Raw Diet....yes, no, maybe?

I'm just curious what the TCS population thinks of the raw diet option for our cats. Please see the poll for choices.

Yes.... I'm sold on it!

I would love to feed raw, and will probably start if we get my wish and move in a year (we'll be raising our own meat).

There is no 'other' option
I want to be able to raise my own meat first.
Partly so I can guarantee the quality, and that the animal was raised humanely, but mostly because I lack any real freezer space.

im all for a raw diet, if it is planned properly. my two dogs are on a raw diet, and i feed raw meals to my cats as well... i would feed the cats all raw but 2 out of 4 cats in my house think raw meat is gross. still working on those two.
to me, it makes perfect sense that feeding an animal a diet that is appropriate to its species would be beneficial. i have found that feeding my beasts raw food is quite economical, too... it does not cost me very much more to feed the dogs raw then it does to feed them a high quality commercial dogfood, and i have more control over the quality of the ingredients. and it costs me less money to feed the cats homemade raw then it does to feed them canned catfood. my vet is all for it, too.

I've been feeding a premade raw diet for over a month now, and never want to go back ! The cats love it, they got fat on kibble, I fed them less kibble, they got hungry. Now they get 125 grams of food a day each, stopped gaining weight and get plenty of fluids through their food.

I supplement the premade with BARF-components, they seem to love their daily suprisemeal ! I think I'll be feeding a complete homemade diet in the future, but fot now, this is great.

I am feeding some raw... I too have one who is not into it .. Yet the older cat and the dog love there "raw days

Based on my schedule, income and my and my cats' needs, it's just best if we stick to top-quality natural commerical foods for now! I feed Evanger's Holistic (wet) and Evo (free-fed dry), so I'm not particularly worried about them getting the good stuff.

I may have to switch Napolean if he continues to have the issues he's been having. However, right now he is being fed a high quality low allergen food. I would do RAW but there's so many thing you can screw up, over supplementing and under supplementing that I'd rather give my dog a pre-made food than cause heart failure or anything like that. if switching him will help his issues, then I'll research the crap out of it and do it. I am however considering doing partial raw, giving him some raw meat a few times a week.

I didn't vote because I don't quite fit in. I will not feed my girls raw, not because their Vet advises against it, but due to my own personal research as well as a dear friend who experienced great losses due to bacterial contamination.

I have to agree with Arlyn & DawnofSierra about quality concerns. I think that it is much less of an issue with dogs, as their stomach acids are extremely strong and they are scavengers. Cats, however, are hunters who prefer to eat their meat fresh; their stomach acids aren't as strong, so contamination is much more of a concern.

Yes, yes,yes! At the moment I'm working on getting the kitties to understand the benefits of raw too. I understand worries about food contamination in the US, since my picture is that you have very loose food safety regulations there. On the other hand, where do you think the animal material in dry food comes from? It's the lousiest meat available, not fit for human consumption, packed with hormones, antibiotics and disease.

For me, there is an other important reason to feed raw: Animals used for multinational pet food brands have even more horrible lives in the factory farming system than the animals deemed fit for human consumption. I'll rather buy Scandinavian meat, for which I have at least some hope the animals have seen the sun, though their conditions are far from perfect here too.

my vet said she did not think that raw was safe, she said she has had cats who have salmonella poisoning

i wanted to try it, but i would not do a homemade one, as i hate dealing with raw meat, but i was looking into those freeze dried medallions that they sell, you re hydrate them and feed them. i dont recall if you needed to supplement them

does any one feed these? how would you find out if they were safe, ie free from bacteria? would the freeze drying kill any bacteria?

On the other hand, where do you think the animal material in dry food comes from? It's the lousiest meat available, not fit for human consumption, packed with hormones, antibiotics and disease.

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Ah but the meat is cooked, therefore eliminating any possible LIVE bacteria. And the meat you buy at most grocery stores has hormones and antibiotics. It's just like people who claim to have cows that only eat grass and aren't on hormones or anything. If one of the cows gets sick, it's treated with antibiotics and tagged [[so they know who has been treated with them.]] The problem is that when the cows poop, they poop out the antibiotics, and the rest of the herd eats the grass that now has antibiotics on it.

does any one feed these? how would you find out if they were safe, ie free from bacteria? would the freeze drying kill any bacteria?

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I think it would kill live bacteria. I've been told freezing things kills bacteria as well. Alot of people's animals have actually done really well on RAW food. The biggest thing is you have to be dedicated. You can do more bad than good if you aren't supplementing enough, heart failure and renal failure being apart of the "bad" aspect of feeding RAW. You really need to know your stuff. I myself would like to kind of get into it, to give my cat something more natural to eat. However, my cat isn't wild. He's a domestic cat, he's been inbred and overbred to be domestic, and his stomach doesn't have the acids his wild ancestors had. So I don't know that going RAW is technically "better" than a pre-made food. We have several clients at our clinic whose cats live to be 18 and 19 years old, HEALTHY eating Whiskas and Science Diet and so on.

I will say in defense of RAW. The barn cats at the barn are fat and sassy. Their teeth are nice and clean. We worm them regularly because of all the mice they catch and eat. But both of the cats out there do quite well on the real raw food Honestly, I'd research it and see if it's something you would be interested in. Talk to your vet about it too. Most vets don't promote it because they are worried about the owner not doing enough research, and because they don't want the animal getting sick. It's simply alot easier to just buy a bag of premade food. If your vet is too uptight to help you find out more information, they shouldn't be in business.

My vet says it's fine to feed raw, my old vet didn't think so. But I left my old vet because I caught her saying things that were total nonsense and that endangered my cats' health, stuff to do with cat genetics, so guess which vet I believe ? There are even vets who feed their pets raw food but advise kibble because they are worried people will try to feed raw without knowing enough. I don't know about The States, but here in the Netherlands vets only learn about medicine, the only stuff they learn about nutrition they get taught by guestspeakers from Hills.

Because of concerns for Salmonella the premade food I feed is cultured for Salmonella and other entero's by the manufacturer. Just as manufacturers of kibble do, because their food is not free of contamination too ! http://www.njboxers.com/Question.htm

Originally Posted by Mimosa

There are even vets who feed their pets raw food but advise kibble because they are worried people will try to feed raw without knowing enough. I don't know about The States, but here in the Netherlands vets only learn about medicine, the only stuff they learn about nutrition they get taught by guestspeakers from Hills.

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Vets aren't cat food experts, they have absolutely no training in that area. They learn about this stuff just by personal interest or commercial channels. I agree with the reason for reccomending dry too. In addition, vets get lots of perks from the pet food industry, they may also have vested interests in advocating commercial foods. Think about the unhealthy relationship between doctors and drug companies as an other example.

Originally Posted by Plebayo

Most vets don't promote it because they are worried about the owner not doing enough research, and because they don't want the animal getting sick. It's simply alot easier to just buy a bag of premade food. If your vet is too uptight to help you find out more information, they shouldn't be in business.

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I have to disagree with your thought on why Vets don't promote the raw diet.
Unfortunately most Vets are intimately entwined with the huge pet food industry. This relationship starts when they are students at Vet School. I.E. the new MRI at NC State is provided by the IAMS company, and they advertise this fact quite prominently. I think at this point in time it is career suicide for Vets to full on support the raw diet, so many of them will advise against it.
We have 2 good Vets that we use, one supports our raw feeding and the other does not. The one who supports us, is a holistic Vet and he is regarded as a bit of a rebel. He is very knowledgeable and skilled and has limitless compassion for animals, but he bucks the system in place at the moment. I don't think many Vets are willing to buck the system just yet.

I should have also added that our holistic vet has been in practice for many many years and for a good twenty of those years he was totally against the raw diet. Over the years he's witnessed what commercial foods do to the health of animals and is now completely convinced that raw is the way to go.

Vets aren't cat food experts, they have absolutely no training in that area. They learn about this stuff just by personal interest or commercial channels. I agree with the reason for reccomending dry too. In addition, vets get lots of perks from the pet food industry, they may also have vested interests in advocating commercial foods. Think about the unhealthy relationship between doctors and drug companies as an other example

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I have to disagree with your thought on why Vets don't promote the raw diet.

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Oh yes, they get soooo many perks. 10% of sales. I've actually talked to 3 vets in the area. Two whome I work with, the other from another clinic. One of the graduated from Cornell a while ago, one from OSU like 8 years ago, and another guy whose been doing this for like 40 years. All of them had the general census that prepackaged food was just easier maintain. Alot of people don't want to do things the correct way. And you can cause alot of problems in your pet if you aren't feeding RAW correctly. Granted, the older guy, he is very against RAW. I mean... he was just way against feeding it. For no better reason than the fact he thinks it's a phase. But the two guys I work with don't have a problem feeding raw. The biggest worry to them is the health of the animal, and there's alot of bad things that come with feeding raw just as there are good. But veterinarians don't make a huge profit off of the food. Not to mention Petco around here carries Science Diet, so it's not like you can ONLY get it from your veterinarian.

Actually, you should mention to that vet that kibbled and packaged foods are actually the phase...they've only been around about eighty or so years, give or take. Before that, cats and dogs ate raw and food scraps.

As for the salmonella concern...look where cats lick.

My cats are currently on a mixed high quality kibble and wet diet, supplemented with raw. I'd love to have them only on raw, but with the number of cats I have its more difficult. One will eat only the offal while another will eat only muscle meat, etc. etc. It becomes harder to maintain a proper diet for each and every one of them.

Still, they get raw fish, octopus, chicken livers, gizzards, and hearts, and various other odds and ends as an addition to their premium food.

My dogs are on strictly raw.

Originally Posted by Plebayo

Oh yes, they get soooo many perks. 10% of sales. I've actually talked to 3 vets in the area. Two whome I work with, the other from another clinic. One of the graduated from Cornell a while ago, one from OSU like 8 years ago, and another guy whose been doing this for like 40 years. All of them had the general census that prepackaged food was just easier maintain. Alot of people don't want to do things the correct way. And you can cause alot of problems in your pet if you aren't feeding RAW correctly. Granted, the older guy, he is very against RAW. I mean... he was just way against feeding it. For no better reason than the fact he thinks it's a phase. But the two guys I work with don't have a problem feeding raw. The biggest worry to them is the health of the animal, and there's alot of bad things that come with feeding raw just as there are good. But veterinarians don't make a huge profit off of the food. Not to mention Petco around here carries Science Diet, so it's not like you can ONLY get it from your veterinarian.

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The Vets get perks whether you personally get to find out about them or not, they get the perks. And, they also get lots of pressure from the big companies to promote the foods. Why do so many vet clinics and animal hospitals promote and sell the big companies foods? Science Diet, IAMS and Eukanuba. I wouldn't feed any of my animals one bite of those brands.
I rarely see the vets offering the higher quality dry foods from the smaller less well known companies......why is that?? (Rhetorical question...I know why)
With few exceptions, all the dry kibble is made from the scraps and waste that was deemed unfit for human consuption from packing plants around the country. There is no telling what sorts of things are in that junk. Sure they bake it to destroy any bacteria and then they flavor it up to make it smell and taste better, but it's still full of sub-standard products.
In a chicken processing plant, when the workers cut off a portion of the chicken that doesn't pass inspection because it's diseased or has a tumor, where do you think that piece of meat goes? That's right...the cat and dog food companies buy it and your pet eats it. Pretty gross.