TB and Raw Food

Was there not someone on here recently looking for info on potential TB risk in dog food? I can’t seem to find the thread though...

I'm certainly interested, not that my dog gets venison, except as leftovers. Far too good to waste on him.

Some of the commercial raw food is frankly disgusting, one lot of stinky game bird stuff looked as if it was just whole birds, complete, guts, rudimentary plucking, chucked into a mincer. Beaks, feet, feathers, other bits still identifiable. The dog took one look, gave me a "you've got to be joking" expression, and in the bin it went.

If that was deemed "fit for human consumption", well I'll be going vegetarian.

PS: in the paper that Buchan linked, in post #12, it states that:

"The company was alerted, and an internal investigation
by it led to the voluntary withdrawal of the
venison version of their food from sale, ‘because some
of the ingredients were not inspected in line with EU
requirements. The absence of inspection means the
safety of the product cannot be confirmed and may
therefore carry a potential risk’. The batches withdrawn
are those dated as best before between March
2019 and August 2019, and pre-date those submitted
for testing at the University of Edinburgh. The FSA is
now undertaking this area of the outbreak investigation
independently."

It also mentions an outbreak in a hunt kennels from raw meat, I'm guessing fallen stock, that led to dogs having to be euthanased within days, so rapidly did it affect them.

Plenty of other potential nasties in raw meat, maybe apply the "would you eat this yourself, even cooked" test before feeding it to your dog or cat. But it is a big, commercial, heavily promoted industry, currently very fashionable, selling otherwise sometimes waste products at premium prices.

And who knows what is actually in the stuff, once the bits have gone through a grinder it would take some complex analysis to figure it out. Remember the horsemeat lasagne scandal when knackered old nags were ending up as a high proportion in beef ready meals ?

The study focussed on privileged house cats, never let out to pick up contamination elsewhere, fed an exotic commercial raw meat diet, and came to a pretty clear conclusion ISTM. Widen that out to an investigation of the larger raw-meat petfood industry and who knows what else might be discovered.
 
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Here seem to be the rules about making pet food:

Using animal by-products to make pet food.

A telling one, this is allowed:

"material from animals that passed an ante-mortem test, that is unfit for humans to eat, eg liver with fluke"

So my dog's not going to be getting anything advertised as raw offal, but that doesn't mean that such offal hasn't been chucked in with the other raw mixtures.

And in case you were wondering about the categories of ABPs, 1, 2 and 3, see Animal by-product categories, site approval, hygiene and disposal

From a bit of asking around it seems that farmers have to pay upwards of e.g. £30 to have a dead sheep legally disposed of, £100/cow, so I can see that there might be some temptation to let somebody else take them away.

As for prion disease concerns, well I don't know that anyone is looking for them in our wild animals. Unlike Scandinavia, where they have found chronic wasting disease spreading since 2016. We don't have BSE in beef anymore, supposedly, at least not now that they are mostly slaughtered before 30 months, before it can become apparent. Older better beef is still inspected for it, and it is still found, occasionally, by alert inspectors.
 
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Makes you want to feed dry all this worry .

That's not necessarily any better. It seems that you are allowed to make petfood from any old cr@p. Even rats, insects, shellfish shells. Hides, skins, horns, feet, pig bristle, feather or blood. Factory-rejected pet foods of animal origin. Processed animal protein (PAP) no longer intended for human consumption. Blood, placenta, wool, feathers, hair, horns, hoof cuts and raw milk from live animals.

etc. etc.

Would you really knowingly feed that stuff to a dog ?

It's not difficult, or necessarily any more expensive, to make your own from human food from the supermarket, if you educate yourself. And can be more sure of what you are feeding your pet, particularly, in my case, knowing his dietary intolerances. He still gets leftovers, but nothing containing wheat. So no dry feed, or pizza crusts, much as he loves them, nevermind a big sack of the cheapest "Working dog mix". from the country store. Nor tins of dog food that cost less than a decent can of baked beans, bulked up with mixer, though at least they should have been heat treated.

Perhaps he is pampered, but I hope he will last a few more years yet, and I don't begrudge feeding him stuff that I would also be prepared to eat.

As opposed to this "pet food" that is absolutely not allowed to be fed any-more to farm animals. It seems that pets don't count, perhaps because we don't eat them.

From my link:

"
To make processed pet food
To make any processed pet food, in airtight containers or wrappers or otherwise, the ABPs you can use are:

category 3 ABPs from carcasses passed fit for human consumption
slaughterhouse by-products, like hides, skins, horns, feet, pig bristle, feather or blood
heads of poultry
milk production by-products
materials from on-farm slaughter of rabbits or poultry
hatchery waste, eggs, egg by-products and day-old chicks
fish and by-products from fish processing factories
food production by-products including degreased bones
products of animal origin (POA) or processed animal protein (PAP) no longer intended for human consumption
imported pet food
ABPs from aquatic animals from factories that make food for humans
factory-rejected pet foods of animal origin, containing ABPs or derived products
shells from shellfish with soft tissue or flesh
sea or land invertebrates (spineless animals, eg insects) once they don’t carry diseases that can be passed on to humans or animals
rodents and lagomorphs (rabbits) unless they are from zoos, experimental animals, or diseased wild animals
blood, placenta, wool, feathers, hair, horns, hoof cuts and raw milk from live animals
aquatic animals, and parts of such animals, except sea mammals
 
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Yes mate ,I feed my dogs raw after it’s frozen for a while .Rabbits ,venison and chicken .All frozen to kill most things .
They get raw bones from pet store ,whether they treated in some way or not I don’t know but they are frozen by myself too before feeding .
 
i was told tape worms die after freezing, all current food hygiene differs from the above opinon on bacteria, guess it depends on what he means by pathogens
shakey
 
Did you read the linked paper?
If I worried about papers mate I’d never leave the house .Fed raw in this manner for 35 years so won’t be changing any time soon .If you heat food to sterilise ,you aren’t feeding raw and you’ve broken down the main reason for feeding raw .welfare of the dogs gut .
 
Freezing will kill off quite few horrible things, after a week or so, but not others. It's a sensible thing to do.

As for the actual benefits of raw vs. cooked, I'm not sure whether it is just a current fad, or has some basis in fact.

I think that the main thing is not to feed dogs unnatural stuff of unknown provenance. I mean, if I understand this correctly, it can even be made out of waste products from maggot farms.

Commercial raw food ought to be a bit better than this, but who knows ?

All I know is that my dog was getting very poorly with severe gut problems on dry and tinned food, since we started making up food ourself he has been thriving on it. Cooked, or raw, I'm not sure there is much difference, it's decent ingredients that seem important to me.

E.g. when the dog was really very poorly we started with plain boiled chicken, rice, some other veg. and he soon started to perk up. Just one meal of his previous diet set him back for days. And anything with wheat is disastrous for him.
 
It’s not rocket science ,dogs have carnasal teeth for a reason ,they are carnivores .Not strict as in cats but wheat should never appear in their diet
 
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