Duc,
You mentioned fish and 'clean waters' specifically, implying a risk from either water pollution or the more common concern, mercury toxicity. While you're correct about *humans* not eating raw meat, cats can handle raw meat just fine, though I would agree that one should check the source of raw meat as much as possible. Cats as you know can handle the bacterial load of raw meat, and their carnivore digestive systems are much shorter than ours as humans, thus less time for bacteria to do its thing.
I understand your concerns about the human processing, and that's something to look in to, though I question whether the human-processed meat is riskier than say, a dirty mouse in the wild. I still think, on balance, the concerns you have are more for human consumption of raw meat more than cats.
Of course, this is an argument about the processing of raw meat and factory-farming reform and not against feeding raw food to cats...as it's easy enough to source whole prey from various online sites and go that route as well, and there's the whole commercial raw option as well (Primal, Rad Cat, Feline Pride, etc.).
Your initial post to me was against raw food for cats in general, it seemed (which we disagree on, clearly), but you might have a point about store-bought meat which comes from factory farms. Even if we grant that there are pathogens in the meat (which there certainly are, most likely), my contention is that evolution has equipped cats to deal with raw meat better than humans can imagine. What do you think of places which sell hand-raised whole-prey or the commercial raw food?
As far as vegetables and all this hooey about anti-oxidants and other supplement-industry buzzwords, that's to appeal to humans. Cats get all the nutrition they need (as guided by evolution for millions of years) from meat, bone, organs, etc. from the animals they'd normally hunt and eat. It's quite possible to overdo it on supplements...and humans do this to themselves all the time. In fact, anyone on a regular diet shouldn't need *any* supplements unless prescribed by a doctor, or unless their diet substantially lacks nutrients for some reason. For instance, Vitamin B12 is only available in meat, and vegetarians/vegans might supplement to compensate. The supplement industry is *big business* and their claims should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Bodies evolved to get their nutrition from food anyway, not necessarily supplements. I'm not saying people can't absorb supplements, but a lot of people are taking supplements they simply don't need or are going right through their bodies (while the money comes out of their wallets). In some cases, people overdose on certain supplements which can cause a cascading effect on the balance of other vitamins in the body...so I would never try to self-prescribe random supplements to my cat (Enzyme CoQ10, anti-oxidants, etc.).
I don't support the 'organic' movement because while I think the intent is good and I am green-conscious, the organic movement is plagued with some anti-science views and can be hysterically anti-GMO (genetically modified organism). Anyone who understands the history of botany/horticulture knows that almost every domesticated fruit/vegetable we humans eat has been shaped by artificial selection or even genetic modification whether that's 'seedless' grapes, seedless mini Clementines (Cuties is one brand), seedless watermelon, giant ears of corn, more nutritious foods, etc. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as 'seedless' watermelon. Corn of course (maize) is hardly recognizable in its 'natural' an unmodified form. The reason farmers can patent seeds is because it takes years of work, growing, artificial selection with genetic considerations to get an ideal seed....such as that for seedless, personal-sized watermelon. I appreciate the science that goes into that. It seems many people in the 'organic' movement have an inherent distrust of science, at least with respect to genetics and horticulture.
Synthesized insecticides, as you've touched on, are generally going to be safer than the 'natural' pesticides and fertilizers used by the organic industry, and this is true both for the environment, relating to pest-control and for human consumption. My main beef (heh) with the organic movement lies more with the higher pricing, false claims about better nutrition and its lower crop yields (less green and efficient). Due to the wide use of manure as fertilizer, there's a risk of E-Coli contamination. E-Coli as we know is perfectly natural. :) As I've mentioned before, synthetic varieties of Human Growth Hormone giving to children today is safe, but this used to be made from crushed cadaver pituitaries...and that put some kids at risk for debilitating illnesses such as CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), which was only discovered decades after the intial batch of 'natural' HgH was given to test subjects. With synthesized agents, the impurities can be perfectly-controlled, which is why Craig Venter's work with synthetic genomics is so promising.
On the Penn and Teller takedown of organic food, nobody in their testing was even able to tell the difference between organic and conventional bananas. ;) It was a fun yet unscientific test, and I am sure it would be corroborated in any double blind, more rigorous studies, but there is absolutely no difference in nutrition between organic and conventional foods. Meanwhile, the 'boutique' organic food companies (often owned by large mega-corporations) are certainly charging a price-premium and for what, really?
I am in support of factory-farming reform, scientific practices applied to farming, better crop-yields than current conventional standards, GMO to say, infuse vitamin A in rice for countries which sorely need it, better and safer synthetic pesticides, better fertilizers, buying local and fresh, etc. I just don't buy the religion that the organic-food industry has become. I see it as a form of food elitism or 'green' movement ideology applied to food with a huge dollop of ignorance, fear-mongering of science and a misunderstanding of genetics.
We just need to remember one thing. ALL food is organic, or we couldn't eat it. ;) But, people need to be careful about paying more for food falsely-claimed to be 'better', when it isn't. Cruelty-free, free-range chicken? I'm all for it, thus my support for factory-farming reform.
That said, raw food is ideal for cats physiologically and psychologically (and on almost any metric). We just have to be careful not to conflate our concerns with factory-farming with the efficacy of a raw diet for obligate carnivores who evolved to eat exactly that. In the meantime, it's always good to know where our food is coming from, no matter who's eating it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ducman69 
I was not talking specifically about fish, but about raw food in general. Yes, cats are obligate carnivores, but as with the fish analogy this is inherently fresh meat eaten while the prey is still twitching more often than not. It is an obvious fallacy to believe that this is the same as industrialized farmed chicken that you find at your grocery store.
Take the "fresh" chicken you find at your Kroger's meat section. Starting from the egg, the hens are typically cramped in very tight cages in very close proximity to vast numbers of other chickens which introduces health concerns. The egg itself passes through the same passageway as feces down a constantly reused conveyor belt. After incubating and brought to the hatchery, they are crowded with other chicks, debeaked, and injected which may or may not kill all pathogens already in the animal at this point. The chicken is then fed massive amounts typically with little sunlight crammed together in large lots in a dust cloud of fecal particulates. When they reach market weight, they will be brought for slaughter which passes it through various machines that will prepare well over a hundred thousand other chickens that day alone before shut down and cleanup. The meat is then usually not frozen but transported fresh to the grocery store in trucks and then reach the shelves for consumers to purchase generally within approximately 24 hours. The meat then sits waiting until it is purchased, typically another day or two before the consumer transports it unrefrigerated for typically an hour before finally has it in their refrigerator many more hours before serving.
This is why the FDA so strongly urges the public to heat meats to various minimum temperatures before consumption, as this meat is not considered fresh or sanitary enough to be consumed raw, nor is this man-made meat processing of non-prey animals for cats somehow natural to their evolutionary diet.
So mainstream commercial meat is cooked, which costs more than NOT cooking the food, but provides a greater safety margin since it kills contaminants picked up during the life cycle and processing of the prey. However, the unfortunate side effect is that cooking and processing does destroy some of the nutrients originally in the meat. These can and are supplemented after the cooking though into the recipe per AAFCO minimum guidelines for a complete and balanced diet. It is more economically viable to obtain some of these lost nutrients from plant sources, say omega fatty acids from flaxseed meal, vitamin B2 from riboflavin, or carrageenan to improve the texture of the recipe to improve palatability.
This meets the naturally evolved nutrient needs of the cat, without subjecting it to the bacterial risks associated with industrial processing and long dead meat.
Edited by MaxKitteh - 12/18/11 at 8:20am
What's the point?
as one of the most thorough and easy to read, but there are many, many readily available sources for this information.
