need to be made in my organization. Let me offer a few suggestions:
AKC can improve the health of purebred dogs by incorporating new genetic information in their criteria for participation in AKC activities.
Intact animals, which participate in AKC conformation shows, field trials, rallies, obedience, and agility events should have clearances as non-carriers of all serious genetic disorders common in the breed.
Conformation shows should be restructured to be more about dogs' soundness and breed type and less about the handler and showmanship. However entertaining spectators find extreme coiffure and runway behavior, the major focus of shows should be to select sound, typey parents for the next generations of the breed.
AKC should sever its relationships with commercial sponsors, especially pet-food manufacturers. A less splashy show, not sponsored by Eukanuba, would be better received by many who care about dogs' health.
AKC should cease any partnerships with pet-food and drug companies to "educate" veterinarians about pet care and diets. Veterinary education is perverted by pet-food and drug companies anyway, and the AKC should keep it's still-good name out of a corrupt morass.
AKC should sponsor popular educational programs for pet owners about the evolution of dogs, their identity as a subspecies of wolves, and the implications of these scientifically established facts for dog feeding and care. A television series on "Know Your Dog" could save the health and lives of millions of pets.
AKC can work with breed organizations that have adopted extreme conformation standards that impair the breed's health or alter their natural appearance by mutilation. Surgical alteration and unhealthy standards have no place in an organization with a mission to improve the welfare of purebred dogs and their owners.
I hope you find this message constructive and helpful. Please feel free to share it with others at the AKC.

Aloha,
Sandra Scarr
*****************************************************************************************
Aloha Labradors-------------------------------------------------------808-322-9445 telephone
78-6915 Palekana Road--------------------------------------------808-322-9445 fax
Holualoa, HI 96725---------------------------------------------------808-987-5005 cell
www.AlohaLabradors.com-----------------------------------------SandraScar@aol.com
*******************************************************************************************

If the AKC were to reform itself, I would be happy to support their effort to register my puppies. The
AKC is so afraid to take proactive stands on extreme breed standards and cosmetic mutilation, for example, it lags kennel clubs in the rest of the world in taking these steps. Ear and tail cropping have disappeared in the UK, EU, Australia, NZ, and other dog-fancy parts of the world.

The AKC still has not accepted into the purebred dog registry Dalmatians with normal urea processing genes, who are now 5 and 6 generations from the outcross that provided the normal gene. They still register only Dalmatians with defective genes. How is that promoting the interests of purebred dogs and their owners?

The biggest reform, however, would be to sever their commercial relationships with pet-food and drug companies -- especially commercial pet-food companies that use the AKC to sell junk foods that make pets sick. The AKC has the stature and opportunity to make major reforms in pet feeding, but they don't.

Until they do, they can count me out.

Desperate Dog Owners

2010-08-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

This week I am visiting family in the Milwaukee area, where my son Phil and daughter Rebecca live. Phil's two sons, Erik and Christopher, are 9 and 12. Rebecca's two children are 3 1/2 (Jane) and nearly two (Asa). Both have very nice spouses as well.

Left behind with friends in Hawaii are responsibilities for 14 adult dogs, 7 puppies at 4 weeks of age, a cat, and management of an active, raw-meaty-bones pet food cooperative. It's hard to thank Mark and Joslyn enough for their willingness to take on such huge jobs. When I go away, it becomes apparent how much I do everyday. No doubt, I have a busy schedule in my "retirement".

Despite being 5,000 miles away, I still get phone calls from desperate pet owners. Typical story is the dog has terrible allergies, tormenting itchiness, hot spots the dog licks relentlessly, and is miserable. Owner has tried everything veterinary medicine offers -- antihistamines, steroids, ingredient-restricted diets, antibiotics, special baths and ointments. Owner recognizes the dog is sick, not well. What to do now?

My mobile vet sent me such a case just hours before I left on this trip. He said he cannot do more and told the owner to try a raw-meaty-bones diet to cure the dogs' multiple ills. This is very unusual advice from a veterinarian, but my mobile vet has actually read about the rmb-diet and believes it makes sense. I tried to call the distraught owner, left a message with my phone number. I'll try again to reach her when I get home.

The first day in Wisconsin, a phone call from an acquaintance in Kona told me about her Doberman pinscher. The dog is itchy, irritable, and has skin eruptions and sores that plague the poor animal. She was in PETCO looking for remedies for her poor dog when she spoke out loud to a total stranger about her dog's problems. The stranger told her to contact KonaRaw.org, the raw pet food co-op. She went online and found me. After a half-dozen phone calls to me and to Mark to learn about the rmb diet, she ordered rmb for her dog this week and picked up the order yesterday. She will need a lot of support and information when I return to Kona

Yesterday, when Amy, Erik, Chris, and I were in the beautiful Milwaukee Art Museum, my cell phone rang. Another desperate dog owner told me the familiar story about his dog with allergies, itchiness, open sores, and generally miserable state. He began to cry because he feels so bad for his dog. I told him to go online to KonaRaw.org, to order some meaty bones and meats for next week, and to come next Thursday to meet with me and pick up his order. I hope he has enough information and reassurance to try the rmb diet.

All of these pet owners need re-education about appropriate diets for carnivorous pets. That cannot be accomplished in a long-distance phone call. It's difficult and painful to unlearn everything you have been taught about pet foods. It's hard to accept that everything you have been feeding pets for decades -- kibbles and canned mush -- are disastrous for pets' health. How could vets recommend health-destroying foods? Aren't vets the experts on pet nutrition? Well, not exactly .... And that's another very long story.

How many thousands of Kona pet owners could tell the same story about pets' health being destroyed by kibbles and canned mush? In our small community, there are so many suffering pets, it's hard to imagine how to reach and help them all. Just removing all kibble from their diets will start them toward recovery.

Adding healthful animal proteins and fats to their diets will restore many pets' health, but there may be detours on that road to recovery. Some of these pets have infected teeth and gums that require veterinary cleaning and antibiotic treatment before the pets can begin the road to health. Some of them have chronic disease conditions, caused by years of inappropriate diet, and those diseases may have advanced beyond a dietary cure. At least they can enjoy a healthy diet in their remaining months or years.

It is ironic that pet owners have to rely on other pet owners to learn how to feed pets. We often rely on family members and friends for advice on rearing children, but medical experts -- pediatricians -- also offer helpful advice. More importantly, most of the advice on feeding children healthy diets is consistent across family and medical experts.

Pediatricians promote whole foods for omnivorous children. A balanced diet for children includes meats, dairy products, whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. Pediatricians and human nutritionists advise against feeding children processed and "fast" foods. Grandmother and family friends also "know" that whole foods are healthy diets for children.

A balanced diet for carnivorous pets consists of raw meats and meaty bones with minor additions of family leftovers and cooked or minced veggies and fruits. By contrast to pediatricians, veterinarians have been brainwashed to believe that processed grains and other starches provide a "balanced and 100% complete" diet for carnivorous pets. What a disaster for pets!

I expect to receive more phone calls from desperate pet owners. I know that veterinarians will continue to oppose the raw-meaty-bones diet and continue to treat diet-induced illnesses medically, with predictably poor results for many pets. Pet owners are torn between adamant veterinarians who demand they feed commercial junk food and their own good sense that carnivorous pets require a variety of raw meats and meaty bones to thrive.

When they get desperate enough about their pet's suffering, some will find me and call.

American Kennel Club Diet Advice

2010-06-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

Given the outrageous advertising exposure and endorsements the AKC gives its members for commercial junk foods, it seemed interesting to see what "expert" advice they offer dog owners in their less commercial pages. Here's the essence of AKC's advice on how to feed your dog./

Broadly speaking, the first choice you need to make is whether to feed your dog a homemade diet or a commercially prepared diet.

Homemade Diets

Homemade diets are meals you prepare at home for your dog that usually include meat, grains, vegetables and supplements such as bone meal, minerals and vitamins. With homemade diets, you have more complete control over each of the ingredients that you feed your dog than you would if you were feeding your dog commercially prepared food. In addition, the ingredients in the homemade diet will likely be fresher and have undergone less processing. Many dog owners also feel that preparing food for their dog is a bonding experience that helps them feel closer to their dogs. Advocates of homemade diets claim that homemade diets make dogs more energetic and promote healthier teeth, skin and coats.

There are also some drawbacks to preparing homemade diets. First, and most importantly, creating a healthful and balanced homemade diet is not that simple. You must educate yourself and consult with a veterinarian or nutritionist to make sure that you are giving your dog meals that include all essential nutrients in the proper amounts. Both undersupplying or oversupplying certain key nutrition building blocks can have adverse consequences for your dog. Second, preparing a homemade diet requires a consistent time commitment to prepare meals for your dog. It also makes traveling with your dog more difficult as you will have to prepare many meals in advance and make sure that the meals are kept fresh during the journey.

Commercially Prepared Diets

Commercially prepared diets generally fall into three categories: kibble (dry food), semi-moist food and wet food. The most common method for producing kibble is to grind up and mix the ingredients and then put them through an extrusion process in which the ingredients are mixed with liquid (usually fat or water) and then the moistened ingredients are pushed through a cylinder that self-generates friction and heat to further mix and bake the kibble. At the end of the cylinder is a mold that gives the kibble its shape. Upon completion of the extrusion process, the kibble is cooled and dried and then often coated in flavor enhancers. The flavor enhancers usually include vitamins and minerals that may have been destroyed in the cooking process.....

Many veterinarians will generally recommend giving your dog kibble as crunching the kibble helps to keep your dog’s teeth clean and in shape (sic; kibbles coat dogs' teeth with gunmmy sludge)....

Reading Commercial Dog Food Labels
On many dog food labels you will find one of the following AAFCO statements: “___ brand dog food is formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO Dog Food Nutrient Profiles for [specific stage of dog’s life];...

... Manufacturers are required by law to list ingredients by weight. However, watch out for these two little tricks. First, the weight of each ingredient includes the moisture in each ingredient. Second, manufacturers can break up each less “desirable” ingredient such as rice into its component parts (rice, ground rice etc.) so each component part can be positioned further down on the ingredient list even though the ingredient should, by overall weight, be at the top of the list. In general, items that you prefer not to see on the list of ingredients include artificial colors, artificial flavor, artificial preservatives and by-products...

You should also understand what the guaranteed analysis listed on your dog food signifies. The guaranteed analysis is a table with the percentages of important nutrition building blocks such as carbohydrates, fats and protein. Like with the ingredient list, the guaranteed analysis does not take into account the amount of moisture contained. ...In addition, the guaranteed analysis does not differentiate between the different digestibility levels of ingredients. For example, commercial food A could have a higher level of protein than commercial food B, but commercial food B’s protein source may be more readily digestible and thus more useful to your dog.

If your head isn’t spinning already, you should at least be aware of where your dog’s food is manufactured...

Raw Diets

Finally, it is worth mentioning raw diets. Raw diets, though the ingredients vary, all contain raw meat or raw, meaty bones. Raw diets can be prepared from scratch, or you can now buy commercial raw diets that are fresh frozen and then packaged. Proponents of raw diets claim that raw meat provides the optimum and most easily usable source of important nutrients for dogs, and most closely replicates the ideal diet dogs lived on for generations in the wild.

Critics of the raw diet believe that the raw diet can be potentially harmful to your dog and to you because of various parasites within the muscle meat along with bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli that are present in raw meat. There is no doubt that bacteria does exist in raw meat and, although some people claim dogs have the ability to safely ingest the bacteria, especially if your dog is geriatric or weakened by another condition, feeding a raw diet is generally not a good idea.

If you do decide to use a raw food diet for your dog, you must keep the food frozen until it is ready to eat, throw out any food not eaten after each meal and clean your dog’s food and water bowl in hot, soapy water after each meal. You will also need to take precautions to make sure you and other household members do not accidentally come into contact with the bacteria. Washing your hands and any surfaces or objects that come into contact with raw meat with hot, soapy water is essential. Do not allow young children or weakened or sick household members to touch the raw meat or any objects or surfaces that have come into contact with the raw meat prior to cleaning."

At the bottom of the AKC's diet advice is the following commercial message:

Having been a cook all my long, adult life, I am amazed at the hysteria veterinary nutritionists display.over raw meats. Do they ever grill chicken or steaks in the backyard? Do they prepare meals for anyone? Are they all vegetarians or vegans?

What causes this unreasonable fear of handling raw meat? Does their fear apply only to meat and meaty bones intended for pets, or do their cautions apply to the human diet and kitchen?

Of course, one should wash one's hands and surfaces used to prepare raw meats. My grandmother knew that. She taught my mother, who taught me, who taught my children, to clean up after handling raw meat, for the reasons cited. But none of us though it was dangerous to handle raw meat.

I own dozens of cookbooks that tell me how to prepare hundreds of meaty meals. Not one of the recipes begins with dire warnings about the dangers of raw meat or stern commands to clean my hands and surfaces the meat.touches. I guess cookbooks just assume that people raised in homes where meals are prepared learn how to handle raw meat. It's part of the culture that does not require endless admonition.

Handling raw meats for pets is no different from preparing meals for one's family. Last evening, I fixed a tasty Italian chicken dish for people and handed the dogs other parts of the same birds. What's the difference?

Yes, pets eat it raw, which is no problem for them, unless, as the AKC says, they are very old or seriously ill. I don't eat raw chicken myself, because laboratory tests show it is likely to be contaminated with salmonella (from poor growing and processing conditions). Dogs and cats, however, are well-equipped by Nature with strongly acidic and short guts to eat raw poultry without a problem.

I wash my hands and clean all surfaces that chicken touches with anti-bacterial soaps and a 10% bleach spray. I am not casual about handling poultry, whether intended for myself or my pets.

Other meats are not so often contaminated as chickens. Here in Hawaii we often eat raw fish in the forms of poke and sushi. This, too, is a cultural pattern. One learns early in life that raw fish should be fresh and carefully refrigerated from ocean to plate.

I have often eaten raw beef as steak tartar and carpaccio, especially in Europe. 40 years ago, I got very ill from eating raw oysters (Hepatitis A) in Paris. I have eaten raw oysters dozens of times since. Yes, there are risks to humans from consuming raw meats, but then many other daily activities are also pretty risky.

Feeding raw-meaty-bones to pets is no cause for hysteria about raw meats. My grandmother knew how to handle raw meats safely, and so do the nation's cooks. It's easy -- just wash. I suspect veterinary nutritionists, most of whom are paid consultants to pet-food companies, are merely using another ploy to scare pet owners away form the best diet for carnivorous pets.

I give credit to the AKC for including raw-meat-bones in their list of dog diets and for not damning it as unbalanced or incomplete. Of course, rmb is the diet Mother Nature intended for carnivorous pets to eat. And it can be safely done.

Watch Dog

2010-06-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

Whether you own a dog or not, you must appreciate

the efforts of this owner to sell her dog.

Read the sales pitch below!

DOG FOR SALE

Free to good home. Excellent guard dog. Owner cannot afford to feed him anymore, as there are no more drug pushers, thieves, murderers, or molesters left in the neighborhood for him to eat. Most of them knew Jethro only by his Oriental street name, Ho Lee Schitt.

Raw-meaty-bones takes on a whole new meaning!

AKC Lauds New Iams Junk Food, and Iams Recalls Bad Batches

2010-06-15T12:20:00.001-07:00

The American Kennel Club, those self-proclaimed advocates for the welfare of purebred dogs and their owners, sent out this advertisement for Proctor & Gamble's Iams kibble and canned mush this morning.

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	A Prebiotic is a natural ingredient that promoted healthy digestion. It does this by nourishing the bacteria found in the digestive tract. The good bacteria crowd out the bad bacteria, promoting healthy digestion.

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PreBiotics and ProBiotics are ingredients that are supposed to make digestion of the other stuff in the bag or can easier and more complete, Even though your carnivorous dog or cat did not evolve to be fed primarily on cooked starches, Iams is now adding "nutrients" to the formulae to help your pet digest the inappropriate diet. How nice!

In the same few minutes it took to read AKC's pandering notice, the following announcement of a pet-food recall arrived in my Inbox from Public Enemy Number One, the Pet Food Institute. The Pet Food Institute is the lobbying arm of commercial pet-food companies. They make sure Congress and regulatory agencies do not interfere with the huge profits to be made from junk pet foods.

Procter & Gamble recalls select Iams brand canned cat foods

Release Date: Thursday, June 10, 2010

Procter & Gamble voluntary recalled cans of its Iams ProActive Health cat and kitten foods due to concerns over low thiamine levels.

"Diagnostic testing indicated that the product may contain insufficient levels of thiamine (Vitamin B1), which is essential for cats," Procter & Gamble said. "Cats fed these canned products as their only food are at greater risk for developing signs of thiamine deficiency."

The recalled products are the 3 ounce and 5.5 ounce cans, with dates between September 2011 and June 2012 printed on the bottom. The company advised cat owners who purchased the food to throw it out.

No refunds? No apologies from P & G for mis-formulating their Iams-brand, manufactured "food"? Just another error in the pet-food chemistry lab, it seems. Oh, well....

There are so many recalls of tainted and mis-formulated pet foods, it's impossible to keep up. Please remember that these are the same people who promise your pet "100% compete and balanced" nutrition in every bag and can. Too bad for pets and pet owners that they make so many mistakes.

That a nonprofit animal welfare organization, like the American Kennel Club, blatantly advertises commercial pet foods is shameful and should be illegal. How can the AKC use their nonprofit lists of purebred dog owners and breeders to advertise the products of profit-making companies, such as P & G, and keep their nonprofit status? Nonprofits are usually forbidden to engage in for-profit enterprise, or they have to keep the profit making at arms length.

The AKC has a profit-making affiliate (Dog.com) that sells canine products, such as leads, crates, shampoos, and the like. They don't promote any one company's junk food. It is quite legal for profits from Dog.com to support AKC's nonprofit mission, as long as Dog.com pays taxes on its profits.

I would consider filing a complaint with the IRS about AKC's blatant advertising of Iams products, but I am sure the Pet Food Institute has that angle covered, to protect the AKC and other nonprofit groups they co-opt with generous funding. It's disheartening to know there are no independent groups one can trust to stand up for pets. They've all been bought.

AKC Defeats Initiatives to Create Healthier Purebred Dogs

2010-06-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

This month's Whole Dog Journal contains a story about Dalmatians that will shock dog lovers. Although I have been around purebred dogs all my life, I was not aware that Dalmatians in the US and UK, and probably around the world, all carry defective genes that predisposes them to form life-threatening urate bladder stones. Some Dalmatians have repeated surgeries, while many others suffer and are euthanized. Genetic testing found that no Dalmatians in the US and UK carry the normal gene -- all are homozygous defective for urea processing.

No one has explained how this terrible defect was carried and spread throughout an entire breed. The most likely explanations are: (1) the defective gene for urea metabolism has other desirable effects on Dalmatians' characteristics (pleiotropy), or (2) the locus of the defective gene is closely linked (located at short distance on the same chromosome) to a desirable gene (close linkage). In either case repeated selection for a desired trait brought along the defective urea gene that became universal in the breed.

In 1973, Dr. Bob Schaible, a geneticist and Dalmatian breeder, cross-bred a Dalmatian to a champion Pointer with normal urea processing genes. Through multiple generations, he was able to develop Dalmatians that look like others of the breed but with normal genes.

In 1981, Dr. Schaible gained approval of the Dalmatian Club of America and the American Kennel Club to register two dogs from the fourth generation of this backcross. When the general membership of the Dalmatian Club found out about the registration, however, they caused such an uproar, the AKC refused to register any offspring from these dogs. Thus, the AKC stopped the introduction of normal genes into a known, studied, defective breed.

Far from making progress toward healthier Dalmatians, the breed club banned any discussion of the topic for 22 years! In 2008 the membership of the Dalmatian Club of America again voted against registering Dalmatians with normal genes, therefore ALL registered Dalmatians in the US carry the defective gene that causes high uric acid levels and life-threatening bladder stones.

One can despair at the genetic and evolutionary ignorance of average dog breeders, whose misplaced priorities value appearance above health. But whose responsibility is it to educate breeders and dog owners about canine genetic health and how to improve breeds with major genetic defects? Most breeds have a few serious genetic threats to their health. Doesn't the AKC's mission include working for the welfare of purebred dogs and their owners? Surely, canine health is a major component of that mission.

Mary Straus, writing in the Whole Dog Journal, says "It's time for the AKC to take the lead in improving the health of purebred dogs -- and for breed fanciers to put the health of their dogs above an insistence on genetic purity". I would add that evidence of "genetic purity" in breeds is arbitrary and illusory. Most dog breeds have been isolated in registries for less than 100 years, some for less than 25 years, a very short time in dog's evolution. Dogs are wolves; all dogs share most of the same genes and share 99.8% of their genes with wolves. What nonsense to talk about breed purity when health is at stake.

In 2008, a British documentary, "Pedigree Dogs Exposed" was aired by ITV. The shocking video highlighted serious genetic problems in several breeds -- problems so serious to dogs' health the public was outraged. How could dog breeders be so irresponsible as to perpetuate these defects? Public anger toward The Kennel Club and the venerable Crufts Dog Show caused major changes in breed standards and judging, as well as a commitment for The Kennel Club to consider registering dogs from outcross and inter-variety matings to improve dogs' health. The Kennel Club now registers Dalmatians with normal urea genes. Not so the AKC.

Here's the bottom line for the AKC: Genetic testing for major health defects in canines is far advanced over even 5 years ago. Genetic detection of canine disorders is advancing rapidly. It is now possible to test for many serious disorders that are CARRIED by dogs that appear normal and populate show rings. Carriers of recessive genetic disorders are the greatest threat to good health in purebred dogs. Dominant genes can be weeded our by not mating obviously affected individuals. Affected dogs with two recessives can be removed from the mating pool. Carriers of recessive defects do not usually show any symptoms but will pass the defect on to half their offspring. When carriers become champions, thereby desirable mates, the frequency of defective genes in the breed multiplies.

In some cases -- Cavalier King Charles spaniels are the gravest example -- affected individuals are entered in shows and judged winners, when their stunted skulls and growing brains will soon cause them horrible pain and early death. Before the winner dies, however, he will be mated to dozens of females and pass on his defects to many in the next generations of Cavaliers. How does this make any sense for the health of a breed? Grossly misshapen muzzles, hips that fall out of their sockets, knees and elbows that freeze or wobble, eyes that go blind -- the litany of avoidable genetic defects in purebred dogs is alarming. -- and most are preventable through sound breeding.

The AKC can vastly improve the health of purebred dogs simply by requiring genetic testing and publishing results of testing for every dog that enters an AKC event. I am sure the AKC knows such a plan would affect some great show people, some great supporters, members of their governing body, and so forth. Their reluctance to act on behalf of canine health is political and financial. Is that a good enough excuse?

Perhaps, for the first 5 years, affected dogs and carriers could be shown, but information about their genetic profiles for significant breed defects would be published in the show program. After 5 years, the AKC should prohibit dogs affected by or who are carriers of serious health disorders from being shown in AKC events.

Dog shows are designed to select the best breeding stock for the next generations of the breeds. Surely, the AKC and breeders want the healthiest dogs to produce the next generation of every breed. As long as genetic testing is ignored and excluded from consideration, the AKC is not fulfilling its mission.

In Britain, public opinion and loss of sponsors moved Crufts and the Kennel Club to a more informed and proactive stance. The AKC is not ignorant; it simply lacks the guts to lead ignorant breeders and force malicious breeders into a better practices.

Shame on you, AKC! Shame on you, breed clubs!

Why Is There No Outrage or Adjudication of Veterinary Corruption?

2010-06-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I documented the use of pet-food dollars to hire credentialed professionals to teach veterinary students Commercial Pet Food 101, rather than an unbiased course on the evolution of pet species and natural diets of carnivorous pets. These same professionals hold offices in veterinary associations, hold faculty positions at veterinary schools, and populate regulatory commissions dealing with pet foods.

In sum, pet-food dollars buy biased instruction in veterinary schools, favorable treatment in professional associations, and toothless pet-food regulations. The scope of pet-food corruption in veterinary medicine is breath-taking. Pet-food companies completely control those aspects of veterinary medicine that concern them -- pet nutrition, internal medicine, and research on diseases associated with bad diets.

Pet-food money is not seen as tainted, of course, because veterinary authorities are on the take. Pet-food endowed chairs in university departments seem legitimate, until one looks at the control pet-food companies retain over the selection and activities of the chair-holder. Endowed buildings and research programs look legitimate until one sees that the scope of activities is defined by pet-food donors. There's no free lunch in pet-food/veterinary relations -- although pet-food companies do often sponsor "free" luncheons and dinners for their hired hands.

Veterinary schools and professional associations thank their pet-food donors for their generous support, which sums to tens of millions of dollars per year. Pet-food companies reap billions of dollars in profits from the veterinary endorsements they purchased for about ten-cents-on-the-dollar.

Why is there no outrage about pet-food companies' control of pet nutrition and associated health issues in veterinary medicine? In recent correspondence, Australian Tom Lonsdale, DVM likened corruption in veterinary medicine to crooked police:

Currently there's a TV program on here about the Wood Royal Commission. Basically all the cops
were corrupt and engaged in massive scams, rape, murder and etc. The Commissioners got a corrupt detective to roll over and film his colleagues in corrupt activity.

It would be good if we found either a champion or reformed crook in the system who would help this along.

There are veterinary crooks quite openly on the payroll of pet-food interests, paid to promote commercial pet foods, while holding office in professional associations and faculty positions at universities. For US examples, please see the last bog post.

Why authorities don't see this cozy arrangement as conflict-of-interest, at the least, or bribery is baffling. How can a faculty member at a veterinary school be permitted take payments from a pet-food company or pet-food front to teach pet nutrition to veterinary students?

The ongoing scandal in medical schools is faculty members at leading universities taking large fees from pharmaceutical companies to promote off-label use of drugs in their lectures and appearances. That's shocking and undermines public trust in physicians. Authorities -- professional and legal -- are looking into the matter.

We can identify plenty of vet crooks in the system, whose activities are quite open. Unlike crooked police, who hide their illegal activities and are discovered only when a reformed crook blows the whistle, crooked vets are practicing their corruption in public, and authorities seem not to care.

Here's why: Commercial pet food is the unchallenged right-way to feed pets, so no one sees the harm in allowing pet-food companies to pay faculty, support research, and provide income to vets in practice. It's not corruption or biased instruction, until other theories/concepts of pet nutrition are seen as valid options.

Thus, we need, first, to define pet-food payments to veterinary faculty as corruption, because there are valid pet-feeding options that are omitted from their biased courses. Second, we need to persuade the public and authorities to accept this definition of corruption. Otherwise, no one is outraged, except those of us who believe that small animal nutrition ought not to be taught as Commercial Pet Food 101.

Imagine if the only "vegetable" served in school lunch programs was ketchup. (Ronald Regan once agreed that ketchup could be considered a vegetable in school lunches.) Suppose that Heinz and Del Monte, the largest ketchup manufacturers, funded instruction for school nutrition programs, endowed chairs and buildings in human nutrition programs, and hired a cadre of nutritionists to promote ketchup as the only vegetable children need for a complete and balanced diet (sound familiar?).

If ketchup companies spread enough dollars and bought enough expertise, they probably could have ketchup enshrined as the only vegetable in school lunch programs. Anyone who suggested kids need green and yellow vegetables and unprocessed tomatoes would be confronted by research showing ketchup has sufficient nutrients (ah, the key word) to replace all other vegetables. Ketchup would flow through the nation's school lunch rooms, while ketchup dollars bought all the professional support they need. All it takes is money.

Why is no one within the veterinary medical establishment publicly blowing the whistle on commercial pet-food corruption? There are dissident voices, but they remain largely anonymous, for fear of professional reprisals. At the very least they would be excluded from honors and offices in professional associations and could lose their livelihood. An inquiry into pet-food corruption must come from outside, because virtually no one inside the veterinary establishment has clean hands. They are all on the take in one manner or another.

Motivation for reform is lacking within grassroots veterinary medicine, for economically understandable reasons. Vet students are taught Commercial Pet-Food 101. After graduation, they establish pet practices in which sales of junk pet foods contribute up to 40% of their incomes.

Even better, commercial pet foods create periodontal problems that require expensive veterinary treatment and chronic diseases that generate lots of income for vets. Laboratory tests, according to Idexx -- the leading veterinary laboratory -- are the most profitable revenue stream in veterinary practice. Chronically-ill pets require lots of lab tests. Prescription drugs, dispensed by vets, are marked up by hundreds of percents, generating enormous profits. Chronically-ill pets require lots of medications.

Commercial pet foods are the gift that keeps giving. By undermining pets' health, kibbles and canned mush not only generate profits from their sales but their exclusive use as pet diets creates patients that need extensive and expensive veterinary treatments. Why would veterinarians voluntarily surrender such a gift?

The pet world is changing, however, and vets no longer have an exclusive hold on pet owners' purses. In the US, most vets require owners to pay for pet examinations and heartworm tests annually, before inoculations or other treatments will be offered. Vets charge handsomely for mandatory exams, tests, and inoculations. That racket is about to change.

Prescription flea/tick and heartworm medications are now available online at less than half the price charged in vet clinics. If one buys them from Australia, no prescription is needed. Heartworm tests are completely unnecessary for pets routinely given heartworm medication. Vaccines for routine inoculations are available online and at local feed stores and pet shops. Vaccines can be purchased for about $5; vets often charge $40 to $50 to administer the same shots. Owners of healthy pets can now avoid veterinary clinics for routine drugs and inoculations and save themselves a fortune.

Owners of sick pets are wising up to the junk pet-food - illness connection. Against veterinary advice, many are switching pets to raw diets and marveling at the pet's improved health. Even if the sick pet dies, they vow never to feed junk foods to the next pet. By promoting junk pet foods, veterinarians are losing credibility in pet owners' minds.

When the public recognizes the stranglehold pet-food companies have on small animal veterinary medicine, there will be reform. Pet owners are the most likely force to push authorities to inquire into pet-food funding and control of veterinary medicine and to demand change. Disseminating information on appropriate diets for carnivorous pets is beginning to change the world.

How To Feed Pets -- As Taught by Hill's Pet Nutrition

2010-06-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

To understand why veterinarians recommend and sell cooked, processed starches as "food" for meat-eating cats and dogs, one must delve into relationships between veterinary medicine and pet-food corporations. Hill's Pet Nutrition (Science Diet and prescription products) were the pioneers in corrupting veterinary medicine.

Mark Morris founded Hill's Pet Nutrition in his garage in 1948. Morris was a veterinarian, whose son also trained as a veterinarian. Mark Morris's son carried on the family business. Their products, Science Diet and Hill's prescription diets, expanded into factories and ultimately were sold to Colgate-Palmolive for several billions of dollars in 2003.

From the outset, Mark Morris believed that convincing veterinarians to believe in Science Diet and Hill's prescription products was the key to the company's success. He was absolutely right. Hill's Pet Nutrition invested heavily in veterinary education, pet nutrition research, and helping new graduates to set up small animal practices with Hill's products on the shelves.

Hill's representatives infiltrated veterinary schools, aiding students with donated pet foods, teaching pet nutrition courses, giving research grants supporting commercial pet foods, providing funds for student activities, summer interneships, and many other initiatives. Morris enjoyed a three-decade lead over other pet food companies in corrupting the veterinary profession.

By contrast to other pet-food companies, such as Mars and Nelstle-Purina, Hill's Pet Nutrition spends a pittance on advertising to pet owners and focuses their funds on veterinarians. Once purchased by Colgate-Palmolive, however, advertising of Hill's pet products accelerated, but their focus is still on controlling veterinary medicine. Hill's investment in controlling pet nutrition teaching, research,and practice has paid off very handsomely for the company, which is now a high-profit unit of global Colgate-Palmolive.

Rich from the sale of the family business to Colgate-Palmolive, Morris's son endowed the Mark Morris Institute in his father's honor. What does the Institute support? Teaching small animal nutrition in veterinary schools, of course!

They write the textbook (Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, 5th Edition) that is used in nearly every pet nutrition course in every veterinary school.
They teach the pet nutrition course.
The Mark Morris Institute pays a dozen veterinarians, whom they send, free of charge, to veterinary schools to teach pet nutrition and to consult with veterinary students about setting up successful pet practices.
Most Mark Morris Institute Fellows are current and/or former employees of Hills Pet Nutrition and the Morris Animal Foundation. They speak about nutrients, not food, and teach vet students to believe that commercial formulations are the best nutrition Father Manufacture can concoct. Mother Nature is nowhere to be found.

Mark Morris Sr. and Jr., with hundreds of millions of Hill's dollars behind them, also founded an interlocking set of self-congratulatory professional associations in veterinary nutrition and internal medicine. By controlling memberships, they bestow Diplomate status and honors on each other and exclude those who do not pledge allegiance to commercial pet foods.

The Mark Morris Institute, Morris Animal Foundation, and Hill's Pet Nutrition have interlocking directorates. One can easily see the lines of communication and conspiracy in the faculty biographies below. Even more alarming is the extensive penetration of these pet-food entities into leading veterinary schools.

Although lengthy, the evidence is worth reviewing in detail. Here is what the Mark Morris Institute says about its University Teaching Program and the faculty who carry their message.

University Teaching Program

Have a look at the Hired Guns the Mark Morris Institute sends (free of charge) to veterinary schools to teach pet nutrition. I highlighted their pet-food positions, but please note their positions in leading veterinary schools and professional associations.:

The individuals providing this professional education program are the equivalent of an academic faculty of clinical nutrition. MMI faculty are involved in veterinary nutrition health studies, clinical service, publication, education, and continuing education.

Debbie Davenport DVM, MS, DACVIM

Dr. Davenport received her DVM from Auburn University in 1981. She completed an internship at Louisiana State University and a medical residency and master’s degree at The Ohio State University.

Dr. Davenport was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine where she was the recipient of the University Teaching Award for instructional excellence. She is currently the Director of Professional Education at Hill’s Pet Nutrition and the Executive Director of the Mark Morris Institute. In addition, she holds an adjunct professorship at the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine and serves as a Trustee and Scientific Liaison for the Morris Animal Foundation.

Dr. Davenport is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. Her major professional interests are gastroenterology, oncology and clinical nutrition.

S. Dru Forrester DVM, MS, DACVIM

Dr. Forrester received her DVM from Auburn University in 1985. She completed an internship and residency in internal medicine, and received a Master of Science degree at Texas A&M University.

Dr. Forrester was a faculty member in the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine for 13 years and a professor at the Western University College of Veterinary Medicine in southern California for 2 years. She has received many awards in recognition of teaching excellence, including the national Carl Norden/Pfizer Distinguished Teacher Award in 2004.

Dr. Forrester's professional interests include urology and nephrology. She joined Hill’s Pet Nutrition in 2005 in the Department of Scientific Affairs and is a Mark Morris Institute Fellow.

David Hammond DVM, MS, DACVIM

Dr. Hammond received his DVM degree from Washington State University in 1980. After owning and operating a mixed-animal veterinary practice, he returned to academia where he completed a medicine residency at Mississippi State University.

Dr. Hammond was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania before joining Hill's Pet Nutrition as a Veterinary Affairs Manager. He is currently the owner of Horizon Veterinary Services, Inc.

Dr. Hammond is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. His major interests are endocrinology and clinical nutrition. He is an adjunct professor at Colorado State University, the University of Minnesota, and Washington State University as well as a Mark Morris Institute Fellow.

Michael S. Hand DVM, PhD, DACVN

Dr. Hand received his DVM from Colorado State University in 1968. After ten years of private practice in Wyoming, he returned to Colorado State University where he received a PhD in nutritional physiology.

Dr. Hand was a faculty member at the School of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University for three years before joining Mark Morris Institute in 1985. He was the Vice President of Research at Hill’s Pet Nutrition Center until his retirement in 2000.

Dr. Hand is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition. He has authored over 60 research publications and book chapters and holds two patents. He is a co-author of the textbook, Small Animal Clinical Nutrition III and editor of Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, 4th Edition. He is an adjunct professor at North Carolina State and Kansas State Universities and Chair of the Board of Directors of Mark Morris Institute.

Claudia Kirk DVM, PhD, DACVIM, DACVN

Dr. Kirk received her DVM degree from the University of California-Davis in 1986. She completed an internship at the Animal Medical Center in New York City and medicine residency at University of California-Davis. She remained at the University of California-Davis as a Hill's Fellow in Clinical Nutrition where she also completed a Ph.D. in Nutrition.

Dr. Kirk joined Hill's Pet Nutrition as a Veterinary Clinical Nutritionist in 1994. She is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition and the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. Dr. Kirk is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and Nutrition and acting Department Chair of Small Animal Clinical Sciences of the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine.

Dr. Kirk's major professional interest is small animal clinical nutrition, with special interests in feline nutrition, lower urinary tract disease, geriatrics, and endocrinology. She is a Mark Morris Institute Fellow. She has served as president of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition. Dr. Kirk is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and Nutrition and acting Department Chair of Small Animal Clinical Sciences of the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine.

Ellen Logan DVM, PhD

Dr. Logan received her DVM degree from Kansas State University in 1988. She spent five years as the University Veterinarian for Kansas State University providing veterinary care to a wide range of animal species. She also instructed students, inspected university laboratory animal facilities, and provided consultation to university researchers. She completed a Ph.D. in oral pathology in 1994.

Dr. Logan joined Hill's Pet Nutrition as a Veterinary Scientist in 1994. She is currently the manager of the Veterinary Consultation Service. Dr. Logan's major professional interests are pathology, dentistry, and clinical nutrition. She is an adjunct associate research professor at the University of Kansas, an adjunct assistant clinical professor at Kansas State University, and a Mark Morris Institute Fellow. She has served as president of the American Veterinary Dental Society and national spokesperson for Pet Dental Health Month.

Chris L. Ludlow DVM, MS, DACVIM

Dr. Ludlow earned his DVM from Kansas State University in 1986. He worked in general practice in southern California for five years. He then completed a combined internal medicine/small animal clinical nutrition residency and masters degree at Kansas State University.

Dr. Ludlow was a faculty member at Kansas State University for one and half years before joining Veterinary Information Network in internal medicine and nutrition.

Dr. Ludlow is a Diplomate of the American Veterinary College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. His professional interests include gastroenterology, endocrinology, cardiology, and clinical nutrition. He is a consultant for the Veterinary Information Network in internal medicine and nutrition, and a Fellow for Mark Morris Institute.

Richard C. Nap DVM, PhD, DECVS & DECVCN

Dr. Richard Nap received his DVM from Utrecht University (NL) in 1979. After graduation he worked in both small and large animal practice (2 yrs), at Utrecht University (13 yrs) and in a corporate environment (11 yrs). Since 2005, Dr. Nap has owned an independent private consulting firm, Uppertunity Consultants. He is also co-owner of Vetstart International Ltd. His special areas of interest are Clinical Nutrition, Orthopedic Medicine & Surgery, Practice Management, and international student programs.

Dr. Nap is a Diplomate of the European Colleges of Veterinary Surgery (ECVS) and of Veterinary and Comparative Nutrition (ECVCN). As consultant he supports international companies around the world. Dr. Nap has a passion for supporting veterinary students around the world by providing support during the transition from student to practitioner.

Dr. Nap is the chairman of the international specialist group on hip dysplasia that advises the scientific committee of the FCI (international kennel club) on the hip dysplasia screening protocol. He is also a member of AO-Vet and ESVOT.

Phil Roudebush DVM, DACVIM

Dr. Roudebush received his DVM degree from Purdue University in 1975. After two years in a private small animal practice in Denver, he completed a medical residency at the University of Missouri.

Dr. Roudebush remained at the University of Missouri for two years as a faculty member before joining the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University. He was a faculty member at Mississippi State for eight years before joining Mark MMI in 1989. While at Mississippi State, he served as Chairman, Department of Clinical Sciences, for three years and received three college or university awards for teaching excellence. He is currently a Director of Scientific Affairs at Hills Pet Nutrition, Inc.

Dr. Roudebush is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. His major professional interests are clinical nutrition, veterinary education, cardiopulmonary disease, and dermatology. He is an adjunct professor at Kansas State University and a Mark Morris Institute Fellow.

Meri Stratton-Phelps DVM, MPVM, DACVIM (LA), DACVN

Dr. Stratton-Phelps graduated from the University of California, Davis with her DVM in 1996, and completed her MPVM degree in 1999. After working as an intern at San Luis Rey Equine Hospital, Dr. Stratton-Phelps returned to U.C. Davis for an equine emphasis large animal medicine residency. She proceeded to complete a nutrition residency and PhD at U.C. Davis. Her research interests include the dietary management of small ruminant urolithiasis, equine enteral nutrition, and the effect of dietary management on the microbial profile of the equine gastrointestinal tract.

Dr. Stratton-Phelps was a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Large Animal Medicine at the University of Georgia from 2005-2006, and remains an adjunct professor in the Department. In 2004 she started a clinical nutrition consulting business, and currently works full time as a multi-species clinical nutritionist. She is a Mark Morris Institute Fellow.

Dr. Phil Toll DVM, MS

Dr. Toll received his DVM degree from Kansas State University in 1986. He spent two years in private practice working with large animals and racing greyhounds.

Dr. Toll returned to Kansas State University and completed an M.S. in physiology in 1990. He remained in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology for another year as a research associate before joining Hill's Pet Nutrition in 1991. He is currently an Associate Medical Director.

Dr. Toll's major professional interests are exercise physiology, metabolism, acid-base balance, and clinical nutrition. He is an adjunct assistant professor at Kansas State University, past president of the American Canine Sports Medicine Association, and a Mark Morris Institute Fellow.

Todd Towell DVM, MS, DACVIM

Dr. Todd Towell received her veterinary degree in 1990 from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. She completed an internship in small animal medicine and surgery at North Carolina State University in 1991 and a residency in small animal medicine at the Virginia-Maryland in 1994. Dr. Towell also received a Masters degree in Veterinary Medical Science from Virginia Maryland in 1994.

Dr. Towell practiced as in internist in both referral specialty and general practices for 5 years. In 1999, Dr. Towell became a clinical trial coordinator for Heska Corporation. She joined Hill's Pet Nutrition, Inc. in 2002 as a Veterinary Affairs Manager and is currently a Scientific Spokesperson.

Dr. Towell is a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. In 1996, she received the Jersey Shore Veterinary Medical Association’s Veterinarian of the Year Award and received the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association’s Up and Coming Veterinarian Award in 2000. In 2005, Dr. Towell served as President of the CVMA.

Dr. Steve Zicker DVM, PhD, DACVIM, DACVN

Dr. Zicker received his M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982, his DVM degree from the University of California-Davis in 1986, and his Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of California-Davis in 1993.

Dr. Zicker also served an internship in medicine and surgery at Texas A&M University and a residency in medicine at the University of California-Davis.

Following his graduate education, Dr. Zicker spent one year as a lecturer and postgraduate researcher at the University of California-Davis and 18 months in private practice in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He joined Hill's Pet Nutrition in 1996. He is currently a Principal Nutrition Scientist in the Department of Advanced Research at the Hill's Pet Nutrition Center. In 2007, Dr Zicker received a Fulbright award to teach Veterinary Medicine in Ethiopia.

Dr. Zicker is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and the American College of Veterinary Nutrition. His major professional interests are protein and amino acid nutrition, neonatal nutrition, nutrition and behavior interactions, and general comparative nutrition. He is a Mark Morris Institute Fellow.

This who's-who list of credentialed, veterinary nutritional professionals are all paid to promote commercial pet foods, specifically Hill's Pet Nutrition. The fact that so many are university faculty or consultants, that so many have Diplomate status in professional associations, that so many have held office in professional associations -- is breathtaking.

Surely, the close, financial relationships of university faculty with commercial interests deserves more public and legislative scrutiny. Given the extent of interlocking university-professional-commercial entities, an outside investigation is essential. No veterinary group could begin to conduct an independent inquiry, because too many leading members are involved in the corruption.

Before doing this research, I would not have believed that veterinary medicine was so completely corrupted by pet-food interests. Now, there can be no doubt.

ASPCA Warns Dogs Should Not Eat Avocados

2010-06-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

Amidst its warnings against feeding chocolate, alcohol, and coffee to pets, the ASPCA also proclaims that avocados contain dangerous chemicals, and their seeds can cause choking, if swallowed.

What's next? Many dogs in Hawaii and California, where avocados fall off trees, eat avocados regularly without ill effects. Veterinarians in Hawaii accept pets' avocado-eating in moderation. They even see benefits from dog's eating avocados -- healthier coats and fewer skin problems.

Putative problem is avocado leaves, skin, and to a lesser extent flesh, contain a fatty chemical, called persin. The Merck Manual of Veterinary Medicine lists avian, rodent, and ungulate species that are susceptible to organ damage from persin in avocado leaves, stems, seed, and to a lesser extent fruit. Dogs and cats are not among the known species adversely affected by avocado fruit. The warning against dogs eating avocados rests on one case report of 2 dogs that were said to develop cardiomyopathy after injesting avocados.

Avocados are not a main food for my dogs, but they love to eat one they find on the ground in my orchard. I have seen absolutely no problems in almost 9 years from their eating the occasional avocado. Each of the 10 dogs may find one or two avocados a week. Avocados have a lot of vegetable fats, which are healthy for dogs' coats and energy levels, but too much of any good thing is undesirable. Dogs can get quite fat from eating large numbers of avocados regularly.

The warning about a dog swallowing and choking on avocado seeds applies to all small, round objects, such as golf balls, ping pong balls, parts of toys, seeds of other fruits, etc. I have not observed this phenomenon, but evidently some dogs try to ingest anything that is vaguely nutritious to supplement their inappropriate kibble diets. It is said that kibble-fed dogs will eat cat poop, and feces of other dogs. I supposes avocado seeds may be appealing to kibble-fed dogs for the same reason -- any bit of extra nutrition will be eaten.

Dogs choke on kibble and Greenies, too. My dogs don't swallow or chew on avocado seeds. They also don't eat the cat's poop or each others' poop. My dogs have raw meats to eat and meaty bones to chew.

On the same page on which the ASPCA issues dire warnings about avocados, they post the following bad advice:

Raw/Undercooked Meat, Eggs and Bones

Raw meat and raw eggs can contain bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli that can be harmful to pets. In addition, raw eggs contain an enzyme called avidin that decreases the absorption of biotin (a B vitamin), which can lead to skin and coat problems. Feeding your pet raw bones may seem like a natural and healthy option that might occur if your pet lived in the wild. However, this can be very dangerous for a domestic pet, who might choke on bones, or sustain a grave injury should the bone splinter and become lodged in or puncture your pet’s digestive tract.

There is so much misinformation in this paragraph, one hardly knows where to begin. The warning about raw eggs applies only to egg whites fed alone, not to whole eggs. How many pet owners separate egg whites from yokes to feed them to pets? The yoke of eggs contains plenty of biotin to offset avidin in egg white. Whole raw eggs are very healthy additions to pets' diets. I feed my dogs and cat raw eggs (not just the whites) with crushed egg shells (calcium carbonate) two or three times a week.

The raw meaty bones they warn against should be the principal food in dogs' and cats' diets.. Raw bones don't splinter; cooked bones splinter. Bacteria? How many times do they have to be told that dog/wolf and cat digestive system are highly acidic and short -- they are designed to handle bacterial loads that could make their human owners ill but do not adversely affect healthy pets.

Perhaps, the best warning I can issue is to remind readers the ASPCA is brought to you by Nestle-Purina, Mars, and Colgate-Palmolive. Any advice they give pet owners is filtered through their corporate sponsors. Unfortunately, the ASPCA is against feeding pets anything not produced by their corporate sponsors, including avocados, raw meats, eggs, and meaty bones. Enough said.

Do Wolves/Dogs Eat the Vegetable Contents of Herbivores' Stomachs?

2010-06-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

A major argument to justify vegetable matter in dogs' diets is the claim that wolves eat the stomach contents of their herbivore prey. The stomach contents of wild herbivores are partially digested and undigested gasses.

Do wolves, in fact, eat the stomach contents of prey? Not according to David Mech (1), who has studied wolves in various parts of the world for more than 30 years. Mech observed wolves attack large herbivores, such as moose and elk. When wolves open the abdominal cavity and begin to eat digestive organs, they shake out the contents of stomachs before eating the organs. Thus, according to Mech, wolves eat a small amount of digested grasses that cling to the rough lining of stomachs, but they shake out large volumes of undigested grasses from herbivores' stomachs.

I feed my dogs green tripe, as well as many other raw meats and meaty bones. Green tripe is the stomach of cattle that, when grass-fed, closely resembles the stomachs of wild herbivores. Fortunately my dogs eat grass-fed beef from local ranches.

I noticed a curious phenomenon: When first handed a whole green tripe, my dogs shake it, before settling down to eat it. Why on earth would they shake green tripe? There is nothing inside the tripe to shake out. It's contents were shaken out at the meat-packing plant. The dogs don't shake other meats, even other organ meats, such as heart, kidney, lung, and spleen. They shake only green tripe. Yesterday, I asked a friend to take rough videos of the phenomenon with my small digital camera. The quality is not good, but the dogs' behavior is clear. As I handed dogs green tripe, he filmed what they did with it. Here's the video.

My hypothesis about shaking green tripe is that dogs and wolves are hard-wired for the behavior Dogs are hard-wired for certain behavioral sequences in hunting and shepherding. The Coppingers (2) detail the selection of dog breeds for specific, hard-wired behaviors. Before you become outraged over genetic determinism, I hasten to add that all mammalian behaviors have learned elements. Dogs must be raised with sheep to become good shepherds. Hunting dogs need early experience on hunts to develop their hunting skills.

Natural and artificial selection for specific behaviors simply predispose some dogs to show the behavior and to learn the behavioral sequence more readily than other dogs. Here's an important caveat: The desired behavior must appear spontaneously, before it can be reinforced with experience. If the dog never shows the behavior, there is nothing to reinforce, and the dog cannot learn how to use the behavior. So, gene-based wiring for a behavior to appear at some point in development is essential for continuing and shaping the behavior.

In an earlier blog entry, I cited a specific Labrador retriever behavior that was selected in a breed specialized for bird hunting: Dogs dive into the water to retrieve ducks and geese, and when they return are pulled into the boat by other dogs, thereby allowing the hunter to continue firing. The behavior of pulling other dogs from water shows up inappropriately when my Labs try to pull each other out of the swimming pool -- a behavior that is not much appreciated by other dogs. Yet, they are "driven" to do it.

I think wolves and dogs evolved to shake the contents from ruminant's stomachs before eating the organs. Carnivores are not equipped to use vegetable matter as food, unless the vegetable matter is predigested. Digested grasses that cling to the stomach lining of green tripe are perfect for wolves and dogs' diets.

When confronted with an herbivore stomach, dogs shake it, even though the green tripe is empty. It's curious to observe behaviors that have no function in their present context. The fact that they appear at all suggests they were hard-wired in evolution.

The implication of this discovery is that wolves and dogs do not need or want large amounts of vegetation in their diets. They are carnivores who eat prey. A little bit of digested veggies is sufficient.

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(1) L. David Mech & Luigi Boitani (Eds.) Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation,Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2003.
(2) R. Coppinger & L. Coppinger, Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origins, Behavior, and Evolution, Chicago: U.of Chicago Press, 2001.
It is most unfortunate that the Coppingers' book was written before wolf and canine genetic mapping was completed. They exaggerate genetic differences between dogs and wolves. Their observations of wolf and dog behaviors, however, are extremely valuable.

Pets Thrive on Environmentally Friendly Raw-Meaty-Bones

2010-06-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Recent discussions on Amazon.com of my review of Nestle's and Nesheim's bad book on pet diets include familiar points that are worth summarizing here.

I want to address four issues raised cogently by commentators: (1) what's in various kinds and prices of pet foods?, (2) forgotten issue of TEXTURE in pet food, (3) genetic resemblance and evolutionary history of dogs/wolves, and (4) is feeding pets the raw-meaty-bones diet wasteful, contrary to a sustainable planet?

(1) Discussing what's in various bags and cans of commercial pet food is unproductive, because all these products are COOKED and consist mostly of STARCHES. Certainly, pet-food companies do their utmost to differentiate their products in consumers' minds and to achieve branded status. Brands are much more profitable than generic products in any consumer category.

I agree that a variety of foods is the best safeguard for a complete diet, for both human owners and their pets. For humans, a variety of whole, fresh foods is recommended by physicians and nutritionists. For pets, veterinarians and animal nutritionists recommend feeding a monotonous diet of a single cooked, starchy junk food. How can this make sense? Feeding a variety of cooked, starchy foods does not exactly address the nutritional problem, however. Despite branding and advertising, all kibbles have pretty much the same nutritional profile.

Kibbles must be primarily cooked starches that are required to manufacture dry foods that keep their shapes. Deceptive labeling regulations allow pet-food companies to put meats first in the ingredient list, implying meat is the primary ingredient, which is false. Ingredients' weights are measured prior to processing. Meat is 75% water. Corn, wheat, and soy fractions are dry to start. The final product has very little meat, compared to the amount of starch.

Deceptive labeling also allows pet-food companies to divide starches into several ingredients, such as wheat bran, wheat gluten, wheat protein, etc., so wheat does not appear first on the ingredient list. Corn can appear four or five times in the ingredient list. If consumers add up the amount of starch in the product, they would be outraged that companies are permitted to advertise kibble with whole chickens and rib roasts falling into the bag.

If you want to know how pet foods are made and why there is so little difference among kibbles that cost a pittance and those that cost three and four times as much, look at an excellent video (http://www.viddler.com/explore/jennifergoodwin/videos/4/) made by Elizabeth Hodgkins, DVM, Esq, and Marion Smart, DVM, Professor at University of Manitoba School of Veterinary Medicine. They show exactly why all kibble is pretty much the same cooked starches, whether based on corn, wheat, rice, potatoes, or tapioca. They also show how useless AAFCO guidelines really are.

(2) A very important point, often omitted from discussion of pet foods is TEXTURE. Commercial pet foods leave a gummy sludge on pets' teeth. Pets who are deprived of meaty bones to gnaw have no way to clean their teeth. Teeth become coated with plaque, leading to gingivitis and periodontal disease. Periodontal disease afflicts 85% of dogs and 70% of cats over two-years-of-age. Untreated, gum disease challenges the animal's immune system and pours infection into major organs. Heart, liver, kidney and other chronic diseases follow. These facts are publicized by veterinary organizations to lure pet owners into expensive dental treatments. If pets are simply allowed to gnaw on raw meaty bones, they do not develop dental problems in the first place. It's that simple. Food texture is critical to pets' health.

(3) Some (most) veterinarians are not informed about genetic and evolutionary research on canids in the past decade. They cling to convenient untruths that allow them to continue feeding carnivorous pets cooked starches that are literally killing them. Here's brief summary of recent research:

The genetic structure of wolves and dogs was finally mapped from 2000 to 2004. The origin of domestic dogs from wolves is firmly established. Dogs are related more closely to East Asian wolves than to European or North American wolves (1). All wolves and dogs belong to the same species. Other canids, such as coyotes, jackals, and foxes, are genetically more distant and distinct from wolves and dogs.

By tracing mitochondrial DNA, inherited only from mothers, researchers found several wolf origins for contemporary dogs. The study looked at the DNA of 654 dogs from 83 dog breeds and 38 Eurasian wolves. Three maternal DNA patterns accounted for more than 95% of dog genotypes, and these three sources came from East Asian wolf populations. Based on number of mutations found in the DNA sequences, researchers estimate that dogs became domesticated in several events (at least 5 unique mothers), beginning about 15,000 years ago.

Another group of researchers (2) studied 96 gene loci in 414 purebred dogs representing 85 breeds. They plotted the genetic relatedness of contemporary dogs and wolves. They found that genotypes of ancient Asian and Arctic breeds more closely resemble contemporary Eurasian wolves than they resemble other dog breeds. Specifically, Shiba Inu, Chow Chow, Akita, Alaskan Malamute, Basenji, Shar-pei, and Siberian Husky breeds cluster with contemporary wolf genotypes more closely than with other dogs breeds. Afgan Hound, Saluki, Tibetan Terrier, Llasa Apso, Samoyed, Pekingese, and Shih Tsu breeds are intermediate, sharing genotypes with both contemporary wolves and with other dog breeds.

Most dog breeds were created by human selective breeding for specific tasks or appearances. Breed isolation, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. Most dog breeds have existed as isolated breeding populations for less than 200 years, many for less than 100 years. Following wars, famines, and natural disasters, some dog breeds that became nearly extinct were re-established by interbreeding several related breeds.

Few pet owners look at their Poodles, toy terriers, and Chihuahuas and think "wolf". Yet, these small dogs are just as much wolves as dogs that bear more obvious resemblances to species-brothers. Small size in dogs is caused by a single gene (3) that has been imported into many breeds to downsize them. Dwarfism depends on a single gene and has been used to create the dwarf profile in dachshunds, basset hounds, bulldogs, and so forth. The rest of these dogs' genotype is still wolf.

Dogs would thank their owners for thinking "wolf" when they consider how to feed them. Perhaps, it is obvious that an Alaskan Malamute or a German Shepherd would appreciate the whole-prey diet their wolf-brothers thrive upon. It is not as obvious that toy dogs need the same diet, scaled down to their size.

Don't let "experts" in veterinarian clothing, or minced-veggie purveyors online, tell you dogs are omnivores, whose diet has been shaped by human leftovers. Wolves and dogs are "opportunistic carnivores", who kill and eat whole prey and scavenge off other predators' kills. They will eat human garbage, but a healthy diet for wolves and dogs is principally meats and meaty bones. Pet owners can easily provide a wolf-diet in appropriate amounts and sizes for their friendly domestic wolves.

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(1) Savolainen, P., Zhang, Y, Luo, J, Lundeberg, J., & Leitner, T. (2002). Genetic evidence for an East Asian Origin of Domestic Dogs, Science, 298, 1610-1613.

(2) Parker, H., Kim, L.V., Sutter, N.B., Carlson, S., Lorentzen, T.D., Malek, T., Johnson, G.S., DeFRance, H.B., Ostrander, E.A., & Kruglyak, L. (2004). Genetic structure of the purebred domestic dog. Science, 304, 1160-1164.

(3) Sutter, N.B.and 20 coauthors, (2007). A single IGF1 allele is a major determinant of small size in dogs. Science, 316, 112-115.
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The argument that dogs evolved distinctly from wolves more than 100,000 years ago is false. Domestication of dogs BEGAN only 15,000 years ago, and dogs and wolves continue to be cross-fertile populations.

The argument that dogs and wolves evolved to eat different diets because of human contact is false. Both wolves and dogs scavenge at human garbage dumps in many parts of the world. Garbage is not the preferred diet of either dogs or wolves, but they will eat whatever they can find when game is short. Domestic wolves are just as much predators as their wild brothers. Studies of feral dogs underline this point.

The argument that small breeds are less wolf-like than larger breeds is false. Toy and dwarf breeds have one or two gene loci that make them extremely small or dwarfed. 99.9999 % of their genes are the same as larger breeds and wolves.

There is much evidence from many perspectives to lead to the conclusion that dogs and cats thrive on whole prey or its equivalent -- raw-meaty-bones. Dogs/wolves can eat human waste materials, but they do not thrive in the long run on a grain-based diet.

(4) Some commentators argue that feeding pets meats and bones that from food animals is wasteful, competes with human consumption, and is inconsistent with good earth stewardship. First, consider that 50% of every cow raised for human consumption is waste. 40 to 50% of sheep, pigs, chickens, and turkeys are deemed waste. Second, pets are largely fed on human waste, whether through byproducts processed in rendering plants that make up the bulk of animal ingredients in commercial pet foods, or by feeding pets parts of animals humans do not prefer. Let me speak to the latter.

I live in Hawaii. We do not have a rendering plant in the state. Of beef raised on the Big Island (grass-fed, no hormones or antibiotics), 50% was going to the local landfill, before we founded a raw-pet-food co-operative. Now co-op members can feed their cats and dogs beef tracheas, kidneys, spleens, lungs, back-ribs, neck bones, liver, and other parts that are less popular on the human table. The beef producers are delighted to have a pet-food market, pets are thriving on real carnivore foods, and we are keeping huge amounts of animal waste out of the landfill. I think raw pet-food co-ops, which exist all over the US and the world, are very environmentally friendly.

Rendering plants are also essential to public health. Without them, communities would be inundated with wastes from food animals and euthanized pets. However unsavory rendered products may seem, they are a mainstay of commercial pet foods. One could certainly argue that pets help to rid the world of human wastes. I prefer to feed my own dogs and cat with raw meats and bones that would go to a rendering plant elsewhere or to a landfill here. No apologies needed.

Delta Society (aka Purina) Bans Raw-Fed Dogs from Pet Therapy Program

2010-05-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

Dogs are not only man's best friend, they also help sick people get well and dying people feel happier. Pets that are trained to remain calm and behave in a friendly fashion with hospitalized children and older adults in nursing homes and hospices have become commonplace. Benefits to patients and to therapy dog owners are easily observable in smiles and laughs.

The largest therapy dog training organization is the Delta Society, which operates out of Bellingham, WA. This month Delta told its pet therapy trainers and Pet Partners, the thousands of volunteers who own therapy dogs, that dogs fed raw meats will be excluded from their programs, beginning in June. Delta's communication is posted on their web site.

Reason given for excluding raw-fed dogs is potential bacterial transmission from dogs to vulnerable patients. Delta Society alleges its Medical Advisory Group recommended to the Board the exclusion of raw-fed dogs based on overwhelming research data. What data? They don't say. They do proclaim that no pet food company influenced their decision.

Let's get real. The Delta Society is sponsored by Nestle-Purina. An officer of the Board is the Marketing Director for Purina. On the Home page of their web site, Delta posts the following:

Thank you to our incredible partner, the passionate pet lovers at Purina.

Your Pet, Our Passion -- don't you just love it?

The directive excluding raw-fed dogs asserts there is no scientific information to favor raw or home-cooked diets over commercial pet food. Raw-fed pets, they say, may appear to be healthy, but.... I am sure Purina would not recognize any evidence favoring raw-diets over kibbles and canned mush, even if they allowed such evidence to exist.

Further, they assert, there is copious evidence that raw-fed dogs can be hazards to people with compromised immune systems. The hazards of raw meats they cite apply to anyone who handles raw meat -- clean your hands and surfaces that meats touch thoroughly. Oh, yes, don't eat dog poop and wash your hands after cleaning up dog poop. Are they suggesting that patients in hospitals and nursing homes would eat dog poop? Clean up poop? How many come into contact with raw meat -- aren't their meals prepared in the hospital kitchen and delivered cooked to their bedsides?

The real question is whether visiting dogs, carefully bathed and groomed by Delta's devoted Pet Partners, pose a bacterial threat to hospitalized patients. Here's the best evidence they have. A study from the University of Guelph Veterinary School followed 200 raw-fed and kibble-fed therapy dogs for a year, analyzing stool samples every 2 months. One question was whether therapy dogs carry bacteria commonly found in healthcare facilities (that is, are dogs getting bacteria from visiting hospitals?)

Question: What are the incidence rates of specific pathogens in therapy dogs and do these rates vary by level of exposure to healthcare facilities?
•Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA)
•Extend-spectrum b-lactamase (ESBL) E. coli
•Clostridium difficile
•Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE)
•Salmonella spp

Three of the bacteria are common in hospitals: MRSA, Clostridium difficile, and VRE. These hospital-bacteria are dangerously resistant to antibiotic treatment. Non-specific Salmonella and E. coli are found on raw meats, vegetables, eggs -- everywhere.

A higher percentage of kibble-fed therapy dogs were found to carry the dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria! The implication is that kibble-fed dogs are more susceptible to bacteria acquired from visiting hospitals. These dogs then carry these bacteria back to other hospital sites they visit. Author did not discuss the implications of this result.

More raw-fed dogs carry Salmonella spp, and various E. coli, which are usually benign and commonly found in intestinal tracts of healthy animals and people. Overwhelming amounts of normal intestinal bacteria can make animals and people ill. Patients with compromised immune systems are probably more prone to develop illnesses from these bacteria. No quantitative assessment was done, so we don't know if small or large amounts of bacteria were present in the stools of these otherwise healthy animals.

What does the author recommend? First, please note that Royal Canin Pet Food Company (owned by Mars) endowed the small animal nutrition program at the University of Guelph Veterinary School in 2009. Second, please note that Royal Canin influences (can withdraw funding, if not pleased) the professor who is chosen as the chaired professor and determines the small-animal iresearch program. What will this Ph.D. student in small animal nutrition conclude about the safety of dogs on raw versus kibble diets as therapy animals?

•Dogs that consume raw diets are considerably more likely to carry Salmonella than dogs that do not
•These dogs also appear to be considerably more likely to carry ESBL E. coli
•Just because dogs are shedding doesn’t mean people are going to get sick…
•Therapy dogs that consume raw diets should be barred from interacting with people in healthcare setting.

Nary a word is said about the dangerous bacteria carried by more kibble-fed dogs. She does note that just because dogs shed bacteria in their feces does not mean people will get sick, unless they eat poop or clean up poop.

Internet groups that discuss pet foods condemn the Delta Society's exclusion of raw-fed dogs, even if they don't support raw-feeding. Susan Thixton says:

This is one of the most ridiculous moves I’ve seen yet from a national charity; right up there with the Humane Society of the United States making a pet food in Uruguay. The Delta Society is kicking out any pet owner that has made the educated decision to feed their pet raw food.

I don’t feed my pets raw, and I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve dealt with verbal abuse from steadfast raw feeders; one even demanded my website “condemn all pet owners that feed anything but raw”. Demanded! No kidding. But, I support any pet owner that makes an educated decision to feed raw.

Christie Keith says:

I’ve been trying to pretend the Delta Society, the nation’s leading therapy dog organization, hadn’t just issued a ban on participation by dogs fed a raw diet. Because honestly, after 24 years of feeding raw meat, eggs and dairy products to my dogs and cats with not a single food-borne illness or nutritional problem, I’m just plain tired of this debate.

Do they honestly believe a living creature, let alone one that regularly licks its own butt, is ever going to be sterile?

Others call for action against the Delta Society. Supporters of raw pet diets can write to the Delta Society to express their views on exclusion of raw-fed dogs from Pet Partners. Pet Partner volunteers who feed raw diets can resign under protest.

Pass this on to all the raw feeders you can find. I hope there is mass resignation from Delta Society.

Lucy Rasmussen, ScD
lucyrasmussen@stanford.edu

For me, the Delta Society is another example of the pernicious impact of pet-food funding on veterinary and animal welfare organizations. Here, their long arm extends to a human-focused nonprofit organization that uses pets as therapy for sick and dying people. It's disturbing and disgusting.

Adventures in a Raw Pet Food Co-op

2010-05-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

Wes's experience with his first order of raw-meaty-bones reminds me of all the vagaries I encountered when Kona Raw Pet Food Co-op began.

Wes started Oahu Raw, our counterpart on the main Hawaiian island, with heavily populated Honolulu as its center. He looked all over Oahu for a local beef producer that could provide grass-fed beef, raised without hormones and antibiotics. He found NONE. The last ranch on Oahu is going out of business this month, another victim of high land prices. All the beef on Oahu will come either from mainland feedlots (loaded with growth hormones and antibiotics) or from the Big Island or Maui, which still have grass-fed beef operations.

Cattle ranches are not the only local meat producers that are threatened with extinction. Hawaii Island had three chicken farms as recently as 5 years ago. Now we have NONE, because the price of chicken feed, imported from the mainland, made local chicken farms uncompetitive with mainland chicken factories. Tyson and Perdue can buy taxpayer-subsidized feed and crowd birds into darkened coops to become marketable in 6 to 8 weeks. These pathetic birds are genetically selected to have big breasts and are almost unable to stand or walk. They are fed antibiotics and growth hormones to hasten their growth to market weight.

Free-range chickens, raised in more natural environments without growth hormones and antibiotics, take much longer to reach marketable weights, and they cost far more to raise. Until consumers are willing to pay twice or three times more for free-range chickens, mass producers of poisoned birds will dominate the chicken market. Evidently, Hawaii does not have enough discriminating consumers to keep local chicken farms in business. For pets, most owners take a deep breath and feed factory-raised chickens, because they can't afford to make a healthier choice.

Pork? Forget it. There are no pig farms left in Hawaii. Pork factory-farms on the mainland are notorious for producing methane-gas and enormous quantities of aquifer-threatening waste. Although other countries have developed less offensive pig-farming methods, the cost of humane, healthy farming techniques makes healthy pork uncompetitive with factory-farmed meat -- a familiar and depressing story.

Unable to find any local source of grass-fed beef or healthy-raised chickens, Wes placed his first order with Hawaii Beef Producers, which processes local grass-fed beef and can supply mainland chickens, pork, and other meats. His first order arrived by barge from Hawaii Island yesterday. He picked up 6 large brown cartons with about 200 pounds of frozen meats and meaty bones.

First question is what is it? Meats came packaged in 5- to 15-pound plastic pouches, many of which look alike. With frozen meat, it's difficult to tell what's in the package. Is is cheek meat, skirt meat, liver, what? He could identify chickens, beef tracheas, ribs, hearts, and neck bones, but what was in the other dozen frozen blocks?

Second question is how to divide frozen 10-pound packages into individual orders for 1- 2-, or 4-pounds? Thawing large packages of frozen meat is not a simple or quick process. I put some frozen packages in the sink in cold water to hasten thawing. I have not used a microwave yet to thaw meats, but that's another option. In any case, it is far easier to fill smaller orders with chilled than frozen meats.

Third question is how to store all that meat he cannot distribute immediately. Wes bought a chest freezer for his own Great Danes that is large enough to hold his first order. Simply putting all the large packages of frozen meats in his own freezer, however, does not address how to divide and fill members' orders.

It takes some mental adjustments and creative thinking to figure out how to organize and run a raw-meaty-bones co-op. Wes plans to ask HBP to send chilled, rather than frozen, meats and maybe to label packages. That will be a good start toward resolving some of the issues.

Raw-meaty-bones are becoming so popular at Kona Raw, and prospectively much more popular at Oahu Raw, we may outstrip the local beef supply. On several occasions, Hawaii Beef Producers has had to delay delivery of beef hearts and kidneys, which are very popular pet-food items, because they simply did not slaughter enough cattle to meet Kona Raw's demand. Mature beef cattle have only one heart and two kidneys, amidst a thousand pounds of other meats and organs. We need to expand members' preferences for parts of the cow. Some members order spleens and lungs. My dogs like tracheas (again, there's only one per cow). I need to explore again what parts of the cow the USDA inspector will approve for sale as pet food.

Pet owners provide a new market for Hawaii Beef Producers. Before Kona Raw, HBP had to pay fees to put meats that pets eat into the landfill. HBP is thrilled and amazed at the growth and potential of the pet-food market. The other, smaller meat packer on this island, Kaumana, claims they sell all their pet food to Hilo customers, who come to their plant to pick up their orders. I have to conclude that far more pet owners are quietly feeding their pets raw-meaty-bones than anyone suspects.

Is something like this happening in other communities around the world? Are pet owners wising up to the commercial pet-food fraud and voting with their pocketbooks to switch to raw-meaty-bones? It would be great to know.

Why Engage in Controversies?

2010-05-24T15:53:00.000-07:00

It takes a special constitution to engage in, and even enjoy, controversies. Most people do not enjoy standing on principle, while opponents throw rocks at them. It is more comfortable to turn away from the fray and find a less disturbing diversion. Engaging in intellectual and political battles takes energy, time, and exacts an emotional toll. It can even be dangerous. So, why do it?

One reason to engage in controversies is because one cares deeply about an issue. If one cares enough about the consequences or the principle at stake, it's worth fighting for. For some people, patritotism in time of national threat is worth their personal sacrifice. For others, threatened civil liberties are worth a stand. Many principles evoke strong commitments that lead some people to fight for them. Not all principles have overwhelming public approval, like nationalism in time of war. Some principles, such as equal rights for blacks or gays, had less than majority approval when advocates stood and died for these causes.

Intellectual battles are usually less dangerous to one's physical being but still costly to one's personal security and often to one's professional career. I have to admit that my academic career and my retirement years are fraught with controversies. For 35 years, I fought "naive environmentalism" in the behavioral sciences. Naive environmentalism is the belief that all behavioral differences among people arise from differences in their environments. Psychological studies were, and many still are, based on this false assumption.

My research focused on genetic differences among people that proved to be very important to understanding why each of us is unique. Behavior genetic studies showed that intellectual and personality differences among people are mostly due to genetic differences among them, not to differences in opportunities or exposures to environments. "How people make their own environments" became a classic paper, written with Kathleen McCartney, now Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I was honored by professional and academic societies for my research. These intellectual controversies cost me emotional grief, but I was fortunate to be exonerated and even honored in the end.

Since retiring to Hawaii, I have learned to grow Kona coffee and to pursue a lifelong interest in breeding and raising purebred dogs. It's odd that each arena provides its own controversies. In Kona coffee, the huge, emotional issue is that 10% Kona blends (90% foreign coffees) are legally permitted to use the famous Kona name. Even coffee experts cannot taste 10% Kona coffee in a 90% foreign blend. The name Kona sells fraudulently labeled blends.

We, Kona coffee farmers, are understandably outraged at a state Legislature that permits such a tourist rip-off and desecration of Kona coffee's reputation. We protest, write letters to editors of magazines and newspapers, fly to Honolulu to testify at the Legislature -- year after year -- with no results. The coffee blends are owned by huge food companies, with local representatives that know how to keep state legislators in line. I served on the board and was president of one Kona coffee organization that was taken over by the blenders. Farmers founded a new organization, the Kona Coffee Farmers Association, and I served two terms on the board. Not one to shy away from controversies, I have done my share of protesting and suffering for Kona coffee.

Breeding and raising Labrador retrievers taught me a great deal I did not know about feeding carnivorous pets. Like most pet owners in the Western world, I thought dogs eat kibble and maybe some canned dog food from time to time. Certainly, I knew better than to feed them human foods or leftovers. Some months into raising Lab puppies on premium dog chow, I noticed some had itchiness, hot sports, inflamed ears, and one had sore joints. The regular vet prescribed antihistamines and steroids. I was dissatisfied that my well-bred puppies were having so many problems, so he referred me to a holistic vet. She changed my life.

Long story made short: I learned that cooked starches are not suitable foods for carnivorous dogs. Dog chows cause all manner of minor allergies and much more serious systemic disorders in the long run. After several years of making the BARF diet of cooked brown rice, minced veggies, and raw-meaty-bones, I realized what dogs need is simply raw-meaty-bones. My dogs have thrived ever since.

Why, I asked, do most veterinarians recommend and sell kibbles and canned mush, when dogs and cats need raw-meaty-bones? That question led me into the current controversy that occupies a great deal of my time -- the pet-food conspiracy. Here it is in a nutshell: Global food companies produce pet foods from human food waste, a very profitable business. Global food companies support veterinary education, research, and practice, and animal welfare organizations, thereby insuring their professional endorsement of species-inappropriate foods. How can this damaging conspiracy be allowed to go unchallenged?

In the process of investigating raw-meaty-bones, I contacted the author of the book, Raw Meaty Bones, Tom Lonsdale, DVM in Australia. He and I became frequent correspondents. I heard his sad tale of controversies with veterinary authorities over pet diets that eventually led to his leaving veterinary practice. Not only were the authorities unwilling to consider his evidence against starchy diets and the cures that can be had with raw meats and meaty bones, they forbade him to criticize the veterinary profession for its endorsement of cooked starches for carnivorous pets. Dr. Lonsdale has suffered enormously for standing up for the truth about pet foods.

I have joined with Dr. Lonsdale and a few other intrepid vets to battle pet food giants and corruption in the veterinary profession. Stakes are enormous. Commercial pet food is a $50 billion/ year global business. Vets in the US reap an estimated $4 billion/ year from pet food sales. Pets are being sickened and killed by the millions. Unwitting pet owners are being bilked out of $ billions/year in unnecessary vet bills. Yes, the stakes are enormous. This is a controversy I cannot turn away from, for love of my own dogs and cat, and for all the millions of pets who can live healthier, longer lives on diets of raw-meaty-bones.

I also want to be counted among those who stand up for FOOD, when global food companies threaten the health of all of us, not only our pets, with highly processed, corn- and soy-based concoctions they pass off as food. The food supply is in crisis. It is not safe. It is not wholesome. It is worth fighting for.

I am fortunate to have low blood pressure and to be surrounded with friends who understand my commitments. All the principles and truths I have stood up for in my life have been worth the time, emotional pain, and energy required. I seem to be constitutionally suited for a life of controversies.

How Can Pet Owners Fight Global Pet Food Giants?

2010-05-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

Pet food battles are a David-Goliath tale: Tens of millions of pet owners allied against multi-billion-dollar companies, such as Mars, Nestle-Purina, Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor & Gamble, Heinz, Del Monte, and a few other international giants.

Pet owners vote with their pocketbooks, of course. Owners who feed their cats and dogs raw-meaty-bones and BARF diets do not buy pet-food companies' kibbles and canned mush. But hundreds of millions of other pet owners buy their pet foods, yielding them enormous profits, which are used to perpetuate the myth that cooked starches are a good diet for carnivorous pets.

Just for fun, I added up the memberships in leading Yahoo groups that are devoted to feeding dogs (mostly) and cats raw diets, instead of commercial junk foods. I quit adding when the list included 44,892 members, and there were 10 more pages of Yahoo groups to go. Some people have multiple memberships in raw-feeding groups, so is impossible to know how many individuals any total represents. Most groups number members in the hundreds, but there are hundreds of groups.

There are unique raw-food groups by location (for example, 1,676 members of the Finnish language site, 987 in the Phoenix AZ raw-pet-food co-op), by species (e.g., 3937 in RawCat), by dog breed (e.g., 390 in RawAussies for Australian shepherds, 886 in NaturalGrey for greyhounds ), and type of raw diet (e.g., 17,819 in rawfeeding for the whole prey/RMB diet).

Most raw pet-feeders do not join or participate in Yahoo groups. They just quietly feed their pets the raw diet they think is appropriate. There are likely tens of millions of pet owners worldwide who feed their pets exclusively or primarily raw-meaty-bones or BARF diets. They may have experienced pets' illnesses and/or deaths from preventable diseases created by commercial pet foods, and they simply switched to raw-feeding. Among my Lab puppy buyers are many people with this experience

People who join Yahoo groups are looking for, and offering, feeding advice or information on how to locate sources of raw pet foods or just sharing their bad experiences with commercial pet foods and local veterinarians, most of whom adamantly oppose raw-feeding. Yahoo groups are the epitome of self-help groups. Members share their experiences to help others with similar problems. When a member, especially a new member, posts a question or asks for help, the deluge of helpful responses is amazing.

Even the 100,000 pet owners, let's guess, who participate in one or more Yahoo groups are an unorganized mass, unlikely to be mobilized against giant pet-food companies. Each one has had a epiphany that led him/her to abandon commercial pet foods and to adopt a raw diet, but they have not joined a crusade against the makers of junk pet foods. They just opted out of kibbles and canned mush, not into a revolution.

Advertising budgets of leading pet-food companies sum to $ hundreds of millions. They pay for global media attention. Why not capture Internet attention as well? Pet-food manufacturers are very busy trying to co-opt Internet groups into supporting their products. They found their own groups and offer incentives for people to join -- discount coupons on junk foods, free veterinary advice, and the like. They post favorable comments about their commercial pet foods on Facebook and Twitter. They engage veterinary nutritionists to endorse their foods on seemingly neutral, Internet sites for pet owners.

When you visit one of these vet-advice sites, because your pet has allergies or infected gums, they advise you feed the same commercial pet foods that created the problem in the first place. It's rather like stumbling into a pro-life office, when you wanted to find an abortion clinic. They appeared to offer help for your problem, but they are just a front for pet-food companies.

Despite pet-food companies' $ hundreds of millions in advertising and their increasing presence on the Internet, tens of millions of pet owners have found their way to raw diets. Raw-feeding pet owners have friends and relatives with pets. Word of mouth and examples of healthy pets are spreading the raw-diet revolution, slowly and quietly.

One local example: A Canine Vice Squad officer adopted raw-meaty-bones for her service dog, after she read research on the dulling effect of bad teeth on olfactory sensitivity. Dogs with bad teeth don't smell well, and odor discrimination is the basis for narcotic-sniffing dogs' work. After she switched her dog to rmb, his teeth became white and his gums lost their inflammation. Other officers noticed his shiny coat and increased vitality. The police canine unit has a contract with a local veterinarian to purchase Hill's Science Diet for their dogs. They plan to switch all their dogs to rmb and to purchase their meaty bones from the local pet-food co-op. These same officers have pets at home and lots of friends and relatives with pets. And so the message spreads....

So, how will the pet-food revolution happen? One can imagine fiery court battles over the harm done to pets by high-starch diets, but court battles are unlikely. In the US, Goliath can bury David in legal paperwork, and the case would never be heard in a court. The expense of responding to an avalanche of pretrial motions and discovery would defeat any volunteer group. If such a case ever got to court, Goliath could line up its supporting cast of veterinarians and animal welfare groups, which depend on pet-food largesse for their very existence, to testify to the healthiness of commercial pet foods.. Pet-food lackeys would certify the scientific (sic) virtue of cooked starches and artificial nutrients for pets. What evidence could be marshalled by raw-feeding groups to attack commercial junk foods ? Evolutionary theory, anecdotes, and common sense, which are unlikely to win in court.

A raw-food coalition with enough legal assistance might unearth pet-food company documents admitting they know raw pet-diets are superior and acknowledging their starchy foods cause health problems. That kind of discovery would be very helpful. What do you think are the chances that, once challenged to a court battle, these very savvy companies will retain any damaging evidence? The vision of shredding masses of documents and erasing computer hard-drives comes quickly to mind. It is very unlikely, in my opinion, that much damaging evidence could be found, although I am confident it exists now.

I think a Quiet Revolution is far more likely than a court-room confrontation. More and more pet owners, simply going about their daily business of choosing a diet for their pets, choose raw diets. These millions of individual choices change the marketplace. Global food companies are in the business of shaping and meeting customer demands. If marketing cooked starches as pet foods is no longer as profitable as mincing up raw meats and bones, they will change their product line.

Consumers will be seduced into buying branded, minced rmb, instead of less expensive and far-superior raw-meaty-bones. But 80% of the battle will be won, if starchy foods are simply replaced in pets' diets with raw animal proteins and fats. The next pet-food frontier will be how to keep your pet's teeth clean and mouth healthy with raw-meaty-bones that you buy at the meat counter, for less money than minced goop. One cannot be too impatient to see the Quiet Revolution take place. It's happening slowly.

Epigen, the First Starch-Free Kibble

2010-05-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

For the past decade, the Wysong Corporation has been working to invent a process by which to manufacture starch-free kibble. Remember that lots of starches are required to extrude kibble from machines and to have kibble hold its shape. Wysong says it has invented a process to manufacture kibble without starches. This could be a revolution in dry pet foods.

Dr. Wysong says repeatedly, in his 100 Truths About Pet Food, that starchy pet foods are not only inappropriate for carnivorous cats and dogs, these starchy foods are the cause of pets' chronic diseases, such as diabetes, cancers, digestive, kidney, and liver disorders. Pet owners are told not to feed kibbles and canned mush exclusively, and certainly not to feed the same starchy food daily for years.

To his credit, Dr. Wysong advocates feeding pets raw-meaty-bones. He laments that not many pet owners will go to the trouble to buy, store, and feed raw meats and bones. When I have queried the company about their advocacy of raw meats and meaty bones for pets, and their sales of starchy, dry pet foods, their reply is that very few pet owners are educated enough to feed rmb. They blame veterinarians and giant pet -food companies for deceiving the public about what pets need to eat.

As second best to raw- meaty-bones, Dr. Wysong recommends raw-dehydrated meats. Last year, the company launched an aggressive campaign to promote their raw-dehydrated foods, which do not require refrigeration. Not many pet owners can afford to feed a lot of Archetype dehydrated meats at $10.00/ lb. My dogs love raw-dehydrated Dream Treats, which not only taste good but are great food. Wysong also produces a line of canned meats -- all chicken, beef, or venison, with added minerals and vitamins,-- but these products are cooked and mushy. They do not clean pets' teeth. Wysong raw and all-meat products are far better nutrition for pets than other commercial pet foods, but they do not make a dent in worldwide kibble sales.

To his discredit, for 30 years Dr.Wysong has produced, and continues to sell, starchy kibbles for cats and dogs. Dr.Wysong says his educational program, to get pet owners to feed more raw meats and bones, is funded by sales of conventional pet foods (which is rather like a drug pusher justifying his sales of illegal drugs by saying he uses them to fund drug rehab programs).

Next month Wysong will launch Epigen , a starch-free dry, bagged, kibble. Epigen will be made available to distributors in June. I have not seen the list of ingredients or the price, but they say it is 60% protein (more than 60% meats and organs) and 30% fat. It will be marketed for both dogs and cats (and ferrets, I suppose). Free samples will be distributed widely. Do request a sample.

Take a minute to look at the previews and videos. Look at what Wysong is saying about the terrible health effects of feeding a monotonous diet of starchy pet foods and the benefits of feeding diets pets evolved to eat. Their educational message is congruent with raw-meaty-bones, even if their corporate practices are not -- yet.

The test of Dr. Wysong's sincerity will be if the company retires its own starchy pet foods in favor of their established line of dehydrated raw meats and Epigen. He is correct that educating most pet owners to feed fresh raw meats and meaty bones is slow progress, because the convenience of having a pet food that can be stored without freezing or refrigeration will always be more appealing than fresh foods, as long as pet owners are duped by vets and pet-food companies into thinking starchy kibbles are good foods for their pets.

Wysong is helping to unseat conventional kibbles by slamming their high-starch content and offering an equally convenient way to feed better food. It will be interesting to see how Epigen does in the marketplace. Price will be an issue for many pet owners. If Epigen is priced above premium kibbles, sales will be limited. If Epigen's price is comparable to premium kibbles, they have an opportunity to blow away the competition. I don't know yet what the price will be.

I see this attack on conventional, high-starch diets as helping advance the cause of raw-meaty-bones. Dr. Lonsdale does not agree. I think the small raw-minced-meat providers are also chipping away at the giant pet-food companies' markets. They know this is happening, which is why they are trying to market their cooked starches as "meaty" and "natural" and "fresh'. Albeit, Epigen and minced raw products are less than half-way toward feeding pets the diet they evolved to eat -- whole prey -- they do offer more appropriate nutrition than starchy kibbles and canned mush. Keeping pets' mouths healthy with meaty bones is not addressed by these products, however. Pets need raw-meaty-bones.

In the next decade, I expect global pet-food companies to revise radically their pet food products, as pet owners wise up to the high starch/ chronic diseases connection. The enormous financial cost of pets' illnesses, and the pain and suffering endured by pets, should be laid firmly at the doorsteps of Mars, Nestle-Purina, Colgate-Palmolive (Hill's) and their veterinary co-conspirators. To avoid such nasty confrontations, I predict they will evolve their products toward less starch, without taking responsibility, of course, for the enormous damages they have caused.

If Wysong and other small companies can make the connection in pet owners' minds between starchy foods and chronic pet illnesses, the global pet food companies can either fight back, with solid backing from brain-washed veterinarians, and claim fraudulent healthiness for their high-starch diets, or they can change their foods. What do you think will happen? And what will veterinarians say about their "100% complete and balanced" support of cooked starches for carnivorous pets?

CATS: Largely Ignored in Raw Feeding

2010-05-20T01:26:00.000-07:00

I know this message will annoy passionate cat advocates, but 90% of discussions about pet feeding and raw-meaty-bones concerns dogs. Cats are seldom mentioned. Irony is dogs are less severely affected by inappropriate, starchy, commercial pet-food diets than cats are.

Even veterinarians and pet-food companies acknowledge that cats are "obligate carnivores", while dogs are called "opportunistic carnivores". The distinction between "obligate" and "opportunistic" is important. Cats MUST have animal proteins and fats in their diets to develop well and live healthy lives. Dogs need diets that consist primarily of animal proteins and fats, but they can digest and use more carbohydrates as food than cats can.

One interpretation of cat-neglect in rmb discussions is that outdoor cats catch enough mice and birds to supplement their own diets. Domestic cats are highly effective predators. Even if their owners are misled into providing dry starches as cat food, free-ranging cats can fend for themselves, as they have for tens of thousands of years. Indoor cats, however, are captives of their owners' misguided feeding,

A less favorable interpretation of cat-neglect is that pet owners do not know that cats can live for more than 20 years on natural diets. Pet owners are told that 15-year-old cats are seniors who can be expected to die any minute. The fact that many teen-age cats have serious chronic diseases, caused by inappropriate diets, has come to seem normal. Indeed, aging cats' with diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic renal failure have become the norm.

Domestic cats are close relatives of desert cats. Desert animals evolved in water-scarce areas. Desert cats do not have access to copious water supplies. Prey provide a large percentage of fluids in wild cats' diets. Domestic cats often do not drink enough water to compensate for a diet of dry kibble, and they become chronically dehydrated. Canned, water-laden foods are not as damaging to cats' health as dry foods are, but veterinarians recommend and sell tons of commercial dry food for cats. Dry foods are convenient for owners but deadly for cats.

Discussions of cats bring back painful memories of my own Burmese cats, from 30 years ago. I didn't know that feeding dry cat chow was deadly. One beautiful male died of urinary tract stones, and a couple of others were put on special diets to address other digestive disorders. I look back in shame and dismay that my lovely cats suffered and died from my ignorance.

Today I have a beautiful Maine coon cat, just 18 months old, who has been fed raw-meaty-bones from early kittenhood. Daisy eats her rmb with Ben the Papillon and three Poodle puppies -- away from bigger dogs. She chews chicken legs, beef cheek meat, and loves heart and liver. I don't worry about Daisy getting a feline-appropriate diet.

Pet owners can buy meats and meaty bones at affordable prices though co-operatives in many parts of the country, including our Kona Raw Pet Food Co-op. Although Kona Raw gets orders for hundreds of pounds of meat per week, virtually none of it is ordered for cats. I asked members if they have cats and if they feed them raw.

Perhaps, half of the members have cats as well as dogs, and a few feed cats some rmb, but not exclusively. Several members said their outdoor cats are accomplished mousers, so they don't feel they have to feed them rmb. Others report their cats are so fixed on a specific food, they will not even try raw meats. I send these owners to Tom Lonsdale's web site to read his advice on switching cats' diets to rmb.

Experts generally advise owners of pedigreed cats to keep them indoors for safety reasons. These poor cats, and other urban cats, are captives of their owners' feeding practices. When veterinarians tell these owners to feed "a complete and balanced" commercial food, I hope they will remember that cats are "obligate carnivores", which means their natural diet is raw meats and meaty bones, not cooked grains with artificial nutrients sprayed on..

Pet Diet Books

2010-05-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com is awash in books that advise pet owners on how to feed dogs and cats. Advice varies from apologias for commercial pet foods to home-cookbooks to guides on how to feed a balanced diet of raw meaty bones.

Books that promote commercial kibbles and canned mush are often written by veterinarians who are employed by, or supported by, pet-food companies. The rationale for commercial pet foods depends on mis-classifying dogs as omnivores that can be fed grains and vegetables, instead of meats and meaty bones. Commercial dog food advertise they are "complete and balanced" nutrition for your pet. Actually, commercial pet foods are cooked grains with manufactured nutrients to try to simulate real food. Relying on manufactured "food" to keep your pets healthy is the same as relying on processed cereals to supply all the nutrients your children need.

Cats are acknowledged as "obligate carnivores" (that is, they must have a meat-based diet), but clever pet-food nutritionists have concocted "foods" from grains and isolated nutrients that are sprayed on cooked starches.Dry cat foods have more proteins than dog foods, but they are far from a healthy diet for cats.

Believing in commercial pet foods is the same as believing that Twinkies, sprayed with synthetic vitamins and minerals, would be a good diet for your children. A moments' thought will tell you this can't be true.

Actually, giant, global food companies commit dietary atrocities throughout the food chain -- feed for herbivore cattle contains rendered meat meals to promote rapid weight gain, and pet foods are based on grains that carnivores did not evolve to digest. These inappropriate diets effectively and profitably dispose of global companies' food wastes, at a high health cost to animals that are fed inappropriate diets.

Feeding food animals a wrong-diet has short-term consequences for the animals, because they will be slaughtered in 12 to 18 months. Food animals would be far healthier for people to eat if they had been grass-fed and free-range, but giving food animals their appropriate diet in a natural environment is less profitable than crowding them in disease-ridden feed lots and darkened chicken factories and stuffing them with unnatural foods.

Feeding pets a wrong-diet has bad health consequences for the 10 to 20 years of pets' lifetimes. Imagine being fed the same wrong-diet daily for 15 years. Make no mistake: Commercial pet foods damage pets' health and are simply atrocious.

Books that advise owners to feed the BARF diet (Biologically Available Raw Food, or Bones and Raw Foods, or vomit, as you wish) promote an omnivore diet for carnivorous pets. Ian Billinghurst, an Australian veterinarian, is founder of the widespread BARF diet. He promotes raw-feeding, including meaty bones and his own line of pet foods. BARF meals contain minced meats, cooked grains and vegetables, and ground bone. He recommends feeding raw meats and meaty bones, but in minced forms that do not keep pets mouths free of periodontal disease.

Hundreds of thousands of pet owners -- probably millions -- subscribe to the BARF diet. Feeding pets the same kind of diet people eat "makes sense" to pet owners who do not know their pet companions are not omnivores like themselves. In my opinion, BARF is a step above commercial dog-food junk. Dogs get better nutrition from more digestible ingredients, but BARF falls far short of being the best diet for carnivorous dogs.

I fed a home-made BARF diet of cooked brown rice, minced veggies, and raw eggs and meats to my dogs for several years. The dogs also had raw meaty bones to keep their teeth clean. When I fed kibble, my dogs had allergies, ear problems and joint issues. The BARF diet removed the grains that caused the dogs' allergies, so it proved to be a better diet for them than commercially fabricated junk.

Cats pose a special problem for BARFers, because cats clearly don't need to eat grains or vegetables and are harmed by their inclusion in a feline diet. BARFers do not talk much about cats. The Honest Kitchen, which markets dehydrated meat-and-vegetable BARF foods for dogs has a big problem with feline diets. Cats just don't fit the BARF profile. Dogs don't fit the BARF profile either, but dogs can subsist on a "starvation" diet better than cats can.

Books that promote raw-meaty-bones take a stand on the carnivorous nature of dogs, cats, and ferrets. Pets are carnivores that require a different diet from their owners. Dogs and cats today are most often considered family members. Many pet owners want to feed pets the same, or similar, diet that they eat. How can 4-legged family members require a different diet?

RMB tells pet owners not to feed grains and vegetables except as occasional leftovers. Pets' diets must be based on the whole prey that they evolved to eat, or its convenient form -- raw meats, and raw meaty bones. Feeding rmb is actually quite easy, but it takes a change in mind-set to adopt it. If owners understand the evolution of wolves/dogs and wild cats, they are more likely to feel comfortable with the rmb diet.

What do wolves and wild cats eat? Whole prey is the well-understood reply. What should domestic wolves and cats eat? The answer is obvious and easy to implement, once pet-food company and veterinary propaganda is dismissed.

Pet owners are bombarded with conflicting advice on how to feed their pets. A survey of books on pet diets indicates that a few offer good advice on feeding pets raw-meaty-bones. Some present rmb as an option but no better than kibble or BARF foods. Informed pet owners can see the commercial venality and mis-information behind that advice.

False Assumptions, Bad Advice About Pet Food

2010-05-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

Marion Nestle is a human nutritionist, who endorses fresh, whole foods for people and criticizes processed junk foods. Her advice to people is to eat less and to eat a wide variety of minimally processed foods.

Her advice to pet owners is much less healthy and helpful. For this book, Nestle teamed up with Malden Nesheim, a veterinary nutritionist by training. He seems to have lead Nestle woefully astray. They endorse starchy kibbles and canned mush as pet food – the commercial pet foods that cause rampant periodontal disease, stress pets’ immune systems, and leave them victims of myriad chronic diseases. It is puzzling that an advocate of fresh whole foods for people would not make similar, species-appropriate recommendations for their pets.

The vast misinformation in this book is based on a false assumption: That dogs, like humans, are omnivores. No references are provided to support this erroneous belief, because there aren’t any. All the scholarship of the last 10 years shows that dogs are carnivores.

To back up their false assumption, they assert that dogs’ intestinal track is long like human omnivores. This is factually incorrect. Both dogs’ and cats’ small intestines are 2.5 times as long as their bodies. Humans’ small intestines are 10 times as long as their height. Long intestines digest vegetables and cereals slowly and well. Carnivores’ short and highly acidic intestinal tracks digest meats and bones fast and pass remaining matter out as poop – great piles of malodorous poop from grain-fed dogs and cats.

The authors assert that dogs “descended” recently (in evolutionary time) from wolves. They fail to acknowledge that dogs are currently classified as a sub-species of wolf. Dogs are wolves, not a separate species. They fail to cite the last decade of genetic research that demonstrates the wolf-identity of domestic dogs. Despite the many human-designed changes in dogs’ sizes and shapes, their digestive and immune systems are species wolf.

As we all know, wolves are carnivores, whose natural diet consists of whole prey. Dogs’/wolves’ natural diet is whole prey, as demonstrated repeatedly in studies of feral dogs Domestic canines, that are abandoned and live in wild packs all over the world, prey on small animals. Feral dogs never graze in fields of corn or eat vegetables or garbage, unless no animal prey is available. Dogs and wolves evolved to eat raw meats and bones, not grains and vegetables. Wolves/dogs do not cook their meat and meaty bones. Cooking alters the nutritional value of foods and causes bones to splinter. Raw bones do not splinter. Dogs and wolves evolved to eat whole prey -- or its convenient form, raw-meaty-bones.

In times of famine, wolves and dogs can subsist briefly on carbohydrates, a convenient fact the authors use to endorse cooked grains and vegetable diets for domestic carnivores. Most pet owners do not aim to feed their beloved pets a starvation diet. If pet owners were told the truth about carnivorous pets, many would choose to feed their pets raw meats and meaty bones. The authors’ false assumption about the very nature of dogs renders their dietary advice misleading at best.

Cats do not fare much better than dogs in this book. Although the authors realize that cats are carnivores, that in the wild feed entirely on whole prey, they accept the pet-food industry line that cats can be fed on grains and artificial nutrients. That carnivorous cats can subsist on a totally inappropriate diet of cooked grains and vegetables is a view endorsed by veterinarians, whose livelihood depends materially on pet-food sales. Cats fed high-carbohydrate diets often develop urinary tract stones, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, and other chronic disorders from stressed digestive and immune systems.

One interesting chapter is an attack on corruption in veterinary training, nutritional research, and practice. Global pet-food companies, notably Mars, Nestle-Purina, Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Del Monte, fund and control small animal nutrition in the veterinary profession. By supporting student training, providing employees to teach nutrition courses, funding “nutrition research”, and contributing substantial income to practicing vets, these giant food companies buy veterinary endorsement of their junk foods that do irreparable harm to pets’ health.

Nestle and Nesheim call for reform of the veterinary profession and establishment of independent teaching, research, and practice. Unlike medicine, there seems to be little concern among veterinary schools or professional associations about undue commercial influence on their profession. Whereas revelations of drug-company influence on medical education, research, and practice provoked some reforms in medicine, little unrest is evidenced among vets, who know how dependent they are on pet-food company largesse.

The authors' recognition that nutritional information about pets is tightly controlled by pet-food companies, to their enormous profit, does not jar them sufficiently to reject the lies they were fed about appropriate diets for dogs and cats. For scholars, who cite many references to trivial details, their blindness to their most basic (and false) assumption about pets' digestive systems is startling.

Although the authors conclude that home-cooked and raw diets can be safe and nutritionally appropriate, they do not favor species-appropriate diets over commercial junk foods. Neither dogs nor cats can safely eat cooked starches daily year in and year out. The authors express faith in AAFCO’s brief feeding trials on a few animals to endorse feeding a monotonous, commercial diet for pets’ lifetimes. Six months of feeding a concocted diet to 8 animals, 2 of which may die during the feeding trial, support an AAFCO recommendation of “complete and balanced” food for pets’ lifetimes. How illogical and unscientific is that?

In a few chapters, Nestle’s familiar theme of diet variety is voiced. Variety of foods assures people’s nutritional needs are met. Variety of meats and meaty bones, and occasional leftovers, also assures that pets’ nutritional needs are met. I agree that variety of foods is both healthy and pleasant for both people and pets, with one major caveat: Dogs and cats are not omnivores. They do not need a variety of grains and vegetables in their diet, as humans do.

Two other Nestle themes are safety and the interconnectedness of human and animal food supplies. On these topics, Nestle is an expert with valuable and disturbing information. Her earlier book on pet food safety reviewed the massive 2007 pet food recall for deliberate melamine adulteration. The same contaminated wheat gluten was fed to farmed fish and poultry intended for US human consumption and put into baby formula in China, with disastrous results. She points to frequent recalls of both human and pet foods for dangerous contamination and the FDA’s inability to prevent or respond effectively to safety issues in the food supply.

Most of the later book deals with pet diets, however. This is a deeply disappointing book. I admire Marion Nestle’s approach to human food. She was badly misled about the diet carnivorous pets need to thrive. One wonders if the authors are otherwise motivated to keep the peace with food-industry giants, the same global companies that make pet foods from human food wastes? Both authors are professors of nutrition at universities. Their careers are based on food. Global food production, processing, and distribution are controlled by the same companies that make pet foods. Getting on the wrong side of Mars and Nestle (the company) by rejecting their junk pet foods is probably not a wise career move. Truth is another matter.

Is Packaged Pet Food FOOD?

2010-05-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Are extruded kibbles and canned pet foods really FOOD? To determine whether kibbles and canned mush are FOOD, depends on how one defines FOOD.

Most nutritionists believe that food is a simple sum of it's ingredients or known nutrients. That perspective was roundly rejected by Michael Pollan in his book, In Defense of Food. For Pollan and other whole-food advocates, FOOD is biologically impossible to replicate in a laboratory or manufacturing plant. Many important constituents of real FOOD are currently unknown, and the complex interplay of elements in real FOOD adds up to more than the sum of known parts.

For me, an old-fashioned grandmother, a definition of FOOD begins with where and how it grows. FOOD is what grows in croplands and in green pastures. FOOD is plants and animals in their unprocessed states. FOOD is alive, or recently so. Humans cook some FOOD to make it safer and more digestible. Carnivores do not cook their FOOD to make it safer or more digestible -- it comes safe and digestible on the hoof.

FOOD is not manufactured mixtures of ingredients or nutrients that are supposed to add up to adequate nutriiton, -- a constantly changing set of criteria. What nutritionist believed was adequate nutrition in 1980 or 1990 has been revised and rewitten many times. A big problem with processed human and pet foods is they are based on what is know at that time about nutritional requirements of the species for which they are intended. What is believed to be complete nutrition in one decade changes to the next and will change again by 2020.

People are advised to eat a variety of foods -- mostly fresh FOODS -- to cover all their nutritional needs. Pet owners, on the other hand, are advised to feed only one kind of food for the lifetime of the pet. Pet-food manufacturers are allowed to say their products are AFFCO-approved as a sole source of nutrition for the lifetimes of dogs and cats. This statement is absurd on its face and very damaging to pets, whose owners depend on government agencies to protect their own and their pet's health.

Actually, most pet foods are not tested on animals to see if they sustain life or kill pets. A few are tested for up to 6 months on 8 dogs or 8 cats. Based on that brief trial, in which 2 animals are allowed to die, the food is declared to provide adequate nutrition for pets' 10- to 20-year lifetimes. What is not wrong with this picture?

FOOD, for me, is not cococtions of 99 ingredients, half of them synthesized from chemicals in a manufacturing plant. Pet foods are.

Can pet-food bags and cans be classified as FOOD? Rarely. Most kibbles and canned mush have many highly-processed ingredients and preservatives that extend shelf-life but may harm pets. Reading the labels on most pet foods is not only (deliberately) confusing, but the list of ingredients contains many chemical compounds that are unfamiliar to nearly all buyers. I challenge you to explain to me what is in a bag of Purina dog chow or Iams premium whatever.

A few canned pet foods, such as Wysong's all-meat line can be considered FOOD -- cooked, but FOOD nonetheless. Also, dehydrated meats and vegetables, although processed, are essentially raw meats and vegetables with moisture removed and some biological preservatives added. Not as good as unprocessed FOOD, but falls under my definition of FOOD.

FOOD for dogs and cats is meat and meaty bones. Carnivores eat meat, not cereals or raw vegetables. Human omnivores can eat a variety of meats, vegetables and grains for complete nutrition. We don't need to know -- indeed no one knows -- which edibles contribute what to a complete diet. We just need to eat a variety of FOODS.

Similarly, carnivorous dogs get complete nutiriton from a variety of muscle and organ meats and meaty bones, with occasional additions of cooked vegetables or green tripe. For cats, forget the vegetables -- they get along best on just raw-meaty-bones. Neither cats nor dogs need to eat grains, which are major ingredients in commercial cat and dog foods. Cats are sickened more quickly by grain-based diets, which kill dogs more slowly.

No, commercial pet foods are not FOOD by my definition or by defintions offered by whole-food advocates. When it is so easy to feed pets real FOOD, why rob them of the benefits of the diet they evolved to eat?

Passionate Advocacy for Raw-Meaty-Bones

2010-05-04T01:32:00.000-07:00

Every now and again, I receive a letter that makes me realize how passionately people feel about their pets' well-being and how grateful they are to have found a source of raw-meaty-bones they can afford to feed beloved pets.

Quite by chance, a fellow called me to see if one of my dogs could offer stud service for his yellow Labrador retriever. From wandering around the Aloha Labradors web site, he found a link to the Kona Raw Pet Food Co-op. Here is his letter:

Dear Sandra,

Certainly enjoyed our informative chat yesterday re breeding our precious yellow lab. Haven't seen any new spotting since "onset" Friday, so it was probably a false start, and she won't have her season until her old usual time in the fall. When will your yellow stud arrive?

Would like to feed her optimally to prepare ....

Thank God for Sandra and her Raw Co-op. I've been struggling with the processed raw dog food [no raw meaty bones] market in CA for years with mixed success. You've started a revolution in pet nutrition.

The same concept could certainly fly on the Mainland in spite of Big Agri & Big Pharma. Best of luck in spreading the good tidings. I'll do my best to help pass the word, as I strongly believe a raw, living foods diet is also optimal for human health.

CHEERS,   Dave

Now that's a letter to warm one's dark moments. Of course, credit goes to Tom Lonsdale, DVM, who has struggled for 20 years to spread the word about appropriate foods for carnivorous pets -- the raw-meaty-bones diet. His goals are not just to feed pets better but to expose the evil conspiracy between pet-food companies and those who serve their financial interests -- veterinarians and so-called animal welfare groups.

The financial power of global food processors, who dominate both human and pet-food processing (and you know who they are), distorts veterinary training and supports vet practices. Gobs of pet-food money are also spent to keep animal welfare advocates quiet about the damage commercial pet-food diets wreak on the health of carnivorous pets.

Dr. Lonsdale wants scientific recognition of his cybernetic theory about carnivores and ecological balance. In today's world, it is difficult to recognize the natural balance of herbivore prey (such as deer, elk, moose) and predators (such as wolves, lions, hyenas) that existed throughout evolution. His theory focuses on the role of periodontal disease in curbing predator populations and maintaining ecological balance. Most ecologists focus on food supplies and competition for resources. To read more about cybernetics and predator/prey relations, look at his book, Raw Meaty Bones, available on his web site.

It is encouraging to know that compete strangers flock to the idea and practicality of a raw-meaty-bones co-op. Wes is working on the Oahu co-op. He has many dozens (one fears, hundreds) of potential co-op members just waiting for him to set up shop. Oahu could probably have 5 or 10 viable co-ops set up in local areas, if only SOMEONE would volunteer to organize them. Meanwhile, Kona Raw thrives on weekly deliveries of 300 to 400 pounds of meat and meaty bones in little Kona. Welcome All!

Defending FOOD

2010-05-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

Food is what grows in gardens and grassy pastures. Food is biologically alive, or recently so. It is amazing that food companies can advertise their dead, manufactured concoctions as food, and people eat it and feed it to their pets.

I just read Michael Pollan's, In Defense of Food. He offers good advice for feeding yourself and, indirectly, your pets. Rules are simple:

Don't eat anything your grandmother would not recognize as food.
Avoid products that contain ingredients that are (a) unfamiliar, (b) unpronounceable, (c) more than five in number, and (d) contain high-fructose corn syrup. This rule eliminates all processed "foods".
Avoid food products that make health claims; they are guaranteed to be less healthy than fresh produce and meats that make no health claims.
Shop the peripheries of supermarkets, where the produce, dairy and meat coolers are. Stay out of the middle aisles where processed foods are shelved.
Get out of supermarkets and into farmers' markets whenever possible.
Eat mostly plant leaves, not seeds. Corn, wheat, and soy make up most processed foods -- all seeds -- that make you fat and hungry.
Eat less, savor food more, and make eating meals social-cultural events, not solitary, rushed, eat-till-it's-gone episodes in a day filled with snacks and sodas.

Pollan's excellent advice is to avoid the Western processed food diet that is making millions of people sick and to return to more traditional diets of fresh, local foods you prepare and serve yourself.

THE SAME ADVICE APPLIES TO PET FOODS. Here's a rendering of Pollan's food advice for pets:

Don't feed anything that your grandmother would not have fed her pets (which was raw meaty bones and table scraps).
Avoid pet foods that contain ingredients that are (a) unfamiliar, (b) unpronounceable, (c) more than five in number, and (d) contain high-fructose corn syrup. This rule eliminates all manufactured pet foods.
Avoid pet-food products that make health claims; they are guaranteed to be less healthy than fresh meats and meaty bones that make no health claims.
Shop the peripheries of supermarkets, where the meat coolers are. Stay out of the middle aisles where processed pet-foods are shelved.
Get out of supermarkets and into meat wholesalers and raw-pet-food co-ops whenever possible.
Feed mostly meats and bones, not seeds. Corn, wheat, and soy make up most processed pet foods -- all seeds -- that make pets fat and hungry.
Feed once a day, help your pet savor food more by giving him large-enough chunks of raw-meaty-bones to chew and gnaw, and do not provide bowls filled with junk foods for him to snack on all day.

Serious critics of our food supply, such as Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle, are unanimous in condemning processed foods that distort eating habits, create an epidemic of obesity and the chronic diseases that ensue from overweight, such as diabetes, heart disease, liver and kidney disorders. Food manufacturers and fast food chains are sickening and killing millions of people worldwide. Similarly, pet food manufacturers (same companies) are sickening and killing millions of pets with processed nutrients they call food.

How did this very sad state of affairs happen? To get the whole story, read Pollan's In Defense of Food and Nestle's Food Politics. First, quantity over quality of food became the US Government's priority after World War II. Starvation could be eliminated if farmers could produce enough calories. Grains and seeds (soy) became the staple US agricultural crops to feed a hungry world.   Today, the same government-subsidized, staple crops are making people around the world fat and malnourished.

Second, nutritional pseudoscience claimed to know all the essential nutrients that people need to ingest to be healthy. Nutritionists speak of nutrients, not food.   The list of "essential nutrients" changed many times over decades of this nonsense, as new "essentials" were found and some were eliminated as harmful. Nutritionists worked closely with manufacturers to add nutrients to cheap processed grains to simulate food. Pollan reviews the dismal history and arrogant failures of "nutritionism" and processed "food".

Third, food is more than the sum of its nutrients (including many yet to be defined or simulated).   Food is biologically alive. Foods, such as vegetables and meats, act on our bodies in far more complex ways than nutritionists can find in studies of isolated nutrients. People do not need to know how isolated nutrients affect their bodies. They need only to eat a variety of fresh foods to supply themselves with all essential nutrients.

As I said in an earlier blog. animal flesh and bones cannot be replicated in a laboratory. Many of their constituents are unknown, and the complex whole of living matter is impossible to replicate The living mystery of flesh and bones makes manufacturing healthy pet foods from isolated "nutrients" impossible. But pet owners do not need to know the nutritional constituents of meat and bones. They need only to feed their pets a variety of meats and meaty bones to assure proper nutrition.

Many voices are being raised today to defend FOOD against nutritionists and processed food manufacturers, whose advice and products are responsible for enormous health-care costs in the overweight and malnourished human population. Obesity brings with it huge increases in chronic health disorders. Pets' situation is identical. Processed grains fed to carnivorous cats and dogs are making pets fat and sick, incurring enormous vet bills for their owners, and causing huge, unnecessary suffering for pets.

So, raise your voice for Raw-Meaty-Bones -- the only FOOD for carnivorous pets!

Optimal Health for Pets

2010-04-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

Understanding the healthy diet for carnivorous pets is quite simple, if you begin with an open mind. Cats and dogs evolved to eat whole prey. Whole prey for cats consists of small animals, such as bird and rodents. Whole prey for dogs consists of larger animals, such as chickens, rabbits, goats, deer, and sheep. If fed whole prey, cats and dogs eat either the whole animal, including feathers or fur and guts, or most of the animal, except the hard, inedible bones and hide. By eating whole prey, carnivores get a variety of meats and meaty bones, including all the minerals and vitamins they need to be healthy.

If owners cannot conveniently feed whole prey, and most cannot, they need to approximate whole prey in their pets' diets. Approximating whole prey is pretty easy with a raw-meaty-bones diet.

Randy Wysong, DVM, began his company, Wysong, more than 30 years ago. His Optimal Health for Pets program recommends feeding whole prey or a variety of raw meats and meaty bones as the best nutrition for pets. Although his company sells tons of junk food each month, because that's what pet owners buy, his dietary recommendations are contrary to his company's business practices.. Ethical considerations aside, his Optimal Health hierarchy for pets makes a lot of sense.

Best diet: Hunted, whole prey

Second best: Raw meats and meaty bones, with minor amounts of vegetables and nuts (preferably organic)

Third best: Dehydrated raw meats (such as,Wysong Archetype), with the addition of fresh raw meats and raw meaty bones.

Fourth best: Dehydrated raw meats with added cooked fresh foods or leftovers

Fifth best: Wysong or other premium kibbles and canned mush (junk food) with added fresh raw meats and meaty bones

Sixth best: Junk pet foods with added cooked fresh foods or leftovers

Seventh best: Commercial kibbles or canned pet foods alone

Eight best: No food at all.

Please note that feeding what most veterinarians recommend -- a monotonous diet of commercial kibbles and canned mush alone -- Dr. Wysong rates nearly as bad for pets as starvation. It's just a slower death.

Understanding what pets need to be healthy is quite simple: RAW meats and meaty bones, not cooked foods and not commercial pet foods. Feeding the same junk pet foods -- kibbles and canned mush -- monotonously is a sure route to pets' chronic diseases and early deaths.

Dr. Wysong does recommend and sell a number of diet supplements that can alleviate some nutritional problems caused by feeding pets inferior diets. No dietary supplement, however, will keep pets' teeth clean, gums healthy, and prevent chronic diseases caused by periodontal infections.

When I have a litter 3 to 6 weeks old puppies, before they can chew bones effectively, I add Wysong Call of the Wild to their meats to make sure they get enough minerals and vitamins. Wysong makes excellent supplements from organic and natural sources. After 6 weeks of age, when puppies can chew up chicken thighs and drumsticks and gnaw on meaty beef bones, they don't need supplements. The RMB diet, and their mother's continued nursing, supply all the nutrients they need.

Wysong promotes its series of essays, "100 Truths about Pet Foods ", that help pet owners understand what pets need and how wrong is the advice they hear from veterinarians and pet-food companies. For pet owners who are new to the idea of raw-meaty-bones, these essays are worth reading.

Feeding carnivorous pets an excellent diet is really quite simple, once you understand what they evolved to eat (whole prey) and how you can supply the elements of whole prey in a diet of varied raw meats and meaty bones.

Poodle Expert Recommends Raw-Meaty-Bones!

2010-04-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

Recently, I decided to expand my kennel to include a breed that should be more popular in Hawaii -- standard Poodles. When a member of the Kona Raw Pet Food Co-op brought her black standard Poodle to my farm, I was reminded of how lovely these dogs are and how seldom I see them in Kona. So, I began to look at standard Poodle web sites, looked for breeders in Hawaii (none), and migrated to my favorite canine web site, Dogzonline, the Australian online marketplace for purebred dogs (it also lists NZ dogs).

For dog lovers in Hawaii, where we have no rabies, importing dogs from the mainland US is a torturous process of quarantine, immunization, and testing that requires 9 to 10 months. Puppies cannot be imported from the mainland (or anywhere else in the world, except the UK and Guam) until they are nearly a year old. Australia and New Zealand, however, are also rabies-free, so puppies can come directly into Hawaii at 2- to 3-months of age, without quarantine.

Australia has many dog breeders, and pets are a major export. Unfortunately, Australia has puppy mills that supply US pet shops with questionably bred puppies that received poor early socialization, many of whom end up in shelters. Fortunately, Australia also has very fine, reputable breeders, who raise world-class dogs and who are quite picky about who buys their puppies. Dogzonline screens its breeders carefully, requires them to be members in good standing with their regional kennel clubs, and to adhere to a code of ethics that excludes puppy mills.

After searching Dogzonline for several weeks and contacting half-a-dozen standard Poodle breeders, I found Stuartlea Poodles in Victoria, which breeds gorgeous red standards. Minna agreed to send me two puppies, a boy and a girl. By the way, most Poodle breeders will not sell puppies to someone who breeds Labrador retrievers, because they fear cross-breeding (Labradoodles). My quest for Poodle puppies was more difficult than most people would encounter.

My two babies, Teddy (left) and Ruby (right), arrived two weeks ago. They are sweet, smart, funny, loving puppies, and I am thrilled with them.

With Poodle puppies coming, naturally I needed to read more about care and rearing, so I went to my favorite books web site, Amazon.com, to search for books on standard Poodles. There are fewer books than I imagined about standard Poodles, a fraction of the number of books on Labrador retrievers. After reading reviews and contents, I selected a few, notably one that reviewers said is the "bible" of standard Poodles -- Eileen Geeson, The Complete Standard Poodle, NY: Howell House, 1998. 1998? That's an old book. I ordered it anyway.

As soon as my Complete Standard Poodle arrived, I dove in. The author has bred, shown, and judged standard Poodles in the UK for three decades (by 1998). She is recognized as the leading British authority on the breed. To my total astonishment, she feeds her champion Poodles, and recommends you feed your Poodle, the RAW-MEATY-BONES diet!

There is no doubt that dogs like a variety of foods. Being natural carnivores they love the internal organs of other animals such as beef (usually complete with well-chewed grass and vegetables), their meat, bones. everything. As natural scavengers they eat anything from scraps to the compost heap. Dogs descended from wolves and still carry their natural instincts. These instincts are often depressed by an owner who refuses to accept their dog is a dog. I have had Poodles come to stay with me who will not so much as look at a raw meaty bone while there is a human in sight, yet leave the dog alone with the bone and you will soon hear it crunching with great passion.

In addition to RMB, she says table scraps and cooked veggies are good supplements to the diet. Tom Lonsdale (author of Raw Meaty Bones) could have written Ms. Geeson's feeding recommendations. I would love to know if she read Dr. Lonsdale's earlier writings; his major book was not published until 2001. The book has no index and acknowledges only a few Poodle experts and photographers. Perhaps, Ms. Geeson is simply a sensible dog expert, who recognizes their wolf origins and the dietary needs of carnivorous pets.

My Poodle babies adore raw-meaty-bones. In fact, they spend a lot of time gnawing on each bone to get every last scrap of meat -- more time than my more "casual" Lab puppies, who rush on to the next bone before finishing the first. Poodle puppies are tidier than Labs, less likely to strew their food over a wide area or leave morsels behind. Regardless of how they approach RMB, all the puppies get lots of minerals and clean teeth from their hours of gnawing on meaty bones.

I am happy to follow Ms. Geeson's advice to feed my Poodles RMB. I wonder how many other standard Poodle owners have similarly followed her advice. She is the leading Poodle expert in the UK ....

As my puppies mature, they will be joined by other standard Poodles to form a breeding program. My friend

and Poodle collaborator, Joslyn, is importing a brown (we prefer to say, chocolate) female from a Montana kennel, who will join us in August after all the Hawaii quarantine requirements are met. I am still looking for more red and chocolate Poodles in rabies-free areas. Our newly launched web site, Kona Poodles, will keep you abreast of developments.

While we raise Poodle puppies to maturity, we plan to try a litter of Labradoodles with a black Labrador retriever female Joslyn owns, mated by AI to a red standard Poodle from the same Montana kennel that is sending us the chocolate girl. We shall see how we like F1 Labradoodles. They are much in demand. The only one I know is a gorgeous honey-colored, large boy with a delightful personality. He was bred as a service dog for a Kona Raw member's paraplegic husband. Unfortunately, the husband died, but the dog became the wife's best friend and companion. Oliver thrives on raw-meaty-bones, which may explain his happy disposition.

Regardless of breed or species, all carnivores on my farm eat raw-meaty-bones. It was delightful to find the UK's leading Poodle expert recommending the same.

How to Celebrate National Pet Month.

2010-04-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

Every year, April is National Pet Month. Promoting pet ownership is very big business. Every vendor of pet toys, clothing, leashes, crates, flea medications, treats, and, of course, pet foods welcomes attention to how owners can spend money on pets. Most owners' expenditures to celebrate Pet Month probably do not enhance pets' lives or well-being.

Tom Lonsdale, DVM laments that too many pet owners view their cats and dogs as furry toys. Furry toys do not have needs; they are inanimate baubles that serve only to amuse their owners. Dogs and cats are very animate species, whose specific needs must be met or their health suffers. Dressing pets in designer clothes may be silly, because cats and most dogs don't need clothes, but the practice is relatively harmless. Feeding pets so-called gourmet treats that are nothing more than cooked, sugary starches is not harmless. They lead to obesity. Feeding pets a diet of cooked, sugary starches day after day, year after year, is neglect and abuse.

The cruelty of feeding dogs and cats inappropriate diets is not featured in National Pet Month. Rather, glossy advertisements on television and in magazines make cooked starches and canned mush appear to have fresh wholesome ingredients that nourish your pet better than real carnivore foods. Promotions of ever more expensive kibbles, with ever more exotic ingredients, is the pet-food industry's response to consumers' growing mistrust of commercial pet foods.

Some common ingredients in pet foods, such as corn and wheat, have developed a reputation for causing allergies (as well they should). Vets tell their clients to avoid pet foods based on corn and wheat. So, manufacturers advertise that their pet foods DO NOT CONTAIN CORN OR WHEAT. So did they put in more animal proteins and fats? Of course not. That would cost more and reduce their profits. Instead of corn or wheat, the new formulation uses potatoes or tapioca or rice or sweet potatoes. The product is still cooked, sugary starches that will sicken and eventually kill your pet. Manufacturers hope you don't know that these new ingredients are also starches that should not be ingredients in pet foods, ever.

Selling pet owners on the "benefits" of exotic pet-food ingredients, such as blueberry pulp, spirolina, and alfalfa sprouts, seems to work, because high-priced kibbles are the fastest growing segment of the highly profitable pet-food market. Pet owners don't know why watercress stems or some other exotic vegetable matter should benefit their pets, but manufacturers tell them these "new" ingredients enhance pets' nutrition, so they pay more to buy the new, "enhanced" junk food.

Manufacturers, such as Proctor & Gamble, Mars, Colgate-Palmolive, Heinz, and Del Monte, make trusted brands for human consumption. These companies control the global, human and pet processed-food markets. Consumers trust them to produce healthy macaroni & cheese, breakfast cereals, and spaghetti sauces for their families. Pet owners have trusted these giant companies to promote their pets' health with Science Diet, Iams, Eukanuba, Purina, and other well-known brands, but something is very wrong. Pets have more illnesses and early deaths than anyone expects. Health officials now tell us the same companies' human products make us obese, and more likely to suffer diabetes and heart disorders -- just like our pets. Perhaps, consumer confidence in the benevolence of their human products will be shaken, as well.

When you see whole chickens and beef steaks pouring into a kibble bag in the Pet Month television ads, please know that these are not ingredients in the expensive pet food you buy. If pet food labels were truthful, you would know that "chicken" is feathers, feet, and beaks, and "beef" is rendered waste. When you are told that some new exotic ingredient replaces one that made pets sick, ask yourself why the new one will be better. Can you trust global food manufacturers with your pet's health or your own health?

Let's celebrate National Pet Month with something that really benefits pets: An appropriate diet to keep them healthy throughout long lifetimes. Carnivorous pets are not furry toys. Cats and dogs are predators that feed on whole prey. They need a raw-meaty-bones diet that approximates whole prey. When shopping for groceries, pass by the processed food aisles for yourself and your pets. Head straight to the meat coolers to buy fresh meats and meaty bones for your pets and your family. Then go to the produce area to gather fresh fruits and vegetables for your human family. These are the foods that will promote your pets' health and your own health, as well.

Getting the RMB Diet Right

2010-04-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

A well-know aphorism is, "Variety is the spice of life." In the case of food, variety is more than the spice of life, it's a lifeline to health.

In our own diets, we include a variety of foods, from different "food groups", to make sure we get the wide range of nutrients our bodies need. No need to include all nutrients everyday, we just vary our foods across a week or two.

The same aphorism applies to pets: A variety of raw meats and bones assures they get all the nutrients they need to grow and stay healthy. Dogs' and cats' "food groups" are not the same as ours, however, because we are omnivores, who get essential proteins and fats from vegetables and grains, in addition to animal proteins and fats. Dogs and cats are carnivores, who must get all or most nutrients from animal sources.

Cats lack enzymes to digest vegetables and grains. Cereals and vegetables (as in kibble and canned mush) poison their guts, causing digestive disorders and urinary tract stones. Cats get all the nutrients they need from eating whole prey -- muscle meats, organ meats, and bones.

Dogs/wolves can digest some vegetable matter and derive nutritional benefits from partially digested grasses that cling to the guts of their herbivore prey. They don't eat the contents of herbivores' stomachs and guts, just the partially digested matter that adheres to the surface. Dogs benefit from organ meats such as green tripe that contain partially digested vegetable matter and from occasional family left-overs, such as cooked vegetables.

Pet carnivores cannot be healthy on muscle meat alone. Muscle meat does not contain all essential nutrients, and it has too much phosphorous and too little calcium. Pets must have edible bone for calcium and various organ meats for vitamins. Pets cannot be healthy if they don't have bones to gnaw to keep their teeth clean. Feeding minced mixtures of meats and bones omits Nature's toothbrush and makes pets vulnerable to periodontal disease and the chronic diseases that follow.

A complete diet for carnivorous pets includes items, such as green tripe, guts, and other parts of food animals that many pet owners would not willingly eat. Many people have trouble feeding their pets foods they would not themselves eat. Get over it! Your pets are carnivores. If you choose to keep a carnivorous pet, feed it an appropriate diet, which is NOT your omnivore diet or muscle meats alone.

A complete diet for dogs includes muscle meats, organ meats, and meaty bones, with occasional human left-overs. A complete diet for dogs does NOT include cooked grains, extruded from machines and sprayed with synthetic vitamins, manufactured minerals, preservatives, and animal fats to make the cereal appeal to carnivores (aka, kibble), or cooked mixtures of grains, meat byproducts, and vegetables, with added preservatives (aka, canned mush).

A complete diet for cats is simple: Just the equivalent of small, whole prey (think birds and rodents): Meats and edible bones. No leftovers or vegetable matter required or desired. A complete diet for cats emphatically does NOT include dry, baked carbohydrates (aka, kibble), or cooked, canned mush.

When feeding carnivorous pets, the best image to keep in mind is WHOLE PREY. That's what you are trying to approximate in your pet's diet. You can't leave out the innards, such as liver and tripe, and provide a well-balanced diet. Grit your teeth, hold your nose, do whatever it takes, to feed your pet the variety of carnivorous foods he needs. Remember, "Variety is more than the spice of life."

Humane Society Launches Inhumane Dog Food

2010-04-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) launched its first-ever dog food in February 2010. HSUS is the largest animal welfare organization in the country. Why market their own dog food? According the HSUS, proceeds from dog food sales will support more actions against inhumane puppy mills and other dog abuses. The press had criticized HSUS for their failing to close abusive animal facilities, so they decided to raise more funds by branding their own kibble for dogs.

HSUS also opposes the inhumane practices used to farm food animals, such as cattle and pig feed lots, mass dairy milking barns, and chicken factories. No doubt these "farming" methods do subject food animals to inhumane conditions. So, HSUS refused to include any meat or dairy products in their dog food. Dogs fed HSUS kibble will receive only vegetable fats and proteins -- NO animal proteins or fats and NO dairy or egg proteins or fats. HSUS dog food is VEGAN! A VEGAN diet manufactured in Uruguay! Two veterinary nutritionists approved the VEGAN dog food, which says a lot about the unreliability of veterinary nutritionists.

How humane is feeding carnivorous dogs, whose natural diet is whole prey, nothing but vegetables? No doubt they have to add manufactured, synthetic vitamins and minerals, which are not supplied by vegetable matter. Vegetables are a very unnatural and inadequate diet for carnivores. In addition, HSUS veggies are cooked and extruded from machines. How humane is that for dogs, whose diet should consist of muscle meats, organ meats, and meaty bones?

HSUS says they have not figured out how to manufacture cat kibble from vegetables alone. Cats must have meats and meaty bones to live. Perhaps, they can manufacture their cat food from all the dogs they kill with their VEGAN dog kibble.

Further Experience with Packaged RMB

2010-04-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

The two weekly menus for 40- to 50-pound dogs were a great hit -- with both the dogs and their owner. She said the dogs were very excited every day when she got out the baggies with their daily portion of meat chunks and meaty bones. Feeding her two bull terriers was easy -- all she had to do was open the bag and hand out the food. Her greatest joy was seeing how happy and excited they are about raw-meaty-bones.

I wondered if she would venture into ordering a la carte from the web site. Not yet. She ordered two weekly menus again. When she picked up her bags of meals this afternoon, she met two other dog owners who were picking up their large orders of varied rmb. We all discussed the many items available for dogs, and the more experienced raw feeders encouraged her to try making up weekly menus for herself. By next week, she thinks she'll be ready to order independently for her dogs.

I'm ready for some new customers to ease into the rmb diet with prepackaged meals. They helped one pet owner to switch immediately from Science Diet to rmb. I don't want many customers for packaged rmb at any one time, however, because they take a lot of time and cutting to get approximately the right amount of meat and meaty bones into 7 baggies. It's a labor of love, though.

First Experience with Packaged RMB

2010-03-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

As soon as I posted the weekly packages of raw-meaty-bones for various sizes of dogs and cats, an order arrived for two packages of 7 meals each for 40- to 50-pound dogs.

The pet owner heard about the rmb diet and Kona Raw Co-op from her daughter in Texas! The daughter feeds her own dogs rmb. She told her mother to try the diet with her two bull terriers, one of whom has severe skin problems. The mother had no experience with feeding anything but Science Diet kibble but was willing to give rmb a try.

So, I made up 14 meaty meals of about 1 pound each (2% of 50 pounds) plus bones to gnaw. I ordered a variety of poultry, beef, and pork, liver, heart, tripe, and kidney to start. Cutting up portions of various meats that add up to about a pound is not easy, even though I am the chief butcher at Kona Raw. Figuring out how to assort muscle meats, organ meats, chicken leg quarters, beef neck bones, and soup bones into roughly equal meals is a mix-and-match challenge. It took me about 45 minutes to cut and allocate meaty chunks and bones into 14 baggies.

When the lady arrived to pick up her dogs' weekly menus, she said enthusiastically that she had already introduced the bull terriers to raw beef heart and kidneys she purchased at a local grocery store. Her dogs were thrilled, she said. I said how great that was, but told her she can buy the same meats for less from the co-op, because grocery store meats come from the same company that supplies the co-op -- Hawaii Beef Producers. I urged her to look at all the meats and meaty bones on the Kona Raw web site and begin to put together weekly orders. Chickens are on sale at Safeway this week....

I predicted that packaged rmb meals will recruit and educate new raw-feeders about how to plan a weekly rmb diet for their pets. Seeing approximate amounts and the variety of meats and meaty bones available will make them more comfortable with feeding rmb.

I look forward to her feedback on how well her dogs like various meats and meaty bones and whether the portions seem suitable. If she orders weekly packages again, I'll cut, measure, and package 14 meals again. At least two kibble-fed dogs can now enjoy a healthy rmb diet, and before long their owner will decide what's on the menu this week.

Transitions from Kibble to Raw-Meaty-Bones

2010-03-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

I am accumulating experiences with pet owners and puppy buyers, who have not thought about raw feeding before. Experiences are data. Traveling down the road to raw-meat-bones with motivated pet owners and prospective puppy buyers highlights what people believe about the nature of pets and their diets.

Most people have never seen a dog eat half a raw chicken. They can't believe it's safe or healthy until they watch me hand an adult Lab half a chicken. The dog takes the chicken gently in her mouth, retreats to a private spot, and proceeds methodically to chew it up, leaving no morsel behind. People are astonished -- she ate it, bones and all! Nearly all of them exclaim that they had been told never to feed dogs chicken bones. An explanation about cooked versus raw bones follows.

Bacteria? Yes, I wash my hands very carefully and clean all the surfaces the poultry touched. People can become quite ill from bacteria in raw meats, but healthy dogs can handle bacterial loads quite well. They evolved to eat whole prey and carrion (aka, rotting, bacteria-loaded meat). I don't feed rotten meat, but they have been observed to dig up days-old bones and chew on them. Nearly everyone has had the same experience. An explanation about dogs' short gut and acidic digestive system, that dissolves bone, follows.

The next step is a discussion about how a diet of raw-meaty-bones can be "complete and balanced". Vets use this phrase so frequently to sell commercial kibbles and canned mush, it has assumed the status of a pet-food mantra. People chant, "100% complete and balanced", while searching their brains for what it means. "What do wolves eat?" is a helpful question at this point. They all know that wolves eat whole prey of various types and sizes. They know that wolves do not eat grains. So, wolves get all the nutrients they need from whole prey, right? Yes, it must be so. Do wolves eat some grasses and berries? Yes, a bit from time to time, when prey is not available.

Now it's time to cement the idea that dogs are a subspecies of wolf. Surprisingly, nearly all pet owners realize that dogs are modified wolves. The veterinary myth that dogs are omnivores has not caught on with the pet-owning public. People know dogs are wolf-carnivores, for whom a carnivore diet is most appropriate. If dogs are wolves, and wolves get a "complete and balanced" diet from whole prey, dogs must also get a "complete and balanced" diet from whole prey. Yes, logically, of course. Can dogs, like wolves, eat some vegetables and fruits? Yes, most dogs enjoy bits of veggies and fruits left over from your table, and avocados, papayas and mangoes they find on the ground in Hawaii. Raw eggs are good, too.

Oh! Now they are puzzled about why, for so many years, their vets have sold them Hill's Science Diet and told them it's a "complete and balanced" diet for their dogs. Science Diet must have the same nutrients as whole prey, doesn't it? Well, no, kibbles are primarily cooked starches, not raw meats and meaty bones. Even if the bag lists meat as the primary ingredient, it isn't. Eyes widen as people hear how pet food labels list ingredients in order of their pre-processed weights. Meats are 75% water, which is eliminated in cooking, leaving only traces of denatured meat in the kibble. Kibbles are cooked starches. After a moment of reflection, that idea makes sense, because kibble looks like the cooked cereal it is.

So, how can kibble claim to be "complete and balanced" nutrition of carnivorous dogs? Well, manufacturers spray the cooked cereal with vitamins, minerals, and fats to make it pass minimum requirements as pet food. Spraying nutrients on kibble really gets them. They are astonished. The glimmer of having been hood-winked begins to show on their faces. You mean I'm paying $50 a bag for cooked crap? Well, yes, but you don't have to do that any longer.

Cats? Are cats carnivores, too? Oh my goodness, of course, cats hunt birds and rodents. The light dawns. Pet owners I know are more focused on dogs, so cats are often an after-thought. I point to my Daisy, a Maine coon cat, who happily eats chicken legs and thighs, beef tenders, pork butt, and gnaws on meaty bones. It's obvious, once they gave it some thought, that cats are entirely carnivores and don't eat even bits of vegetables and fruits. Feeding cats kibble becomes an easy abomination. How could we do that? Cans of cooked food? Atrocious!

People who have owned dogs before tell me poignant tales of woe. They describe a litany of skin problems, ear infections, and chronic diseases that took the lives of pets before their times. Yesterday, a couple who had recently lost an Akita to cancer said their vet bills averaged $200 a month for the last year of their dog's life. Steroids, allergy medications, immune system boosters, surgeries, various shots and palliatives cost them a fortune. The dog had a lifetime of itchy skin and ear infections. And all the time they were following vet instructions, feeding Science Diet or Iams or Eukanuba. Now they are angry, because they realize, belatedly, how they have been misled and robbed, not only of money but of their pet's longer life. I have heard this story many times.

Now, prospective pet owners and new members of the raw-meaty-bones co-op want instruction on how to feed, what to feed, how often, how much, and so forth. I guide them to web sites that can help, give them my guide to feeding a puppy to healthy adulthood, and offer to take the journey with them. Yesterday, a friend shared her transition from kibble to raw-meaty-bones with the couple who had lost their Akita. Her 4-year-old dog had sore gums and was reluctant at first to chew rmb. She gave him raw meats and poultry at first, until his gums were healthier. Now he gnaws and chews like a dog fed rmb all his life. The couple realized that they have 6 weeks to wait for their puppy to be old enough to go home with them, and their raw-fed puppy will be an eager rmb eater. They have 6 weeks to plan (maybe buy a freezer, he said) and get comfortable with feeding the rmb diet.

Left hanging in these discussions is what to do about local vets. Every pet needs a vet from time to time to treat injuries, give prescriptions for heartworm and flea medications, and provide inoculations. I worry I am creating a dissident group of pet owners who realize they've been had. They blame vets for fleecing their pocketbooks and creating illnesses their pets did not have to suffer. Not everyone lives close enough to use my dear mobile vet, who is now 100% behind the rmb diet. Several are clients of the dreaded vet practice, which has caused so many problems for raw-fed pets (see earlier blog entries about vet malpractice).

I reduce the number of times they need to use a regular vet practice by organizing low-cost inoculation clinics for puppies and providing flea/tick and heartworm medications at cost. My mobile vet provides medications to me at cost, a benefit I can pass on to other pet owners.. Puppy buyers pay only $5.00 for the inoculations my mobile vet administers. A visit to a local vet for the same shot would cost more than $100, because he charges to examine the puppy, insist on one or more "tests", and charges $35 for the inoculation that costs $5. Of course, he has an office and staff to maintain. A visit to my farm clinic is free, thanks to my mobile vet, whose modest visiting fee I am happy to pay for everyone. Heartworm and flea/tick medications cost $6 to $8 a month. Vet offices charge $18 to $20 for the same pills and topicals. Pet owners who buy medications from vet clinics are overpaying by $144/ year per pet. Most owners have more than one dog and/or cat. So, one way to reduce contact between dissident pet owners and local vets is to provide outpatient services at greatly reduced prices.

I will collect more data with each new litter of puppies and with each new member of Kona Raw Pet Food Co-op. I am learning to predict and understand the transition from commercial pet foods to raw-meaty-bones. It's an adventure in re-education and awakening what common-sense pet owners already know.

Can You Trust Your Pet-Food Corporation?

2010-03-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Tonight I will see Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. The progressive political group, Move-On, is sponsoring some 1,500 movie parties across the country to spark discussions about how American voters can take back our country from Wall Street and giant corporations. Fact: The top 1% of wealthy Americans control 95% of the country's wealth. The rest of us work our tails off for them. Is this the way it should be?

In the present recession, it has become obvious that our jobs, our homes, and our health are all held hostage by a reckless financial system. Most people do not recognize the signs of capitalist excess, even when they have been laid off from work, had their homes foreclosed, and gone bankrupt from unpaid medical bills. The myth of Horatio Alger -- the chance to make it from rags to riches -- dominates the American mentality.

The enormous power and wealth of corporations were partially unleashed in the recent fight against health care reform. Only a back-room deal with giant pharmaceutical companies, to guarantee their obscene profits, kept them from stopping the bill in its tracks. The majority of Americans still do not know that health care reform will improve their lives, because powerful corporations funded a campaign of lies about provisions of the reform bill.

Some friends are poster children for corporate exploitation, but they don't know it. After decades of work for huge corporations, showing up reliably, solving problems, and serving well, they were laid off in their late 40s and 50s, without sufficient means of support, until they reaches the age when Social Security and Medicare can help. Several scramble to earn enough at menial jobs to pay the mortgage and look forward to the day when government regulations will allow them to withdraw funds from retirement accounts, to which they contributed their own earnings.

Despite being victims of corporate greed, they hold favorable views of their corporations, which have laid off vast numbers of their workers, and do not hold them responsible for their mid-life, financial predicaments. Some even vote Republican. Americans believe so strongly in individual responsibility and freedom to make life-changing decisions, they cannot see themselves as victims of unregulated, irresponsible capitalism.

Giant corporations control our food supply and tell us what's good to eat. We are obese, because huge profits are made from subsidized sugars and starches -- commodity crops -- that should not be the bulk of our diets. Our pets are obese and sick, because huge profits are made by the same corporations from the same subsidized sugars and starches that should never be fed to carnivorous pets. These corporations control government regulatory bodies that are supposed to protect our health and the health of our pets. Rather, thanks to their generous support of politicians and professional "experts", government regulations are drafted and enforced to protect the profits of these corporations at the expense of our health and the health of our pets.

Most people trust the safety of the human food supply and the safety of commercial pet foods, despite many incidents in which foods are demonstrably not safe to eat. Recalls of meats and vegetables for bacterial contamination are so frequent consumers watch for the next recalls. Only when outbreaks of E-coli or salmonella poisoning sicken more than a dozen and kill more than a few people, are food recalls newsworthy. Commercial pet food recalls are frequent and largely unnoticed, until thousands of pets are sickened and die.

Most people do not realize that decades of "conservative" governance have rolled back consumer protections that used to be in place, such as domestic meat inspections and inspections of produce and meats coming into the US from other countries. Such inspections today are a tiny fraction of what used to be conducted routinely. Congress has not granted either the Food and Drug Administration or the US Department of Agriculture the power to recall contaminated foods. Recalls depend on food corporations' voluntary actions. How widely publicized food recalls are depends on how corporations choose to spin their all-too-frequent contamination incidents. By dominating government regulatory bodies, food producers protect their profits, not consumers.

Pet foods are down the sugar-starch food chain from human foods and even more likely to be adulterated with industrial wastes. The 2007 pet-food recall illuminated the adulterated nature of commercial pet foods. A plastic (melamine) that mimics proteins in tests was introduced into wheat gluten to increase the profits of Chinese and New Zealand corporations.

Adulterated wheat gluten killed tens of thousands of cats and dogs in the US and Canada, before hundreds of pet foods containing the contaminated wheat were recalled. The same adulterated wheat gluten killed hundreds of infants in China before contaminated infant formula was recalled. Only dumb luck kept this adulterated wheat gluten out of US cereals and baby foods. The bottom line is you have no guarantee the pet food you buy is safe, and you will not find out it is unsafe until your pet is permanently disabled or dies.

Here's some advice. No matter how much you love and admire our capitalist, profit-driven system, your health is not protected by government regulators or by corporate ethics. For yourself, buy fresh, local produce, range-reared meats, and free-range poultry that are less likely to be contaminated or adulterated. For pets, buy range-reared meats and free-range poultry, if you can afford to.

Feeding your pets sugary starches that make up the bulk of commercial pet foods is not safe, even if they are not contaminated. Carnivorous pets' digestive systems evolved to handle high bacterial loads in raw meats, such as days-old carrion and buried bones. Even ripe meats that are not suitable for human consumption are far better foods for healthy pets than starchy kibbles and cooked mush. Pets with compromised immune systems may not be able to handle meats with lots of bacteria, but healthy raw-fed pets have no problem with ripe meats.

If you agree with Michael Moore that we need to band together to take back our country from Wall Street and giant corporations, you need to look closely at what you eat and what you feed your pets. Food and health are inextricably entwined. Corporate profits keep us fat and our pets sick. You can change your own fate by recognizing how the system works and by learning how to avoid being manipulated by it.

So, how can we answer the question that motivated this blog entry: Can you trust your pet-food corporation? If your answer is yes, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'm sure you'd like to buy. No, you can't trust pet-food companies with your pets' heath nor trust the same corporations with your own health.

Conveniently Packaged RMB

2010-03-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

For pet owners who are new to raw-meaty-bones, learning what to feed, and how much, can be a challenge. Where do I start? How much organ meat, how many meaty hard bones, how much edible bone, and so forth?

Yahoo groups, rawfeeding, rawpet, rawfed, and others, have tens of thousands of members discussing these questions. "Newbies" have lots of questions and get guidance from more experienced rawfeeders on these sites.

I decided to package weekly menus for cats and dogs of various weights and to offer them through the local raw-meaty-bones co-op.

http://konaraw.org/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=6_20

I hope that pet owners, who have been reluctant to try the rmb diet, will feel more comfortable serving pre-selected portions to their pets.

The rule of thumb is to feed pets 1 to 3 % of their ideal adult weight daily or about 15% per week. Menus are balanced across a week, not a day. Weekly menus include muscle meats, organ meats, and meaty bones in sizes and portions suitable for pets that vary in ideal adult weight from 5 to 80 pounds.

To the wholesale cost of ingredients, I added packaging costs (about $.50/ week) and a small markup for my time to cut, weigh, and package meals. Final cost of packaged rmb is $2.20 to $2.40 per pound. This price compares favorably with local prices for premium kibble and packaged, raw mince.

Another experiment in packaged rmb is being conducted by a brave New Zealand veterinarian, Lyn Thomson. Her clinic and shop can be visited at:

http://www.rawessentials.co.nz/index.php.

Dr. Thomson gets meat for her rmb packages from government-owned lands that are hunted to remove pest species, such as wild hare, rabbit, and ostrich. Meals also include domestic animals, such as chickens, pork, and lamb (plentiful in NZ). Here are typical menu items:

Rabbit legs, Rabbit saddle, Hare shoulder, Hare legs, Chicken carcass, Lamb brisket, Green tripe, Heart/tongue, Pilchards, Ostrich mince, Pigs trotters.

Dr. Thomson's Raw Essentials packaged foods are gaining popularity in the Auckland area and are now available at some pet shops and other veterinary clinics.

Feeding pets minced, raw meats and ground bones have long been popular in Australia and New Zealand. Not so in the US. There is no history of raw feeding in the US on which to build a rmb diet.

A typical Kona Raw menu includes:

Beef neck bones, Beef soup bones, Beef skirt meat, Beef cheek meat, Beef heart, Beef liver, Beef kidneys. Green tripe, Chicken quarters, Chicken giblets, Turkey legs and wings, and Pork trotters, and Pork butt.

Kona Raw rmb packages have a more limited range of species (4) than the NZ diet (7). I wish we had access to more game. If you hunt wild pig, turkey, or game birds, I would love to share some with our pets.

Kona Raw packages do not include any minced meats or ground bones. I use mince only for puppies from three to four weeks of age and will provide mince to other breeders for young puppies and kittens. By the time puppies have teeth and some jaw strength, they should be fed chicken necks and wings.

It will be most interesting to see if some pet owners, who have not fed rmb, will try the package menus.

Will Packaged RMB Be the Pet Food of the Future?

2010-03-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

Reading around in the bible of raw pet-feeding, Tom Lonsdale’s Raw Meaty Bones, I found the following quote that set off a chain of half-humorous ideas:

Artificial pet foods are sold as branded products and thus define
and create control of their niche of the market. While there are
many candy bars there is only one Snickers. Why do companies
fight fiercely to create brand recognition and then fight fiercely to
defend that brand against imitation? The reason is simple —
access to super-profits. In contrast, raw food must always remain
a generic product. The producers will always find their market
crowded with other producers. No brand name cushion for them (RMB, p. 248).

Aha! Of course, that's why the pet-food market has seen a recent rush of BRANDED raw-minced pet foods! Manufacturers are competing to get their brands of packaged raw mince recognized as THE brand to buy. It's already happening.

Dr. Lonsdale thought that raw food must always remain a generic product, but he underestimated the ingenuity of advertisers and marketers. Mixtures of raw minced meats and bones have already found markets, and brand names are emerging. Oma's Pride and Nature's Variety are just two brands that are gaining recognition in the pet-food market.

Possibilities for branding raw pet food are endless. My Aloha Lab brand has just the right mix of organ meats, ground bone, and red-blooded meat to make your pet strong and healthy! Better than any other brand (and twice the price of the real stuff at the meat counter).

Now, how can we brand and package whole chickens, whole rabbits, and slabs of beef and lamb? It can be done, I am sure. Tyson, bless their black hearts, could easily package and brand chickens for pets. Perhaps, they will be allowed to get rid of dead chickens as pet food, an unsavory thought. Can whole-birds-for-pets be far down the road? What about the big lamb producers in Australia and NZ? Bozo's Lamb Parts for Pets could be a winner.

Kibbles and canned mush come packaged for specific breeds and life stages (a nutritional absurdity in the extreme), so let's not pass up the opportunity to sell more differentiated products in niche markets. Best Beef Parts for Bully contains meaty bones, red meat, liver, and heart in the perfect balance for your bulldog. Oh, you have a Pekinese? We have Best Beef Parts for Pekes in just the right assortment for a small dog's optimal health. I can see it now. Best RMB for Nursing Poodles; Best RMB for Aging Afgans. Consumers don't have to think about how to balance an rmb diet for their pets. It comes pre-assorted for them.

This travesty of packaged rmb is just a continuation of consumers' (advertising-guided) preference for branded products over generics. Why should their purchases of pet foods be guided any differently? One reason would be their pocketbooks. Consumers pay enormous amounts extra to get branded products that are no different from their generic counterparts – usually manufactured at the same plants from the same ingredients and merely labeled with a store brand. But consumers keep buying branded, packaged foods for themselves, and they will buy them for their pets.

Look on the bright side of this grim picture. Pets will get a better diet; Science Diet will have to change its formulations, and vets will have to promote raw mince, at the least. Vets will always be behind the curve on these shifts in consumer practices, poor dupes. Their mentors, the giant pet-food companies, will have to catch them up on what to feed pets this year.

I really think the pet-food world is beginning to wake up to raw feeding, even though it may be awhile until assortments of raw-meaty-bones are packaged and branded. Think about where pet food is going, and you may feel just a tiny bit of optimism. Meanwhile, keep shopping at the meat counter, or better still at your local raw-meaty-bones pet food co-op.

Campaign to Reform Veterinary Medicine and Save Our Pets

2010-03-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Veterinary medicine’s teaching, research, and practice on companion animals is funded and controlled by global pet food companies. Lest you doubt the enormous political and financial clout of these companies, remember they are the same companies that dominate the human food supply.

Corporate Control of Our Food Supply

To set the stage for the pet-food scandal, let’s look at a recent, riveting documentary on perversions of the human food supply, called Food, Inc. It is a must-see piece. You can view it in segments on You Tube at the following links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsmZbRoyme8&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vV1XpAPPps&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suec4JHCRlA&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yRfgnRPRFk&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpqA3JR3PS8&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK8gd7Z4VUQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2zmxtQUYrE&feature=related

Here are the essential facts. Elected representatives in Congress vote to allocate farm subsidies to commodity crops – corn, wheat, and soy beans. These crops are the main ingredients in junk foods, sugary soft drinks, processed cereals, and in the feed for McDonald’s hamburgers and KFC’s chickens. Elected officials make these products cheap for consumers by subsidizing their production. Our tax dollars make these fattening products more affordable than fresh fruits and vegetables that are not federally subsidized. Can we wonder why we are becoming an obese nation with an epidemic of fat kids?

Subsidies for animal feed make horrific chicken factories hugely profitable for Tyson and a few others. Cattle in feed lots, where animals are fed antibiotics and subsidized grains, stand ankle deep in their own manure and spread antibiotic resistant bacteria to the human table. Cheap feed makes McDonalds rich.

To understand why Congress allocates tax monies to support crops used in fast foods, soft drinks, sugary cereals, and animal feed, you have to look at the companies that manufacture these products. Global giants reign – Con-Agra, Mars, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Heinz, Del Monte, and a handful of others. These companies make multi-billion dollar annual profits, which they use to influence policy makers (campaign contributions, for example) and lobby for their interests,

The same companies dominate the manufacture of pet foods, which are their hugely profitable avenue to get rid of waste from human food production. Indirectly, Congress subsidizes the manufacture of sugary, starchy foods that sicken and kill thousands of pets annually.

Perhaps, lawmakers think what’s good enough for kids is also good enough for pets. Unfortunately, cats and dogs are not omnivores like kids, who can use carbohydrates as food, along with vegetable proteins, and fats. Cats and dogs are carnivores that need a diet predominantly of animal proteins and fats. Kids are getting fat on too much sugar and starch. Pets are suffering from an inappropriate diet of sugary starches that create allergies, digestive disorders, and urinary tract stones.

To summarize, giant corporations, their executives, and shareholders profit from tax-payer subsidized crops that dominate the food supply for people and for pets, in very unhealthy ways. Corporate domination of government policies is found in two other notable domains: medicine and veterinary medicine.

Corporate Corruption of Medicine

The larger issues of corporate greed and corruption of the medical professions are being confronted first in human medicine. Just last night on CNN was a shocking report of Pfizer's misconduct. They were fined more than $2 billion for their marketing fraud of a drug with limited FDA approval for menstrual cramps that they promoted as a post-surgical pain killer. As CNN pointed out, $2 billion is merely a few months' profit from their misconduct. The more meaningful punishment was not applied. Legally, Pfizer should have been banned from selling drugs to federal health programs, Medicare and Medicaid. They were not banned, because the public needs Pfizer drugs, or so the FDA said.

The FDA said it could not afford to ban all of Pfizer's products, so they punished a derivative Pfizer entity, a sham company owned by Pfizer, and left the giant pharmaceutical company to go about its felonious business. CNN's headline was "Pfizer, Too Big To Nail". Oh, yes, Pfizer promises to clean up its act. Yeah, sure.... Drug companies' profits from misconduct are so enormous, they have no incentives to behave responsibly. The federal government is too toothless to nail them. Imagine the magnitude of drug company contributions to Congressional campaigns and their lobbying budget.

How will this be changed? The public is unaware of how corrupt medicine is, but news trickles out. Last year, the New York Review of Books published a shocking essay by Marcia Angell, MD, Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, highlighting three recent books exposing corruption in medical schools and medical research. She detailed Congressional inquiries into the mess. Reports like this throw doubt on what doctors prescribe and who can be trusted with one's health. People are beginning to realize that their doctors are pawns of drug companies, that doctors are ignorant about the pills they prescribe, that they are making many people sicker, and all of us a lot poorer.

Inquiries into corruption in medical training and practice are ongoing. Inquiries into drug research and the corruption of medical schools are ongoing. All this scandal will shake the halls of medicine long before anyone looks at veterinary medicine. The magnitude of corporate greed and corruption in medicine is many, many times greater and more devastating than drug-company influence or pet-food corruption of veterinary medicine. Fixing corruption in medicine, according to Marcia Angell, will take decades and a will that is probably not there.

Fighting Corruption in Veterinary Medicine

Here's the main message for small pet owners: Veterinary medicine has been corrupted by giant pet-food companies for their profit and to the enormous suffering of pet carnivores. Vets are mis-educated about pets and bribed by pet food companies to push their products. Carnivorous pets evolved to eat whole prey. Raw-meaty-bones is an approximation of whole prey that modern pet owners can provide. Keeping pets' teeth clean and gums healthy is essential to their health and longevity. These facts are solid and worth fighting for. We can fix these problems!

In the past 20 years, I see changes in the way pets are viewed and in what they are said to need.

Pet-food manufacturers have been pushed to make claims about "natural" and "raw" foods because consumers have become more discerning about what they feed pets. A significant fraction of pet owners look for meat as the first listed ingredient (not knowing how little is actually in the food after processing, but they will figure that out soon)..
Pet-food industry knows that so-called premium" and "natural" foods are the only growing segment of their market. Days when they could sell any old stuff as pet food are waning.
"Raw" is the new "premium". More and more "raw" minced and ground bone foods are hitting the market each month. Albeit a half measure, at least pets are getting nutritionally better foods -- low carbohydrates, more animal proteins fats, and bone. My bet is that in 5 years, sales of packaged raw pet foods will double or triple.
Dr. Wysong sends out his raw-meaty-bones message to tens of thousands of pet owners who buy Wysong products. That has some impact. His message is entirely contrary to advice from vets, who hate and fear raw bones. Wysong doesn't sell raw-meaty-bones. Let’s give the guy some credit.
I predict that more and more pet owners will realize that minced foods do not clean pets' teeth and will include raw-meaty-bones in their pets' raw minced diets. They won't switch entirely to rmb, because it's too messy, but many or even most pets will be far better fed than they are today, and vets will enjoy less revenue from cleaning pets’ teeth.

We pet owners need focus our efforts on breaking the stranglehold of pet-food companies on veterinary medicine and promoting the welfare of carnivorous pets.

1. Spread the word about raw-meaty-bones to other pet owners. Many pets suffer allergies, are on restricted diets and tons of medicines. Help the owners to try rmb to cure pets’ allergies. It works!

2. Let your vet know you stand by this diet and the benefits it gives your pets. Let her/him know that an appropriate diet prevents problems and cures ills.

3. Challenge vets to show you independent research, not sponsored by pet-food companies, that compares the benefits of a raw-meaty-bones diet with commercial pet food.

4. Ask vets about genetic research in the last decade that classifies dogs as a subspecies of wolf, not as a separate species and not as omnivores, which they were taught in school. What do wolves eat? Not grains and vegetables, for sure!

Pet owners can have impact in our smaller world of veterinary medicine. After all, we pay their salaries.

Manufactured Raw Mince and Other Garbage

2010-03-13T00:42:00.000-08:00

The trend is clear. More and more pet-food companies are getting on the raw bandwagon. As pet owners wise up to the many deleterious effects of commercial kibbles and canned-mush, pet-food providers are scrambling to make products to replace dry and canned pet foods. If consumers want raw meats for their pets, manufacturers can mince and package ground meats and bones in cute chubs and tubs that they hope will appeal to conscientious pet owners.

There are several problems with minced meats and ground bones. First, minced foods do not clean pets' teeth but provide a gummy sludge that leads to periodontal disease. Second, frozen pet foods are processed is some manner and preservatives are added to extend shelf life. These products are not exactly raw and unadulterated when pets eat them. Third, a major provider of frozen pet food, Nature's Variety, ran into problem with their pasteurization process, by which they attempted to rid ground meats of bacteria. According to Pet Industry News, Nature's Variety had to recall massive amounts of their minced chicken pet foods for fear of salmonella contamination. Of course, pet food recalls for bacterial contamination in kibbles are commonplace, but we are just beginning to see problems in frozen raw products.

I keep asking myself why pet owners will buy these frozen and refrigerated "pet foods" at $3.00 or more per pound when they can buy the fresh ingredients contained in these chubs and tubs in their grocery stores for less than half the price. Does merely labeling them as pet food make it okay to feed to Fido or Fifi, whereas whole chickens and meaty beef bones at the meat counter are not suitable pet food? How silly is this?

Last week, I had the good fortune to talk with a major provider of raw pet foods in New York City. Jerry Briffa wholesales raw-meaty-bones of many types and minced meats and ground bones for many raw pet-food providers. He says the popularity of minced and ground products rests on the ease of feeding them without the pets dragging them around the house. Minced meats are eaten in the bowl, not dragged across the living room carpet. Living in Hawaii, where we go outdoors 12 months a year, I never considered how hard it can be to keep enthusiastic rmb-eaters from soiling carpets with their meaty bones. It is difficult to feed rmb in the house, unless one confines pets to an easily cleaned surface.

No excuses. Pets need raw-meaty-bones to keep healthy teeth and gums. Ground bones and minced meats are not suitable substitutes. Find a place to feed your pets, train them to eat on a cleanable surface, and chalk up messes to the cost of keeping a healthy carnivore at home.

Slide Show for Vets

2010-02-21T23:22:00.000-08:00

Tom Lonsdale, author of Raw Meaty Bones and Work Wonders: Feed Your Dog Raw Meaty Bones, asked me to put together some slides to show to New Zealand veterinarians. Dr. Lonsdale has campaigned to change veterinary education and vet's attitudes about raw feeding for more than 20 years. I am happy to be an ally and apprentice.

Those of you who've read my blog entries on vets and pet food know the content is not flattering, to put it mildly. Vets are both villains and dupes in the global pet-food conspiracy. They are mis-educated about carnivorous pets, and they seem unable to think their way out of the traps pet food companies set for them in school. Of course, they have financial incentives to remain loyal to Hill's and Iams, to sell commercial junk foods and to charge a fortune to clean pets' plaque-encrusted teeth and infected gums that are destroyed by kibbles and canned mush.

But let's assume practicing vets are victims of their perverted education and have not had opportunities to learn the truth about carnivorous pets. This stretches credulity, but, for the present purpose, let's assume they are innocent victims, not conspirators.

Here's my lecture for vets in New Zealand:

This summary of many points made more fully elsewhere in this blog may serve to introduce some NZ vets to ideas they had not considered. More likely, few will come to Dr. Lonsdale's lecture, and those who do will disregard the message.

I am usually an optimist about people, but honestly, the self-interested promotion of commercial pet foods and the resistance of veterinarians to the raw-meaty-bones diet is obscene in a profession entrusted with the care and welfare of pets.

AKC Sells Data on Top 10 Breeds

2010-02-17T11:26:00.000-08:00

For $100, the AKC provided me with registration numbers for the Top Ten Dogs in 2007, 2008, and 2009. These are the years for which they have hidden registration numbers and published only rank orders. I will send a check.

Here are AKC dog registrations from 2007 to 2009 for the Top 10 breeds:

TOP 10 AKC BREEDS 2007-2009

BREED	YEAR			TOTAL	% of LAB
	2,009	2,008	2,007	3 YEARS	TOTAL
Labrador Retriever	89,599	100,736	114,113	304,448
German Shepherd	40,938	40,909	43,376	125,223	41%
Yorkshire Terrier	37,778	41,914	47,850	127,542	42%
Golden Retriever	30,735	34,485	39,659	104,879	34%
Beagle	30,672	33,722	37,021	101,415	33%
Boxer	25,472	29,705	33,548	88,725	29%
Bulldog	23,248	23,413	22,160	68,821	23%
Dachshund	21,089	26,075	32,598	79,762	23%
Poodle	18,601	21,545	26,369	66,515	26%
Shih Tsu	17,314	20,219	24,951	62,484	22%

Total Registrations Top 10 Breeds	335,446	372,723	421,645	1,129,814
Lost Registrations from 2007	86,199	48,922

Breeds are rank-ordered by 2009 registrations. Note that in 2009, there are more than twice as many Labradors as German Shepherds (90,000 versus 41,000). So much for the AKC's musing that German Shepherds may overtake Labs as the Number One Dog.

The far right column shows the percentage of Lab registrations are represented by each of the other 9 Top Ten breeds. Six of the 10 breeds have one-third or fewer registrations, compared to Labrador retrievers.

I love numbers and statistics, but they do not give joy to everyone. A picture is often worth a thousand words.

TOP 10 AKC BREEDS 2007 TO 2009

More than 300,000 Labs were registered in 2007 to 2009. Less than one-third as many beagles, boxers, bulldogs, dachshunds, poodles, and shih tsus were registered in the same period. Anyone can see that the popularity of Labs is almost "off the chart". Evidently, the disproportionate popularity of Labs is embarrassing to the AKC.

The other reason the AKC did not want to reveal recent registration data is that the organization is going downhill, fast. AKC finances depend heavily on registrations, which generate at least $20/ dog. Annual registrations of 400,000 dogs, generate $8 million in revenue. The registration data clearly indicate that every year the AKC is losing purebred dog registrations.

Compared to 2007, which was not a banner year, the AKC had 89,000 fewer Top Ten registrations in 2009. That loss of registrations translates into at least $1.75 million in lost revenue. The trend is ominous. In 2003, Lab registrations numbered 143,000., compared to 90,000 in 2009. The AKC's decline is happening in a context of more and more purebred dogs being adopted as family pets.

If I were CEO of the AKC, I would be alarmed and contemplate what changes need to be made in my organization. Let me offer a few suggestions:

AKC can improve the health of purebred dogs by incorporating new genetic information in their criteria for participation in AKC activities.
Intact animals, which participate in AKC conformation shows, field trials, rallies, obedience, and agility events should have clearances as non-carriers of all serious genetic disorders common in the breed.
Conformation shows should be restructured to be more about dogs' soundness and breed type and less about the handler and showmanship. However entertaining spectators find extreme coiffure and runway behavior, the major focus of shows should be to select sound, typey parents for the next generations of the breed.
AKC should sever its relationships with commercial sponsors, especially pet-food manufacturers. A less splashy show, not sponsored by Eukanuba, would be better received by many who care about dogs' health.
AKC should cease any partnerships with pet-food and drug companies to "educate" veterinarians about pet care and diets. Veterinary education is perverted by pet-food and drug companies anyway, and the AKC should keep it's still-good name out of a corrupt morass.
AKC should sponsor popular educational programs for pet owners about the evolution of dogs, their identity as a subspecies of wolves, and the implications of these scientifically established facts for dog feeding and care. A television series on "Know Your Dog" could save the health and lives of millions of pets.
AKC can work with breed organizations that have adopted extreme conformation standards that impair the breed's health or alter their natural appearance by mutilation. Surgical alteration and unhealthy standards have no place in an organization with a mission to improve the welfare of purebred dogs and their owners.

As I think of more ways to help the AKC meet its goals and live up to its mission, I will post them. Meanwhile, let's hope they get more honest by publishing breed registration statistics for 2010.

Perspectives on Breed Popularity

2010-02-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

The American Kennel Club has a problem with the overwhelming popularity of Labrador retrievers, it seems. Labs are just too popular for their own good, so the AKC says little about Labs, and AKC judges hardly notice them at conformation shows (see previous blog).

Granddaughter with puppies Cody & Charles

AKC's behaviors led me to wonder if the USA is the only country with a big Lab problem. With more difficulty than I imagined, I did find data on Labs' annual registrations with major kennel clubs in other countries. How popular are Labs in other countries? Here's the Table:

Labrador Retriever Annual Registrations by Country, 2005-2006

Country	Population	Annual Lab	# Labs/
	(millions)	registrations	mill. pop.
Sweden	9	5253	584
Australia	10	4491	449
Finland	5	2236	430
UK	60	18554	311
Canada	32	8881	278
France	61	10582	175
USA	298	38951	131
Netherlands	17	1505	89

Data are from published kennel club reports. US and UK figures for annual registrations differ from their reports of total registrations by breed.

Popularity of Labs in the US lags far behind other Lab-loving countries, such as Sweden, Australia, Finland, and the UK. Sweden has 4 1/2 times as many Labradors per capita as the US. Even Canada has twice as many Labs per capita as the US. Discussions of Labradors' popularity in other countries mentioned that, compared to other breeds of roughly the same size, Lab registrations are 2 to 4 times higher than the next large-dog breed (usually Golden retrievers or German Shepherds).

Suppose the US had as many Labradors per capita as Sweden does. There would be 174,000 Labs registered per year with the AKC, far greater number than the 38,000 registered in a good year. At any one time, the AKC could have a million registered Labrador retrievers.

It's hard to imagine how the AKC would react, if Labs' popularity increased four-fold, relative to other breeds. Perhaps, the AKC should accept Labs for the hugely popular breed they are around the world and give them the attention they deserve. Being recognized in AKC conformation shows would be a good start.

Playing Politics with Purebred Dogs

2010-02-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

It's distressing to see the American Kennel Club play politics with registration data. The AKC is the world's largest registry of purebred dogs, a non-profit organization that is supposed to be committed to advancing the interests of purebred dogs and their owners. It does not always behave that way.

As a breeder of Labrador retrievers, I have followed the popularity of my breed since 2000. Prior to 2007, AKC published numbers of all dog and litter registrations. They posted numbers of dogs and litters registered each year by breed. Each year for the past 19 years, Labrador retrievers were the most frequently registered breed with the largest number of litters per year.

Labs are much more popular than any other breed, by a factor of 2.5 to 3 times more registrations than the next most popular breed. The data are astonishing.

As you can see, the total number of dog registrations has declined substantially in these years and has continued to decline through 2009. AKC revenues declined accordingly, and they are scrambling to make up for lost revenue. Although more family dogs are purebred now than a decade ago, fewer purebred dogs are being registered with the AKC and more are listed with competing registries. The AKC is faced with declining registrations and the overwhelming popularity of a single breed. What to do?

Evidently, they decided the registration data are politically incorrect, because the AKC no longer publishes registration numbers. AKC decided to publish only rank orders of breed registrations, which obscures the overwhelming popularity of Labs and hides their declining registration numbers. In February 2010, I requested numbers of dogs and litters registered in 2009 in the top 10 breeds and was told the "special report" would cost me $100. When I receive the report, if they actually supply the data, it will be posted here.

To give an idea of Labs' comparative popularity, let's look at registration numbers for the top 5 breeds (rounded to nearest thousand).

--------------------2003 ---------- 2004------ 2005-------- 2006------ Total-------Labs:
Registrations by ---------------------------------------------------------- Reg.-----Others
Breed

Labrador -------145,000 -------147,000 -----130,000 ------124,000 ------546,000 --NA
retrievers

Yorkshire ------ 53,000 --------- 53,000 ------47,000 --------48,000 -----201,000--- 2.7
Terriers

German ---------44,000 --------- 46,000 ------42,000 ------- 44,000 -----166,000 ---3.3
shepherds

Golden ----------53,000 --------- 53,000------ 41,000 ------- 43,000 ---- 190,000 ---2.9
retrievers

Beagles ---------45,000 ----------45,000 ------33,000 -------39,000 ------162,000 ---3.3

Boxers ----------34,000 ----------39,000 ------35,000 -------35,000 ------143,000--- 3.8

In recent years, Lab registrations sum from 2 1/2 to nearly 4 times as many as other top breeds.

The AKC registers about 160 breeds (number changes as new breeds are recognized). From popularity rank 80 to rank 160, fewer than 1,000 dogs in each breed are registered in the US. If you want to buy a Sealyham or Dandie Dinmont terrier, it will be difficult, because fewer than 100 of these (and a dozen other) breeds are registered.

Judges and Breed Standards

Now consider the popularity of breeds that have won AKC honors as Best-In-Show in recent events. Dogs born in the years given above are likely entrants in 2009-2010 AKC shows:

............................... .............Number Registered in 2006
English Springer Spaniel..................... 8,205
Norfolk terrier ..................................353
Poodle (all sizes)............................ 30,000
Newfoundland .................................3,415
Scottish terrier ............................... 3,545

In competitions for Group wins and best-in-show in conformation events, judges are supposed to assess the degree to which each entrant meets the ideal standard for the breed. Judges do not compare one breed with another.

What are the odds that a show candidate meets the ideal standard for the breed? Likelihood of meeting a breed standard must be in part a function of how many dogs in each breed are registered and eligible to be shown. Fewer members of a breed should translate into fewer being judged as matching the breed standard. More numerous breeds should contain more individuals close to the breed standard.

Assume a normal distribution of dogs' merit in conformation shows, with 3 standard deviations on the right tail containing individuals close to the breed ideal. A breed with 500,000 dogs will have about 1,500 dogs close to ideal, whereas a breed with 1,000 dogs will have only 3 dogs close to the ideal breed standard. What are the odds that a few of those 1,500 Labs will enter conformation events, compared to the odds a smaller breed will have its few ideal individuals entered?

From more than half a million registered Labrador retrievers, none is judged close to the breed standard in major AKC shows. Labs rarely win even the Sporting Group, which was recently won by an English setter (629 registered in 2006). Breeds with fewer than 10,000 registered individuals are regularly judged to be closer to their breed standards than 550,000 Labradors are to theirs. How can this be?

If judging were fairly based on written instructions and breed standards, more numerous breeds would win shows more often than less popular breeds. Obviously, AKC judges and the AKC itself are highlighting less popular breeds in the hope they will become more popular. By giving them exposure on televised shows, perhaps more people will want a Bedlington terrier (192 registered in 2006) or a Harrier (23). Popularizing less popular breeds is a mission for judges and the AKC, who savor the diversity of man-made breeds.

I object to the AKC refusing to disclose dog and litter registration data, however. Their political agenda should not rest on public ignorance. A recent AKC Press Release on rank orders of 2009 registrations reported that German shepherds had displaced Yorkshire terriers as Number 2 (Labs are still Number 1, of course). Then, they suggested, with hope in their hearts, that German shepherd dogs may overtake Labrador retrievers in popularity.

For the 19th consecutive year, the Labrador Retriever is the most popular purebred dog in America, but could this be the last year for the Lab’s reign?

If they had disclosed numerical registration data, I doubt they could have asked that question with a straight face.

Raw-Meaty-Bones Make Sense

2010-02-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

It took a couple of years to do enough research to convince myself that cats and dogs evolved to eat whole prey and will thrive as pets on raw-meaty-bones.

I had to read through and discard a huge amount of nonsense on why pets need grains and vegetables as major components in their diets. I knew from experience why commercial kibbles and canned mush are inadequate diets -- high in carbohydrates and preservatives, all cooked to dead nutrition. As the National Research Council says, dogs and cats have no demonstrated need for carbohydrates. Carnivores use fats for energy and proteins for cell growth and repair. All the minerals and vitamins they require are in the components of whole prey -- muscle meats, organ meats, and meaty bones.

After several years of feeding my Labrador retrievers, two Papillons, and a Maine coon cat a diet of raw-meaty-bones, I can testify to the many benefits of the diet. So, to put knowledge into practice, I started a raw pet food co-operative (Kona Raw) to educate local pet owners about rmb and to make rmb available at wholesale prices. Two dozen members, many new to raw-feeding, now enjoy the financial benefits of the co-op and their pets are thriving on rmb. Feeding dogs and cats an rmb diet makes sense to them.

A more nervous decision was to promote rmb on my Labrador retriever web site (Aloha Labradors) and to require rmb feeding for my puppies. I posted a lot of information about rmb feeding -- why and how and how much it costs -- on the Aloha Labradors web site.

Responses from prospective puppy buyers have been hugely rewarding. Puppy buyers call me because they read the web site and are convinced that rmb is the right diet for dogs. Some have lost pets to chronic diseases they now realize could have been prevented with an appropriate diet. Others are conscientious about feeding themselves and their children, so feeding a dog the diet dogs evolved to eat just makes sense to them.

Think about it. Raw-Meaty-Bones is a close approximation to the whole prey diet dogs and cats evolved to eat. Why not feed it? It makes sense.

Dental Disease for Pets and Profits for Vets

2010-02-08T17:56:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY IS DENTAL AWARENESS FOR PETS MONTH – AGAIN!

February is Dental Awareness Month in the national veterinary industry. One could laugh at the irony that professionals who cause the problem profit from treating it, if the problem were not so serious.

Dental disease is present in approximately 85% of dogs and 75% of cats 2 years of age and older. Plaque and tartar can accumulate on pet’s teeth and invade under the gums to cause gingivitis and periodontal disease.

Dr. Larry Corry, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) says, "In fact, veterinarians report that periodontal disease is the most commonly diagnosed problem in dogs and cats. This can lead to painful infections of the mouth, and in severe cases these infections can spread and become life-threatening conditions.”

Why should the vast majority of pets have serious dental disease?  Simple.  Because they are fed commercial pet foods that coat their teeth with gummy sludge that harbors bacteria that infect gums.    Pets fed kibble and canned mush have no way to clean their teeth.  Owners are urged to brush pets’ teeth daily, as though cats will sit still for tooth brushing and as though owners can effectively brush all the surfaces of their dog’s teeth, daily.  Vets know it’s not happening, so they mobilize their practices to profit from Dental Awareness Month.  

Without embarrassment, vets nationwide offer discounts to clean your suffering pet’s teeth, under anesthesia.  Note that vets put pets to sleep to clean their teeth, because pets don't cooperate with teeth cleaning, but you are told to clean your pet's teeth daily.  Cleaning your pet’s teeth will cost around $300.  The vet will sell you Hill’s Science Diet to begin the vicious cycle again for next year’s Dental Awareness Month for Pets.  Destroying your pet’s dental health for another year with Hill's kibble will cost you about $2/pound.  

How bad is the epidemic of periodontal disease?  According to Dr. Henry Childers, DVM, the president of the American Veterinary Dental Association, "Oral disease is the most frequently diagnosed health problem for pets. Just as the public has come to realize that their own oral health is linked to their overall health, veterinarians want people to understand that dental health care is essential to maintaining the overall health and well-being of the family pet.

"Periodontal Disease is one of the most common occurring conditions, especially in our older pets. The disease begins from the accumulation of plaque that forms on the teeth after eating. This is largely responsible for resulting in "stinky breath" which often becomes unbearable. If the buildup of plaque is permitted to continue unchecked, gingivitis results with gums becoming red and inflamed.

"Left untreated, gums recede, teeth become unstable with tooth loss and abscess formation occurring. Due to the abundance of bacteria forming on teeth and gums, which is highly accessible to the pets blood stream, internal organs can become infected, which may cause systemic conditions such as kidney failure, liver and heart disease.” Thank you, Dr. Childers.

Now for the best part.  Dental Awareness Month for Pets is sponsored by Hill’s Pet Care.  Nationwide advertising and vet-clinic promotions for dental treatment are paid for by an enormous pet-food company that sells the products that cause pets’ periodontal disease.  In addition, Hill’s pet foods are piled high in vet clinics and generate up to 40% of vets’ profits.  What a great partnership!  Hill’s foods cause dental disease, so they advertise to get pet owners to the vet to pay for teeth cleaning, and to buy more Hill’s kibbles and canned mush on their way out.  It’s hard to imagine a more sinister and damaging partnership than veterinarians and Hill’s Pet Care.  

Imagine that Mars or Hershey partnered with dentists to promote sugary candies for children. Suppose that dentist offices sold candy bars and recommended them as daily foods for children. When children developed dental caries, candy companies could sponsor Dental Awareness Month for Kids and urge parents to bring kids to the dentist to get their cavities filled. We would be outraged if dentists collaborated with candy companies to push candy for children and had the audacity to profit from the damage done to kids’ teeth. Well, that’s exactly what vets are doing to our pets.

Wolves and pets fed raw-meaty-bones do not have dental disease. Gnawing on meaty bones cleans wolf, dog, and cat teeth and keeps their mouths healthy. Preventing oral disease in pets is easy – just give them Nature’s toothbrush, raw-meaty-bones. Their teeth will stay bright white and their gums a healthy, salmon pink from puppyhood to old age.

Genetic Structure of Contemporary Wolves and Dog Breeds

2010-02-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

The genetic structure of wolves and dogs was finally mapped from 2000 to 2004. The origin of domestic dogs from wolves is firmly established. Dogs are related more closely to East Asian wolves than to European or North American wolves (1). All wolves and dogs belong to the same species. Other canids, such as coyotes, jackals, and foxes, are genetically more distant and distinct from wolves and dogs.

By tracing mitochondrial DNA, inherited only from mothers, researchers found several wolf origins for contemporary dogs. The study looked at the DNA of 654 dogs from 83 dog breeds and 38 Eurasian wolves. Three maternal DNA patterns accounted for more than 95% of dog genotypes, and these three sources came from East Asian wolf populations. Based on number of mutations found in the DNA sequences, researchers estimate that dogs became domesticated in several events (at least 5 unique mothers), beginning about 15,000 years ago.

Another group of researchers (2) studied 96 gene loci in 414 purebred dogs representing 85 breeds. They plotted the genetic relatedness of contemporary dogs and wolves. They found that genotypes of ancient Asian and Arctic breeds more closely resemble contemporary Eurasian wolves than they resemble other dog breeds. Specifically, Shiba Inu, Chow Chow, Akita, Alaskan Malamute, Basenji, Shar-pei, and Siberian Husky breeds cluster with contemporary wolf genotypes more closely than with other dogs breeds. Afgan Hound, Saluki, Tibetan Terrier, Llasa Apso, Samoyed, Pekingese, and Shih Tsu breeds are intermediate, sharing genotypes with both contemporary wolves and with other dog breeds.

Most dog breeds were created by human selective breeding for specific tasks or appearances. Breed isolation, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. Most dog breeds have existed as isolated breeding populations for less than 200 years, many for less than 100 years. Following wars, famines, and natural disasters, some dog breeds that became nearly extinct were re-established by interbreeding several related breeds. So, what are the genetic resemblances and differences among dog breeds today?

To refine further the relatedness of dog breeds today, researchers looked for distinctive genetic patterns among breeds. Genetic differences among breeds account for about 30 % of all genetic differences among the dogs, which shows a high degree of genetic isolation among breeds (as breeders intend). The degree of genetic difference among dog breeds is far greater than differences among human populations or breeds of other domestic animals, such as cattle and sheep. By looking only at genes, researchers could classify 99% of individual dogs into their correct breed.

Do dog breeds cluster? To some extent. Beginning with samples of wolves' DNA, the Asian Spitz-type dogs form a distinct cluster: Shar-pei, Shiba Inu, Akita, and Chow Chow. A second cluster includes only Basenjis, an ancient African breed. A third cluster contains two Artic breeds, Alaskan Malamute and Siberian Husky, and a fourth cluster includes two Middle Eastern sight hounds, the Afgan and Saluki.

Structure analysis shows additional breed groups not readily apparent from other analyses. If a three-group structure is used, a cluster of Mastiff-type dogs appears -- Mastiff, Bulldog, Boxer, Rottweiler, and their close relatives. A four-group structure produced a cluster of herding dogs. No additional groups could be reliably found in the data.

Remaining breeds showed few consistent relationships, except for breeds that are not (yet) genetically distinct (e,g., Belgian Sheepdog and Belgian Turvuren) or have a recent history of interbreeding, In other words, more than 70 breeds of modern European and North American invention are now genetically distinct populations, but the breeds show no pattern of genetic relatedness. They are equally related to each other and to modern wolves.

I would guess that few pet owners look at their Poodles, toy terriers, and Chihuahuas and think "wolf". Yet, these small dogs are just as much wolves as dogs that bear more obvious resemblances to species-brothers. Small size in dogs is caused by a single gene (3) that has been imported into many breeds to downsize them. The rest of the genotype is still wolf.

Dogs would thank their owners for thinking "wolf" when they consider how to feed them. Perhaps, it is obvious that an Alaskan Malamute or a German Shepherd would appreciate the whole-prey diet their wolf-brothers thrive upon. It is not as obvious that toy dogs need the same diet, scaled down to their size.

Don't let "experts" in veterinarian clothing, or minced-veggie purveyors online, tell you dogs are omnivores, whose diet has been shaped by human leftovers. Wolves and dogs are "opportunistic carnivores", who kill and eat whole prey and scavenge off other predators' kills. They will eat human garbage, but a healthy diet for wolves and dogs is principally meats and meaty bones. Pet owners can easily provide a wolf-diet in appropriate amounts and sizes for their friendly domestic wolves.

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(1) Savolainen, P., Zhang, Y, Luo, J, Lundeberg, J., & Leitner, T. (2002). Genetic evidence for an East Asian Origin of Domestic Dogs, Science, 298, 1610-1613.

(2) Parker, H., Kim, L.V., Sutter, N.B., Carlson, S., Lorentzen, T.D., Malek, T., Johnson, G.S., DeFRance, H.B., Ostrander, E.A., & Kruglyak, L. (2004). Genetic structure of the purebred domestic dog. Science, 304, 1160-1164.

(3) Sutter, N.B.and 20 coauthors, (2007). A single IGF1 allele is a major determinant of small size in dogs. Science, 316, 112-115.

Beware of Snake-Oil Salesmen

2010-02-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

The pet world is full of snake-oil salesmen,hawking hundreds of dietary and health supplements. Vitamins, minerals, prebiotocs, probiotics, digestive aids, skin soothing lotions, ear treatments, and more exotic compounds are offered to undo damage done by the unhealthy kibbles and canned mush that 90% of pet owners feed their dogs and cats. Little to no regulation of their claims or their compounds exists.

These contemporary shamans often give lip-service to the raw carnivore diet that is by definition complete. They acknowledge that cats and dogs evolved to eat whole prey and have thrived for thousands of years on that diet -- muscle meats, organ meats, and meaty bones. Carnivores, they agree, get all the nutrients they require from the raw-meaty-bones diet they evolved to eat.

Instead of recommending that pet owners feed raw-meaty-bones, however, they launch into selling their jars and bottles of stuff to "supplement" the inappropriate diets most pet owners feed and to cure pets of allergies, lessen intestinal distress, and treat various chronic conditions. These contemporary snake-oil salesmen are very like those of old.

In the 19th century, traveling salesmen toured rural communities selling snake oil and other remedies for poor diets and myriad diseases. Perhaps, their remedies did some good, but there was no regulation of their miraculous claims or their homemade formulations. Some people probably benefited from additional vitamins, minerals, and pain-relievers in these concoctions. They probably made a lot of people sicker and killed quite a few, but then so did doctors in that era. As people's diets improved, their need for snake-oil remedies declined. Even today, however, a small segment of the population takes mega-vitamin/mineral supplements and uses exotic herbal remedies that are largely unregulated.

The contemporary plight of pets makes snake-oil purveyors rich. Pet owners are aware of their pets' illnesses and distress, and veterinarians seem helpless to fix their problems. The vets are selling the cause of most of the problems, of course -- commercial pet foods. Snake-oil salesmen are filling the need pet owners feel to do something to remedy their pet's distress. Vitamin and mineral supplements, oils, lotions, and digestive aids may, in fact, help alleviate some health problems from inappropriate diets. They probably make a lot of pets sicker and kill quite a few, but then so do veterinarians.

The fix to most pets' problems is so simple and so inexpensive, compared to kibble and snake-oil supplements. An appropriate rmb diet is all carnivorous pets require to be healthy. Snake-oil salesmen know what pets need, but they can't make a fortune off raw-meaty-bones. As long as pet owners are duped by vets selling cooked starches as good pet foods, snake-oil salesmen will profit, pets will be sick, and pet owners will pay the bills.

Why Feed Your Pet Ground Meats and Bones?

2010-02-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

Why feed your pet ground meats and bones?

He will be thrilled to wrestle with Raw-Meaty-Bones

I puzzle about why pet owners want to feed ground stuff, rather than whole raw-meaty-bones (rmb). Who told them ground is better, and why? Can you imagine eating only ground meats, bones, and veggies in a pureed mush? Why would anyone think this is what dogs prefer or what is better for them?

When I think of how my Labs delight in shaking whole tripe and throwing them around, before chewing them intensely, I can't imagine why anyone would want to grind them. I do cut off pieces for Ben (the Papillon) and Daisy (the cat), because they can't negotiate whole tripe, but they still chew up their-size pieces.

Grinding up whole chickens, turkeys, ostriches, and rabbits -- why? Why would anyone do that? My dogs love to crunch up edible bones, which all of these creatures have in abundance. Why deprive them of large meaty bones to chew that keep their teeth clean and gums healthy? My dogs spend hours gnawing on meaty bones with obvious pleasure and satisfaction. Why deprive them of what Nature intended for carnivorous predators?

I understand the convenience argument that sends people to prepared foods, rather than starting meals from scratch (although it doesn't take long to fix good meals, if you know how to cook). I learned to cook as a young wife and made sure my children all learned to plan and put together meals from fresh foods. Teaching the children to cook was a time-saver for me, because in their adolescent years, they rotated cooking assignments, and I didn't have to cook every day. They were not always thrilled with the chore, but as young adults they realized they were the only ones, among their friends, who knew how to shop for and cook a coordinated meal for 4 or 6 people. Then, they realized what valuable skills they had learned at home.

Returning to pet owners, I suspect that many did not learn to cook for themselves, and they subsist on packaged foods. Feeding pets prepared foods seems natural. Even if they get the idea of raw feeding, they fall for the packaged, minced version, because they don't appreciate the value of fresh foods for themselves or for their pets. And they have not done a cost analysis of what they eat and what they feed their pets, because they are spending a lot more than fresh food diets cost.

Pet owners need to know how much less expensive whole rmb and pieces of large rmb are than minced, packaged stuff. Besides being much less expensive, real meats and meaty bones require no mincing, mixing, cooking, or other preparation Feeding rmb is so simple even cavemen did it.

Many owners seem to need a course on how to feed pets a proper rmb diet. A hypothetical RMB 101 would contain sections on:

· identifying meats and meaty bones,

· shopping for economical cuts,

· finding sources for game,

· storing meats in coolers and freezers,

· identifying appropriate sized pieces for large and small dogs and cats,

· feeding schedules and amounts,

· the value of raw-meaty-bones for oral health, and

· the many disadvantages of cooked and minced stuff

· cost comparisons of rmb versus packaged, raw foods.

An online course could offer a certificate in “Elementary RMB Feeding”. An intermediate course could cover more of the theory behind raw feeding and more nutritional science. Tom Lonsdale, DVM, Work Wonders: Feed Your dog Raw Meaty Bones would be the textbook. An advanced course would tackle Lonsdale’s Raw Meaty Bones, a more theoretical treatise on the evolution of carnivores and the critical role of oral health in their survival.

Ironically, the same global companies that profit from selling packaged people-meals are poised to sell them packaged, minced rmb for pets, to replace the kibbles and canned mush they now promote. I suppose Oma's Pride and similar stuff will retain their niche markets, even as Mars, Nestle-Purina, Colgate-Palmolive, and Proctor & Gamble launch raw, minced, pet-food lines. I would love to see more pet owners wise up to the scam. Minced, packaged foods do not keep your pet’s teeth clean, and they cost a lot to feed. Feeding your pet honest rmb is easy, healthy, and economical, if you know how.