Eating a diet of raw food is becoming a popular trend among those who are health conscious. Processing and cooking our foods often can destroy valuable micronutrients that could benefit the body. The same reasoning is more and more often being applied by pet owners who are rethinking their pets’ diets. For the last hundred years or so our pets have typically been fed commercially processed and homogenous ‘dog food’ or ‘cat food’. The ingredients in such food, dry or wet, are cooked at high temperatures and heavily processed to avoid spoiling. According to those who advocate feeding our pets raw food, the resulting product is at best lacking in essential vitamins, nutrients, and enzymes, and is at worst a harmful substance that regularly gives our pets allergies and makes them ill. At the same time, many veterinarians have concerns about raw food diets for animals. Raw food diets often do not satisfy federal animal nutrition standards, while most processed commercial foods do. Many vets report that after being on a long term diet of raw food, many of the same problems appear in their patients that raw food enthusiasts claim are resolved by switching their pets to a raw diet in the first place. Thus pets owners are left with the question of whether raw or processed food is better for their animal companions.
The reasoning behind feeding our pets raw food is strongly based on the idea that all creatures should be eating things that their wild counterparts would be eating. For example, dogs should be eating meat, meaty bones, and offal because this is what modern day wolves eat. According to some raw diets supporters, they should also be fed green leafy vegetables, fruit, eggs, and starchy vegetables. This diet is supposed to resemble the slightly omnivorous diet of wolves in the wild. Raw diets for cats are usually more heavily meat and offal based in order to replicate the carnivorous diets of wild felines. Some owners even purchase euthanized whole prey animals such as mice and birds for their cats to eat.
Many advocates of raw food for pets follow the BARF system, an acronym that stands for “biologically appropriate raw food” or “bones and raw food.” According to this system, all animals should be fed the evolutionary diet of their species. Followers are quick to point out that of all the species on the planet, humans are the only ones to cook their food, and that there must be some relationship between this fact, and the apparent tendency of humans to have a higher rate of diseases and disorders than wild species. They also point out that our pets have many of the same health problems that we do, and they place the blame on the consumption of cooked and overly processed foods.
There are many different types of raw food diets making an entry into the pet food market. Several of these follow the BARF system, with meaty bones, fruits, vegetables, and supplements all ground up into patties that pet owners can keep frozen and then thaw out to feed their animals. Other raw pet food manufacturers produce refrigerated raw food mixtures. There are also dehydrated versions of raw pet food that can be reconstituted with water before the food is given to the animal. Pet foods such as these are available at many pet stores. Some of these commercial raw pet foods are made with organic vegetables and meat.
Other models of raw feeding are more meat based and do not include vegetables, fruit, or other supplements. In these models cats and dogs are sometimes given whole or partial carcasses of chickens, beef, fish, rabbits, and other animals, in addition to organ meats of several different kinds of animals. This method of feeding is based less on commercial pet food and more on meats that can be obtained from butchers, chicken processors, or any other source of raw meat. In this version of the diet, the concern for whether the meat is organic does not seem to be as prevalent. This may have to do with the expense and limited availability of finding organic carcasses and organs. One idea that seems to be common to both methods of feeding raw food is that the meats and other items fed to pets should be the same quality as those that humans eat.
Raw food diets have been met with mixed reviews in the veterinary community. There are benefits and drawbacks to feeding our pets such a rich diet. Raw foods contain active enzymes, which raw food proponents claim are more biologically available to an animal’s digestive system. In addition they claim that vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants are destroyed during the process of cooking. Benefits to feeding meaty bones may include the strengthening of neck and jaw muscles, as well as cleaner teeth due to the scraping of the bone against the teeth during chewing. These particular benefits would obviously not be present in raw pet foods in which the bones are not present, or are ground into the food. Pet owners that feed their animals raw food also report that their pets have shinier coats, more energy, and less symptoms of allergies. Perhaps one of the largest benefits to a raw food diet is that dogs and cats sometimes greatly prefer to eat a variety of raw meats rather than a diet of kibble or canned food, and therefore pets might be less likely to be bored with their diet.
But there are also some concerns with feeding dogs and cats a diet with large amounts of raw meat and bones. Raw bones are softer and easier to digest than cooked bones, which make them less likely to cause a dangerous obstruction, but obstructions from raw bones are not unheard of and in some cases can also cause damage to teeth. Perhaps the immediate concern is that a diet that is very high in raw meat can cause problems like pancreatitis, which is often precipitated by an animal (or human) eating overly rich food that is difficult to digest. As more people experiment with raw food diets, some veterinarians claim to be seeing more cases of pancreatitis, ulcers, malnutrition, and systemic bacterial poisoning. Bacterial poisoning is often a concern surrounding raw food diets. It is normal for the meat that we buy to contain several different types of bacteria that typically are killed by the cooking process. If the meat is eaten raw, however, the bacteria are still present and can cause a dog or cat to become very ill. One of the largest concerns that vets have about raw food diets is that they may not satisfy all the dietary requirements of our pets and that feeding them these diets can in the long term leave them malnourished. Cats especially can suffer from taurine deficiency on a raw food diet. One study at UC Davis found that 70% of a group of 22 cats being fed a diet of raw food exhibited heart muscle changes compatible with taurine deficiency, and one of the cats died due to these complications.
In the United States, most commercial (cooked) pet foods meet the nutritional standards of AAFCO (the Association of American Feed Control Officials). Most commercial raw foods diets do not meet these standards, and it is doubtful that a home constituted diet of raw meats would. AAFCO standards and nutrient profiles are established through collaboration between scientific experts in the industry, in academia (such as at universities), and in the regulatory commission (National Research Commission, or NRC). Peer-reviewed literature and documented data is used to formulate nutrient profiles after collaboration. Raw food enthusiasts dismiss the AAFCO standards and argue that nature has formed the digestive systems of our pets and that this supersedes what research tells us about pet nutrition. But there are problems with this ideology. First, while in raw food ideology dog and cat digestive systems are almost always seen as identical to wolf and large cat digestive systems respectively, that may not be the case. More research should be done, but it is quite likely that the digestive systems of dogs and cats have changed to adapt to several thousand years of domestication. While they may be capable of digesting raw meat, for most of this period of domestication dogs, at least, would have eaten primarily human food scraps and rubbish, which is a very different diet than one of mainly meat. The fact that our pets are experiencing some of the same disorders and diseases that we do points to the fact that, like humans, pets are living longer and longer due to regular veterinary care and as they age more age-related disorders will be visible. In addition, our pets are subject to social practices of their owners that may or may not be healthy for them. For instance, as more and more Americans become obese, more and more of our pets are also becoming increasingly obese.
In conclusion, it seems that diets made up entirely of either raw food or processed food can have their drawbacks. There is probably nothing inherently wrong with a diet of raw food, but formulation of a balanced raw diet is more complicated than simply trying to re-create the diets of wild canines and felines in our kitchen. This is currently, however, very much how raw food diets are currently being created for pets. At Raymond Avenue Veterinary Hospital, we believe that both kinds of diets have benefits for our pets. Our suggestion is to feed your pet a regular diet of high quality commercial food but to supplement it appropriately with occasional raw foods that may benefit them. The commercial food that you feed should preferably be formulated from ingredients that are suitable for human consumption. The food will be even more beneficial to your pets if the ingredients are organic. This commercial food can then be supplemented with raw foods, but raw meat should be handled and prepared carefully in order to avoid bacterial contamination. We also do not advocate feeding your pets whole bones, as there is always a chance that they could suffer an obstruction. By feeding your pets occasional small amounts of raw food, they will benefit from the enzymes and nutrients that cooked commercial food lacks, but will be in less danger of pancreatitis or deficiencies. If you have any questions regarding a proper diet for your pet, our veterinarians are always willing to talk with you.
