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 The batches withdrawn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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