Myth #1: The bacteria in the meat can make my dog or cat really sick.

Yes, it could if your dog or cat is already sick and has a suppressed immune system as a result. However, our dogs and cats are bacteria machines. Their bodies are designed to deal with bacteria. Since they have a short digestive tract (unlike ours which is long since we’re omnivores) they can push the food through their digestive tracts quickly which doesn’t give bacteria time to colonize in the intestines. Their guts are also very acidic which keeps the bacteria from colonizing.

Myth #2: A meat diet isn’t balanced

An all-meat diet isn’t balanced. Your also needs bone in a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio in fact and organ meat. To feed raw, you want to model a “whole prey” type of feeding in order for your pets to have all the proper nutrients for their bodies. A dog doesn’t need vegetables which they can’t even really assimilate (digest and utilize) within their bodies. Dogs and cats get all their nutrients from the “whole prey” they eat -meat, bone, organs. You can feed the raw veggies to rabbits, birds, guinea pigs, etc.

When you raw feed your dog and cat, all the EXACT proportions of the vitamins, minerals, fat, protein, enzymes and probiotics are supplied for them within the “whole prey” model of raw feeding.

The reason your commerical packaged pet foods need to ADD nutrients -which are sprayed on synthetic nutrients by the way – is because all the processing to make kibble effectively eliminates ANY nutritional value. This “balanced diet” phrase is nothing more than a selling ploy by the pet food industry so you’ll buy their “junk food” for your pets.

Myth #3: They’ll get parasites from raw food

Yes, they could, especially if you’re feeding poor quality meat. If you feed human grade meat there is still the chance of parasites however there are very effective and easy ways to overcome this little challenge.

If you freeze the meat BEFORE you feed it to your pets, that can kill most if not all of the parasites. You especially want to freeze salmon which has a parasite that can kill dogs. If you freeze salmon for at least 24 hours prior to thawing out and feeding to your dog, you’ll kill the parasite in salmon.

Parasites can really be eliminated or dealt with relatively easy if you know what to do AND if your dog or cat is healthy. Until your dog or cat is healthy if they are not, a cooked diet (DO NOT feed cooked bones!) is still infinitely better than a kibble, commercial pet food diet. Also the “parasite” issue is another scare tactic used by those opposd to keep you from venturing into raw feeding. Actually the incidence of parasite problems are very low in raw-fed animals and higher in kibble-fed dogs and cats. Commercial diets actually really affect your pets immune system and parasites, pest, bacteria, etc., love a compromised immune system but avoid a healthy immune system.

You can routinely keep your dogs and cats parasite-free by using a little FOOD-grade diatomaceous earth in their food. It’s natural, safe, and parasites flee or die!

Myth #4: My veterinarian recommends feeding X brand of kibble

We need veterinarians for all the many services they perform. In fact, I just finished co-authoring a book on natural dog health with a wonderful holistic veterinarian (holistic vets are trained in traditional medicine first, then continue their education into holistic care so they are even better trained than traditional vets). However, she deferred to me in the nutritional and feeding part of the book and is referring clients to me for nutritonal counseling. Why would she do that? Because veterinarians get very little nutritional training. They are taught disease management and care. Another interesting thing is that the training they do receive is often taught to them by the PET FOOD industry! That form of incorrect training has also led them to believe the myth (see myth #5) that dogs and cats are ominvores.

Veterinarians are therefore very linked to the pet food industry since they receive kickbacks and revenue from marketing these commercial foods for the pet food manufacturers. Even more sinister is the fact that these pet food companies promote their products to upcoming veterinarian graduates at the universities and GIVE them free pet food to sell! Here’s an example: Colgate-Palmolive, the company that manufactures Hill’s Science Diet, spends “hundreds of thousands of dollars a year funding university research and nutrition courses at every one of the 27 US veterinary colleges. Once in practice, vets who sell Science Diet and other premium foods directly pocket profits of as much as 40%” (Parker-Pope, T. 1997. For You, My Pet. The Wall Street Journal. 3 November 1997. In Lonsdale, T. 2001. Raw Meaty Bones. p266).

Myth #5: Dogs and cat have evolved into omnivores

You know that buzzer sound: -aaaaahhhnnnt, NOT! All we have to do is look at the teeth of our dogs and cats to know they are not nor have they evolved to be omnivores.
Their teeth are designed for: “…are designed for grabbing, ripping, tearing, shredding, and shearing meat” (Feldhamer, G.A. 1999. Mammology: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology. McGraw-Hill. pg 258.)

Feeding kibble is causing so many diseases and problems in our pets, increasing our veterinarian bills, helping fund the pharmaceutical industry, that it’s no wonder we’ve all been misled to feed this junk food to our pets -lots of folks are making lots of money.

This is why raw feeding has so many myths surrounding it and so much controversy. Do your own research and I’m sure you’ll find out the truth because the truth always has a way of coming out!

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First, understand that cats and dogs are carnivores. Contrary to popular myth, dogs and cats have not somehow evolved into omnivores. This myth arose because wild animals often eat the stomachs and intestines of grain-fed domestic animals they kill. However, when a wild animal hunts other wild animals, they don’t eat grains but rather the digested grasses and various other things that prey animals consume. For example, wild dogs and wolves will pick up the stomach or intestines of their prey and shake them out to rid them of these grasses and partially digested foods. Everything a dog or cat needs to thrive is in the meat and bone—not in grains. So, it stands to reason that they’re not thriving and, in fact, are barely surviving due to the primary ingredients in commercial foods: grains, along with many other undesirable ingredients we’ll uncover shortly.

The Hidden Truth About Commercial Pet Food

The pet food industry is closely tied to the human food industry, functioning as a way to dispose of the “leftovers” from human food production. While this article is too brief to cover the entire process, let’s provide some basic information to help you stay informed. First, let’s talk about that curious term: “byproducts.” Byproducts are a pet food industry euphemism for “junk off the slaughterhouse floor.” These are the remains after the meat has been stripped from the bone—such as beaks, feathers, entrails, blood, brains, etc. While these may not sound so alarming to anyone thinking that dogs are scavengers, the animals used or referred to here are often part of the 4-D classification. This stands for “dead, dying, diseased, and down” or disabled. If that doesn’t make your hair or fur stand on end, hopefully, what comes next will.

These “4-Ds” are rendered at very high temperatures and ground into a glob, with the fat rising to the top. This fat is skimmed off and sold as “animal fats”—another ingredient in your packaged pet food. Often, these rendered animals were other dogs and cats who were euthanized, sick, or even roadkill. Though cooked at very high temperatures during rendering, the process only kills any nutrients that might have been present. However, the pharmaceuticals used to euthanize animals can withstand the heat, so your beloved dog or cat ends up eating this in their “nutritious” food. To add insult to injury, this food is often rancid. Yes, rancid. These rendered animals and fats may sit in containers for days, becoming rancid as bad bacteria and mold thrive. And this is all allowable in pet food.

This “yummy” mixture is further tainted with food dyes, toxic preservatives such as Ethoxyquin—used to stabilize the food, but also an herbicide and just two chemical compounds away from Agent Orange, which killed many soldiers during the Vietnam War. Our pets are being poisoned by the very food they consume daily. Ethoxyquin is used to prevent moisture, so it enters our pets’ intestines, causing dehydration and creating a toxic intestinal environment. As a result, our pets can no longer properly assimilate their food, leading to diseases such as cancer. These foods also contain ingredients like corn syrup to flavor this unappetizing food and convince our pets to eat it. This, in turn, adds diabetes to the mix by introducing sugar our pets don’t need. To make sure we think the food is nutritious, synthetic vitamins are sprayed on top, duping us into believing it’s healthy for our pets.

If that wasn’t enough, the food is primarily poor-quality grains that should really be discarded as chaff. Why are cats and dogs, carnivores, being fed mostly grains? This is a cheap filler and a profitable way to dispose of this chaff. Grains are also the primary cause of yeast infections in dogs. Symptoms include chronic ear infections, incessant licking of genitals or paws, lick granulomas on the legs, habitual scratching, and rashes. This overabundance of yeast will travel up into the head, leading to loss of hearing, eyesight, comprehension, intelligence, and memory. These yeast infections start in the digestive tract, thanks to the grains in their diet, and then spread throughout their bodies, wrecking their health. To make matters worse, they are often treated with conventional medicine, such as antibiotics and steroids, which mask the allergy symptoms. Unfortunately, these pharmaceuticals only exacerbate the yeast problem by killing off any beneficial bacteria in your pet’s digestive tract, leaving them defenseless against disease and harmful yeast (bad bacteria).

So, What’s the Solution?

Feed your dogs and cats what’s natural for their species: raw meat and bones. Yes, raw. Raw bones are good for dogs, but cooked ones are not. For a dog, feed them equal parts bone and meat, totaling about 2-3% of their body weight per day. A high-quality whole food supplement can help them return to optimal health. Use natural remedies like essential oils, herbs, and homeopathy instead of pharmaceuticals and prevention medicines, and stop overvaccinating. If you do, your pets will likely thrive—not just survive.

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