commercial raw without taurine

I've been searching for other threads with this info but haven't found anything related.

As I've been researching ready made raw diets, I've found that some don't include taurine. I know that it's in meat but whenever I see a food without it, it makes me wonder why they didn't add it & I'm also hesitant to try it.

Experiences? Thoughts?

Thanks

If the diet is being sold as 'complete and balanced' then it will have been tested to ensure it contains enough taurine to meet a cat's needs. Remember that organ meat (heart, liver etc) is rich in taurine, so if the recipe is high in these meats it won't have needed extra adding in. Do make sure, however, that the recipe is designed for cats, not dogs. Dogs can create their own taurine from the food they eat, and so taurine isn't added to dog food. However, some premade dog foods can (depending on the overall composition) be fed safely to cats, provided a taurine supplement is added at an appropriate level.

When researching raw food, it can be all too easy to confuse the cat food and the dog food, as some manufacturers don't make it as clear as they could which species the food is aimed at - particularly if they supply plain ground meats as a base for homemade raw as well as fully prepared meals.

Hope that all makes sense! As with any food, if in doubt, check with the manufacturer. It is vital that any diet is correctly balanced, no matter whether it's dry, wet or raw.

Yes, I am very watchful for cat specific food.

Feline Natural frozen & freeze dried doesn't have it but there are a lot of organs in the food, I'm not sure if it's enough cause I can't find anything consistent that says what the min a cat needs per day. Also does it matter if it's in GA format? I don't usually use any of those numbers, I'll call a pet food company & get dry matter or TA if they have it.

Honest Kitchen doesn't have it either

msserena said:

 
Yes, I am very watchful for cat specific food.

Feline Natural frozen & freeze dried doesn't have it but there are a lot of organs in the food, I'm not sure if it's enough cause I can't find anything consistent that says what the min a cat needs per day. Also does it matter if it's in GA format? I don't usually use any of those numbers, I'll call a pet food company & get dry matter or TA if they have it.

Honest Kitchen doesn't have it either

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Feline Natural has heart high on the ingredient list, which is rich in taurine. 

Actually, I don't believe foods that are marketed as "complete and balanced" are tested for taurine content.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong?  Some foods are established by feeding trials, which involve testing the animals but not the food.  For the other foods, the labels say only that they are "formulated to meet" AAFCO standards.  I'm not sure exactly how they count up taurine content.  There was an epic post a while back where I posted an article listing taurine content of various meats, and mschauer pointed out several inconsistencies in the listings.  As a result, she chooses to assume meat contains zero taurine and supplements accordingly (1000 mg/lb).  I also supplement but I choose to assume some natural taurine content.  I end up supplementing about half the AAFCO requirement (500 mg/lb) as that's the amount of supplementation called for in the catinfo.org recipe.  The catinfo.org recipe, by the way, has gone through about the most stringent feeding trial ever:  about 10 years, which is how long Dr. Pierson has fed this recipe to her own cats.  That's why I'm confident in using it.

From my reading of the article, it's not clear that heart is higher in taurine than dark red muscle meat.  The amount listed by the article for chicken heart, as I recall, is actually less than the AAFCO standard for taurine content by weight.

I try to walk this line by feeding a variety of foods as well as supplementing myself - so that I know exactly what my little furry friends are getting.  I'd be wary of commercial foods that aren't taurine supplemented, even if they claim to be "complete and balanced" - especially if you are feeding your cats only one or two different foods.

sophie1 said:

I try to walk this line by feeding a variety of foods as well as supplementing myself - so that I know exactly what my little furry friends are getting.  I'd be wary of commercial foods that aren't taurine supplemented, even if they claim to be "complete and balanced" - especially if you are feeding your cats only one or two different foods.

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Yep. Any time you feed commerial foods you're taking some kind of risk. Even if the company claims the foods are balance there's no real way to know. The best solution to this is to feed a rotational diet and you include homemade with your own supplements. Feline natural appears to a fairly responsive company and I've been happy using a little of their freeze dried foods, but I'm not really thrilled with companies that don't supplement at least taurine. I would never feed these exclusively. 

As hinted, meat does naturally contains taurine.  And this taurine isnt destroyed by heating up either, not even partially, in raw foods.   So there is not necessary adding of taurine.  Mice doensnt have any added taurine, no?

Is my belief the de facto myth of added taurine comes with processed dry food.  Where the animal meat content is usually only a minor part of the food, and even animal content as such is not always the majority.   AND some of the taurine is destroyed in the processing and heating up - of course they do need to add taurine to make it anywhere near a correct and balanced cat food...

While I suspect, with a high end dry food with very high content of animal products and high percentage of meat -  the need of adding taurine is probably less. Perhaps even none.   I dont know for sure.

StefanZ said:

 
As hinted, meat does naturally contains taurine.  And this taurine isnt destroyed by heating up either, not even partially, in raw foods.   So there is not necessary adding of taurine. 

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Sorry, but that's not correct.  We know of at least one instance where taurine deficiency occurred in raw fed cats.  It was a UC Davis study in which cats were fed for a year on a diet of raw ground rabbit. The taurine deficiency was discovered after one cat died, and others were found to exhibit clinical signs that reversed upon supplementing with taurine.

There's no way to really know, but this group has speculated that some combination of grinding and freezing reduced the taurine content, and that the rabbits fed may have had a low taurine content to begin with.   Thus, some people choose to address the problem by feeding a variety of foods, but many of us consider it safer to supplement in addition.

sophie1 said:

 
Sorry, but that's not correct.  We know of at least one instance where taurine deficiency occurred in raw fed cats.  It was a UC Davis study in which cats were fed for a year on a diet of raw ground rabbit. The taurine deficiency was discovered after one cat died, and others were found to exhibit clinical signs that reversed upon supplementing with taurine.

There's no way to really know, but this group has speculated that some combination of grinding and freezing reduced the taurine content, and that the rabbits fed may have had a low taurine content to begin with.   Thus, some people choose to address the problem by feeding a variety of foods, but many of us consider it safer to supplement in addition.

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Tx for the warning, what sounds as a good theory isnt always good in practice. Right.

BUT.

In your example, the cats were fed what seemed to be good nourishment,right?   it wasnt no extreme stress test, right?

And yet, one cat died, and others were visibly unwell.  This is something very peculiar.  There are lotsa of cats living on cheap dry food, and yet the owners maintain they are happy and healthy...   Some may be not optimally top shape, but none or very few dies, or?

So what you talk about, isnt not just a little substandard, its something directly wrong and faulty.  Worse than cheap dry foods of low quality...

How come??  something is gravely amiss here...

They must have done something awfully wrong.  Or at least, found a way to effectively destroy an what was supposed to be first rate food...

sophie1 said:

 
Sorry, but that's not correct.  We know of at least one instance where taurine deficiency occurred in raw fed cats.  It was a UC Davis study in which cats were fed for a year on a diet of raw ground rabbit. The taurine deficiency was discovered after one cat died, and others were found to exhibit clinical signs that reversed upon supplementing with taurine.

There's no way to really know, but this group has speculated that some combination of grinding and freezing reduced the taurine content, and that the rabbits fed may have had a low taurine content to begin with.   Thus, some people choose to address the problem by feeding a variety of foods, but many of us consider it safer to supplement in addition.

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Ground Raw Rabbit.  Of all the meats available, they used one that barely has enough taurine to begin with.  And then, more than likely, just ground the muscle meat. (no organs, no bones). 
I've sure not done any studies, but, I do wonder if the results would have been any different, at all, had they not "ground" the meat.

As has been said above.  If you're going to feed "raw"....variety is always best.   OR, if it's going to be same meat every time?  Choose something other than one single meat that barely has enough nutrients to sustain a cat.  

BassCat said:

 
Ground Raw Rabbit.  Of all the meats available, they used one that barely has enough taurine to begin with.  And then, more than likely, just ground the muscle meat. (no organs, no bones). 

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Rabbit is naturally very low in taurine. The study used the entire ground up rabbit carcass:

Rabbits were readily obtained from a rabbitry producing meat for human and exotic animal consumption, and were of comparatively low cost. Mice may have been more appropriate, but procuring and processing this number of mice was not practical. Moreover, in places where rabbits are abundant, feral cats have been known to choose them as their primary prey (Molsher et al.,1999). Since cats eat most parts of their prey and essential nutrients are concentrated in different organs, the rabbits were not skinned, dressed or cleaned, but rather ground in their entirety. The ground whole rabbit diet was frozen in smaller batches and thawed prior to feeding.

http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/ccah/local-assets/pdfs/Role_of_diet_feline health_Glasgow.pdf

Feeding 'frankenprey" to the laboratory cats used in the study was likely not feasible due to limited refrigeration space for animal food and staff time constraints.

Interesting.  Many Lynx cats survive and thrive, eating rabbit at a sole food source.
Well, "they" say rabbit is all they eat.

I bet in reality they eat anything that moves, and rabbits are just the most noticeable.

msserena said:

 
I've been searching for other threads with this info but haven't found anything related.

As I've been researching ready made raw diets, I've found that some don't include taurine. I know that it's in meat but whenever I see a food without it, it makes me wonder why they didn't add it & I'm also hesitant to try it.

Experiences? Thoughts?

Thanks

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Look for a food that clearly states it provides complete and balanced nutrition as established by the AAFCO. I wouldn't trust a food unless it did. But I've seen raw foods from small companies that claimed to be nutritionally complete but the ingredients make be suspicious of the claim.

sophie1 said:

 
Actually, I don't believe foods that are marketed as "complete and balanced" are tested for taurine content.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong?  Some foods are established by feeding trials, which involve testing the animals but not the food.  For the other foods, the labels say only that they are "formulated to meet" AAFCO standards.

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The AAFCO allows nutritional adequacy to be established in one of 3 ways: 1) by using a formulation that meets the AAFCO nutrient profiles 2) by 6 month feeding trial 3) by being essentially the same formulation as an existing product that has been established as nutritionally adequate by one of the other 2 methods.

If a feeding trial is used it is the taurine level in the blood will establish whether the food has sufficient taurine.

I'm not aware of the phrase "formulated to meet" as providing any clue as to which method of determining nutritional adequacy was used.

mschauer said:

 
Look for a food that clearly states it provides complete and balanced nutrition as established by the AAFCO. I wouldn't trust a food unless it did. But I've seen raw foods from small companies that claimed to be nutritionally complete but the ingredients make be suspicious of the claim.

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What made you suspicious? Do you know of an example? Since I'm still not very seasoned in all this, every little bit of info helps.

I read all the ingredient labels, the ones that concern me is food not supplemented with taurine but then again if it's a large amount of muscle meat/organs, it should have it in there. But that is something that always raises my suspicions. Cat food minus the taurine supplement.

msserena said:

 

mschauer said:

 
Look for a food that clearly states it provides complete and balanced nutrition as established by the AAFCO. I wouldn't trust a food unless it did. But I've seen raw foods from small companies that claimed to be nutritionally complete but the ingredients make be suspicious of the claim.

Click to expand...

What made you suspicious? Do you know of an example? Since I'm still not very seasoned in all this, every little bit of info helps.

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Unfortunately I can't give you an example. I can just recall instances when I wondered how a specific food that claims to be complete and balanced could actually be given the ingredients. I'm pretty certain though that it would have been one of the small food manufacturers, not a large well known one.

 I read all the ingredient labels, the ones that concern me is food not supplemented with taurine but then again if it's a large amount of muscle meat/organs, it should have it in there. But that is something that always raises my suspicions. Cat food minus the taurine supplement.

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Does the label include the "nutritionally complete and balanced" claim? It is possible for a food with the right combination of meats and organs to meet AAFCO recommendations without supplementing taurine. Can you provide a link to the food you are suspicious of?

Any food that doesn't supplement with taurine makes me suspicious, I usually just steer away from those