why are SO many vets against RAW?????

panther pride

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I think feeding raw is a good thing if done in monderation or if going to feed all raw then have a young healthy animal eating the food or one tht has some wild blood in him/her Ki bangels is doing well on this matter and maybe mix in canned foods again when he/she gets older. I agree that evolution plays a very big part in raw feeding and those immune system problems. One day it might even be fatal to feed a housecat/dog raw/barf diets. I'm talking thousends if not millions of years from now if the raw/barf/organic movement stops or changes. Our diet of pot pies, cookies, frozen processed foods and Mic donalds is very very diffient from the eary homid's one of fruit, bugs, and roots plus an occanional carcass found out on the savannah. The first human 'ape' was only the size of a kindergardener and had a brain the size of a chimp and our jaws now are inches smaller then those hiomids of the past we have almost none if any room for wisdom teeth, some people dont even get wisdom teeth and our insides are actually changing too, an appendix, is actually thought to be a second crop for digesting raw meat from eariler times, useless and growing smaller and smaller with every genration. i read an artlce the said basicly mordern homo sapiens are evoving to eat......mush. I was reading up on human diet changes over the past few hundred years and I think our housecats scale of evolution to live with humans and eat cat food is much much less dramic then our own physical makeup of jaw/brains and diet they are alot closer to african wildcats then we are to early homids.

An African wildcat (The wild ancestor of our beloved furbabies) was probably alot stronger and tougher then a house cat in terms of immuneaty, they also probably didnt live for very long, Other factors then food I'm sure. The point is feed raw if you wish but remember to vary it when the pet gets old, Just my humble opinion. I feed a good diet Innova evo and raw as a treat. http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ima...ilies/wink.gif
 

sharky

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Originally Posted by Panther pride

I think feeding raw is a good thing if done in monderation or if going to feed all raw then have a young healthy animal eating the food or one tht has some wild blood in him/her Ki bangels is doing well on this matter and maybe mix in canned foods again when he/she gets older. I agree that evolution plays a very big part in raw feeding and those immune system problems. One day it might even be fatal to feed a housecat/dog raw/barf diets. I'm talking thousends if not millions of years from now if the raw/barf/organic movement stops or changes. Our diet of pot pies, cookies, frozen processed foods and Mic donalds is very very diffient from the eary homid's one of fruit, bugs, and roots plus an occanional carcass found out on the savannah. The first human 'ape' was only the size of a kindergardener and had a brain the size of a chimp and our jaws now are inches smaller then those hiomids of the past we have almost none if any room for wisdom teeth, some people dont even get wisdom teeth and our insides are actually changing too, an appendix, is actually thought to be a second crop for digesting raw meat from eariler times, useless and growing smaller and smaller with every genration. i read an artlce the said basicly mordern homo sapiens are evoving to eat......mush. I was reading up on human diet changes over the past few hundred years and I think our housecats scale of evolution to live with humans and eat cat food is much much less dramic then our own physical makeup of jaw/brains and diet they are alot closer to african wildcats then we are to early homids.

An African wildcat (The wild ancestor of our beloved furbabies) was probably alot stronger and tougher then a house cat in terms of immuneaty, they also probably didnt live for very long, Other factors then food I'm sure. The point is feed raw if you wish but remember to vary it when the pet gets old, Just my humble opinion. I feed a good diet Innova evo and raw as a treat. http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ima...ilies/wink.gif
I would suggest to a bit more research:_)... as many domestics with no wild blood and evan those with immune issues thrive on raw diets
 

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Absolutely!!! You've got to sterilize that food processor and the counter or we could make ourselves sick. Besides a food processor is handy for people recipes. We don't need raw chicken bits and salmonella in our food. Yuck!!!

Although I know it's good for my cats, I've been finding it rather gross handling that raw chicken, touching salmonella and e-coli with my hands. I can't seem to serve it out of the freezer bag without touching that raw stuff and then I wash my hands like crazy. And taking them out of ice cube trays, I have to touch that too, ugh! Next time I'll just put the stuff in little circular tupperware containers and it would be like opening cans. They can float in hot water too to warm to room temp.

Sometimes I think about just buying ground meat and avoiding the whole food processor thing but I've read too much about raw meat packed in supermarkets having the surface bacteria ground into it. Plus I can't find any ground meat at my local supermarket that is organic or free of added hormones and antibiotics.
 

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Wegman's, if you have one near you, does do an organize ground chicken. I admit, shamefully, that we did use this in a pinch once or twice. It's a bit pricey, but it is totally organic.

If there's organic sections in your local grocery, that's where you can usually find it. We had a heck of a time finding organic stuff, but the ground frozen was in the freezer in organic. It came in a "tube" like a sausage, sort of.. with the little metal clips on the ends.
 

panther pride

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Just forming my opinion based on what I read online about and what was posted earlier Sharky, It might only be the big chain brands trying to perswade that their product is better then raw or some animal right activists writing, dont know. Raw is a very very good food choice, I think but we need to be wary of diseases domestic pets are not prepared to deal with in old age/ect. Our housecats live sheltered lives far removed from the homes of their anscestors, But your right raw is the natural diet for cats including housecats,now, but in another thousend or more years their opinion might be right too. http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ima...s/confused.gif. Most housecats dont get raw diets, they get processed foods with grains pasevatives and by products. Nature in any shape or form over time adopts its creatures to their lifestyles, I wasn't kidding about what I read about the path our own human diet is taking, it's scary to me.http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ima...s/rolleyes.gif.

Vets are probably/poorly informed about feline nutrition, worried raw might be too natural, or they just want you to shell out money for them.
 

sharky

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Originally Posted by Panther pride

Just forming my opinion based on what I read online about and what was posted earlier Sharky, It might only be the big chain brands trying to perswade that their product is better then raw or some animal right activists writing, dont know. Raw is a very very good food choice, I think but we need to be wary of diseases domestic pets are not prepared to deal with in old age/ect. Our housecats live sheltered lives far removed from the homes of their anscestors, But your right raw is the natural diet for cats including housecats,now, but in another thousend or more years their opinion might be right too. http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ima...s/confused.gif. Most housecats dont get raw diets, they get processed foods with grains pasevatives and by products. Nature in any shape or form over time adopts its creatures to their lifestyles, I wasn't kidding about what I read about the path our own human diet is taking, it's scary to me.http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ima...s/rolleyes.gif.

Vets are probably/poorly informed about feline nutrition, worried raw might be too natural, or they just want you to shell out money for them.
The thing is You do need to keep reading ... many of us get to a raw diet to help allviate old age or disease issues
.... My vet is not poorly informed and many vets are learning there are a few "old school" that are still in the dry food is best club...lol.. evan pet food companies are realizing wet is at least something that should be in the dietand it is not just a treat for a spoiled animal
Cats have been on commercial foods for less than 75 yrs in most cases that is not enough time for true evolution to occur
IMHO
 
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renovia

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well,
luxor LOVES raw - he's is going to switch over completely much sooner than i thought he would....probably by the end of next week he'll be all on raw. . .

and i don't know if mine eyes deceive me but the fur on his neck feels a little softer and he looks a little leaner around the bum...
 

sharky

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Originally Posted by Renovia

well,
luxor LOVES raw - he's is going to switch over completely much sooner than i thought he would....probably by the end of next week he'll be all on raw. . .

and i don't know if mine eyes deceive me but the fur on his neck feels a little softer and he looks a little leaner around the bum...
no it aint your imagination.. some wont loos "real" wt but like a human there body may sculpt
... lucky for me my Kandie is gaining and Gigi is lossing

Panther you just admitted the cat eats better than you
 

noelle&oliver

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Originally Posted by Panther pride

I think feeding raw is a good thing if done in monderation or if going to feed all raw then have a young healthy animal eating the food or one tht has some wild blood in him/her Ki bangels is doing well on this matter and maybe mix in canned foods again when he/she gets older. I agree that evolution plays a very big part in raw feeding and those immune system problems. One day it might even be fatal to feed a housecat/dog raw/barf diets. I'm talking thousends if not millions of years from now if the raw/barf/organic movement stops or changes. Our diet of pot pies, cookies, frozen processed foods and Mic donalds is very very diffient from the eary homid's one of fruit, bugs, and roots plus an occanional carcass found out on the savannah. The first human 'ape' was only the size of a kindergardener and had a brain the size of a chimp and our jaws now are inches smaller then those hiomids of the past we have almost none if any room for wisdom teeth, some people dont even get wisdom teeth and our insides are actually changing too, an appendix, is actually thought to be a second crop for digesting raw meat from eariler times, useless and growing smaller and smaller with every genration. i read an artlce the said basicly mordern homo sapiens are evoving to eat......mush. I was reading up on human diet changes over the past few hundred years and I think our housecats scale of evolution to live with humans and eat cat food is much much less dramic then our own physical makeup of jaw/brains and diet they are alot closer to african wildcats then we are to early homids.

An African wildcat (The wild ancestor of our beloved furbabies) was probably alot stronger and tougher then a house cat in terms of immuneaty, they also probably didnt live for very long, Other factors then food I'm sure. The point is feed raw if you wish but remember to vary it when the pet gets old, Just my humble opinion. I feed a good diet Innova evo and raw as a treat. http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ima...ilies/wink.gif
Humans have been evolving for hundreds of thousand of years. Homo Sapians arrived on the evolutionary scene roughly 100,000 - 200,000 years ago. It make's a lot of sense that our diet would not be exactly that of our early ancestors, and that we would have vestigal organs. We've had plenty of time on the evolution playing field to adapt and change.

The modern house cat was only domesticated about 3-4 thousand years ago, though. Their size might have changed a bit, as well as their temperment, but their biology is still pretty much the same. And, as Skarky (I believe) said, we've only started feeding cats commercial diets in the last 50 years or so. Even though they were "domesticated", they were fed only table scraps or hunted for their own food. Most likely, they hunted. Cat's and humans formed a symbyotic relationship because cat's kept rodents away from grain stores and provided some protection against snakes.

While some cats are not used to eating raw due to "modern" canned/dry diets, and some with immunodeficiencies may have problems, it's still a very appropriate diet for cat's in general.
 

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I haven't told my vet we switched to raw. I'm afraid I wouldn't be his client anymore after that. LOL We've been feeding raw for awhile now. We're trying for whole prey model. It's not working too well but all my cats love the raw. Most won't go near comercial food anymore. The litter box is better. The stools are better and some of my cats with issues are coming around better. One example is our Monkey. When he was a kitten he would go into a coma every week. The vets all said he would die. He's now 4 or 5 years old but the meanest cat you'll ever meet. We would sedate him just to go near him for anything. He'd guard his food from everyone. He'd just attack you for no reason. He's been eating raw and now he's coming around. He's still mean but not as bad as he was. I can now touch him and pet him without fear of losing a finger or all layers of skin. He won't purr but that's fine with us. I'm not saying raw feeding is a cure-all for problems, though. Just something I noticed with Monkey.
 

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I think most vets are against raw because most people are idiots and don't know the slightest way of doing it correctly A lot of people will read about a raw diet and then just feed them raw meat and that's it, and think it's ok - in addition they don't know how to prepare it correctly, so there is a good chance of salmonella, etc...

Personally, I used to think raw/holistic etc was a bunch of crap!
But I know many people/shelters IRL who have had great success with it, so I am supportive of it now, though I do not do it myself!


I think a lot of vets just err on the side of caution and unless they know you and know you are intelligent and actually research it and all, they would tell you to not do it.
 
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renovia

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Originally Posted by techiegirl

I think most vets are against raw because most people are idiots and don't know the slightest way of doing it correctly A lot of people will read about a raw diet and then just feed them raw meat and that's it, and think it's ok - in addition they don't know how to prepare it correctly, so there is a good chance of salmonella, etc...

Personally, I used to think raw/holistic etc was a bunch of crap!
But I know many people/shelters IRL who have had great success with it, so I am supportive of it now, though I do not do it myself!


I think a lot of vets just err on the side of caution and unless they know you and know you are intelligent and actually research it and all, they would tell you to not do it.
that's a really good point - i hope my vet would support my decision, and i think they do. i hope they realize that i'm not a dummy and maybe that's why they haven't tried to scare me away from raw.....
 

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I agree that vets do not have nutritional expertise. When we know more than
they know about nutrition, its time they catch up. Some of them wear smocks that say Eukanuba vet. :censor::censor::censor:?? I left that vet & went somewhere else. Eukanuba is'nt even a good food. When a vet prescribes science diet or eukanuba as a solution to a serious pet disease, its frightening.

I've heard lots of good stuff about raw and animals can even eat days old road kill & not suffer. We get salmonella far easier than animals ever would. I hope to feed raw at some point & am slowly moving in that direction.
 

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Yes, I called my secondary (emergency) vet as my regular vet doesn't have emergency hours and they were closed for the day.. and I got a lecture from the vet tech about how I needed to switch my F3 Bengal over to a commercially balanced dry food as it's *much* better for the cat. I said.. he won't *eat* dry food. We went through two years of trying to find something he'd eat more than a few bites of and then discard.. we tried every single wet and dry food on the market that was readily available. When he ate a single kernal of Evo dry, I went back to the cat show and kneeled on the ground and bowed my head and hands to the representative. He's like I told you he'd love the taste of Evo.. I said, yeah, um.. don't get your hopes up.. I'm giving you a testimonial because he ate *one* bite, which is one bite more than any other dry food on the market.

Anyway... two years.. finally the last six months of this stint, we were feeding him gerber graduates turkey sticks, and mixing it with crumbled up dry..and he was eating a little more, but certainly not as much as he should be. When we got Joyeux.. she came already on a raw diet. Kahn lept in on the raw meat with a vengence, and he's since gained about three pounds, put on muscle and filled out. He eats close to a pound of raw a day. He won't even look at cooked meats, canned foods, or anything else (we still give the other kitties some of this occasionally).. and this vet tech is lecturing me on how I need to force him to eat a commercially balanced dry food. Her suggestion effectively.. well, it was "you just need to make him eat it". I was like, how about I bring this cat to you and we'll see how successful you are with that. He practically starved himself for two years, he won't be "starved" into eating dry, which seemed to me was the "unsaid" suggestion.

I told her.. you know, I'm feeding this for this vitamin, and this for that vitamin, and they get some of this and some of that, and salmon for omega threes, and other fishes for omega 6's, and I'm asking you if it's safe to feed chicken and/or chicken organ meats. Is there a melamine threat from this?? BTW, she had no real idea (even though I was lectured on how vets spend *years* on nutritional education and I couldn't possibly know that from several months of research)..what meats provided what, and I even told her they receive a supplement to offset whatever vitamins they might be missing..sometimes.

She just insisted that they needed nutritionally balanced commercial dry, and my reply was, yeah, and if I'd been feeding this commercial dry that you're advocating.. they'd have been eating recalled foods. So, quit giving me this spiel about how that's the only safe method. I think not, and really, I can't believe that PENDER is advocating this, when there are so many dying and suffering health problems from commercially dry and wet foods right now. I'm beginning to think that Pender wants our animals to suffer so that they can get the money from treating them.... I can't believe any vet is advocating or insisting on people feeding dry, especially in light of how many recalls and expansions there's been, and how it's still continuing how many months later now??

Sorry, guys, just had to rant about that. I've been so mad about that snotty little vet tech and her lecture, which, if I wasn't feeding raw, could have very easily put my pets in danger. She even went so far as to suggest that high protein no grain drys weren't nutritionally balanced too. I was like.. so you're suggesting that we need to feed OBLIGATE CARNIVORES vegetables and grain????? What vet school did you spend years learning nutrition at that taught you that?

UGH!


I don't know but the more I talk to vets the less I trust their opinion on it..they don't have any real idea and while I admit I don't have the education.. I do know that it makes sense to feed an obligate carnivore meat, not grain. I may not have a class A education, and I may still be learning, and surely I make mistakes (hence the supplement).. but the one fact is that carnivores eat meat. They're not omnivores. (and this isn't directed at anyone here at all... it's just what seems obvious to me)..
 

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CatsAreBetter;1785312 said:
Sorry, guys, just had to rant about that. I've been so mad about that snotty little vet tech and her lecture, which, if I wasn't feeding raw, could have very easily put my pets in danger. She even went so far as to suggest that high protein no grain drys weren't nutritionally balanced too. I was like.. so you're suggesting that we need to feed OBLIGATE CARNIVORES vegetables and grain????? What vet school did you spend years learning nutrition at that taught you that?

QUOTE]

Sorry about the troubles you had with her. She sounds like she's been thoroughly ingrained (no pun intended) with false information. Just a side note though - tech's don't go to vet school. Some people become tech's from hands on work in a clinic, others go through a certification process, and some get an actual 2 year degree. Others have a combination of the three. Where I got my degree in Animal Care they also had a program for vet tech's.
 

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Noelle&Oliver;1785426 said:
Originally Posted by CatsAreBetter

Sorry, guys, just had to rant about that. I've been so mad about that snotty little vet tech and her lecture, which, if I wasn't feeding raw, could have very easily put my pets in danger. She even went so far as to suggest that high protein no grain drys weren't nutritionally balanced too. I was like.. so you're suggesting that we need to feed OBLIGATE CARNIVORES vegetables and grain????? What vet school did you spend years learning nutrition at that taught you that?

QUOTE]

Sorry about the troubles you had with her. She sounds like she's been thoroughly ingrained (no pun intended) with false information. Just a side note though - tech's don't go to vet school. Some people become tech's from hands on work in a clinic, others go through a certification process, and some get an actual 2 year degree. Others have a combination of the three. Where I got my degree in Animal Care they also had a program for vet tech's.
Hmm, wonder how long an actual vet degree is.. I should have done that when I was younger. It's kind of like.. too late to go to school to be a vet, but.. anyway.. she was just going on about how it takes 'years of study and proper vet training to understand nutrition" and that's pretty good considering that from my understanding.. they don't spend that long on it in vet school.. I might be mistaken.. I haven't researched any of that or anything.
 

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CatsAreBetter;1785460 said:
Originally Posted by Noelle&Oliver

Hmm, wonder how long an actual vet degree is.. I should have done that when I was younger. It's kind of like.. too late to go to school to be a vet, but.. anyway.. she was just going on about how it takes 'years of study and proper vet training to understand nutrition" and that's pretty good considering that from my understanding.. they don't spend that long on it in vet school.. I might be mistaken.. I haven't researched any of that or anything.
I think it's 4 additional years after college for vet school, so 8 years.
 

sharky

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beandip;1785581 said:
Originally Posted by CatsAreBetter

I think it's 4 additional years after college for vet school, so 8 years.
Yes that is it plus any specialty training so add 2-3 yrs to the 8 ....

Vet tech can be a 9 month , 2yr or 4 yr degree depending on school ... obviously the 4 yr is teaching more than a 9 month
 
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