With the voluntary revocation of yet another raw cat and dog food due to pollution on August 25, is the future of raw feeding in doubt?
Over the past 12 months, the FDA has issued 10 remembered with pet food, where anyone involves raw or air -dried raw products. The latest came from Viva Raw LLC due to suspected pollution with Salmonella and Listeria Monocytogenes, both of which can cause serious illness in pets and humans. Given this information, you may wonder why some retailers and pet owners are still obliged to Raw Food Movement.
When it comes to pet food, there has been almost a development of 360 °. In the early stages of their domestication, cats party on leftovers and meat of meat and fish discarded or offered by humans. As we learned more about in and outs of the cat’s nutrition, we learned that cats that fed a diet that consisted only of muscle meat and fish were at serious risk of nutritional deficiencies, with potentially deadly consequences. From here we witnessed the economic explosion of the pet feeding industry with cans, bags, bags and bags full of carefully calibrated ingredients designed to meet our pet’s needs. As with most things, affordable prices come at the expense of quality, and over the past few decades, consumers have become more discerning about what goes into their beloved cat’s food bowl.
The raw food revolution
Somehow, raw meat found the way back in our pet’s diets, and although regulatory organs such as AAFCO ensure that commercially accessible raw pet food gives all the right vitamins and minerals, we are still left with a product that is in itself in danger of pollution.
Salmonella, Listeria and recently Aviary Influenza has all been isolated in samples of raw pet food causing serious illness, even death, in animals that consume it, not to mention the risk of humans handling it. So why expose pets to a risk that could be eradicated with some gentle cooking?
Raw food diets are seen as a more natural approach to feeding our pets, so cats can chew cartilage, slice through Sinw and Gnaw on bones, just as they would have done a few millennia ago. While this is a good idea in terms of enrichment, it fails to consider the much lower average life expectancy of our housecat’s ancient ancestors.
Although there is certainly some profits of shaking up the Feline food industry and reconsidering our dependence on over-worked, ultra-heat-treated, carbohydrate kibble, maybe the raw food movement has taken things back to a little too basic. Just because we want to move away from ultraProcessed foods does not mean that we have to return to the completely unprocessed; Something an increasing number of pet food companies seem to realize.
Is gently cooked the new raw?
There is a growing number of cat feed marks that produce fresh frozen foods, where recipes containing a mixture of fresh meat, vegetables and grains are gently cooked to a temperature of approx. 165 ° F to eliminate food -borne pathogens and frozen to increase durability. Cats benefit from a more interesting range of flavors and textures without the risk of food poisoning.
The disadvantages of these fresh frozen pet food are that they will cost you a reasonable amount and freezer area, and you often have to sign up for a subscription. Of course, if raw pet food becomes a past, the availability and affordable prices for these options will of course rise.
With the growing threat of food -borne pathogens that put our pets and families at risk, and both the FDA and Avma advising pet owners to move away from raw feeding, it seems inevitable that this once thriving trend can approach extinction. After all, we are no longer facing a choice between ultra-processed and raw, and the middle ground looks pretty tasty.
Functional image credit: Nils Jacob, Shutterstock