Introduction
For thousands of millenniums, our canine and feline companions have subsisted on diets of raw meats and human dinner scraps. Around 60 years ago, pet foods began growing in popularity, supplanting the more natural diets of our dogs and cats. The past 10 years, however, have seen a rise in the raw food diets, often called “BARF” diets for bones and raw foods, or biologically appropriate raw foods.
Feeding these diets is relatively simple. Most pet owners notice improvements in one or more qualities of their companions. These include shinier hair coat, better body muscle to fat ratios, cleaner teeth and breath, decreased itching, normalized energy levels, improved urinary tract health, better resistance to infections, increased mobility with a decrease in arthritis pain, decreased allergy symptoms, and little to no hairballs in cats.
Concerns
Many clients indicate concerns for feeding raw meats to their pets. The number one concern is food-borne illnesses such as Salmonella and E. coli, and spread of these zoonotic pathogens to humans. (Zoonotic means a disease that can be transmitted from animals to people.) Other concerns include choking on bones. Feeding raw foods to sick or debilitated pets is another concern.
In our experience, when feeding these diets to our patients, illness in dogs and cats resulting from ingesting raw meats potentially tainted with Salmonella and E. coli is not a concern. The gastrointestinal tracts of our patients are designed for handling and digesting raw meats. When raw meat is ingested, the stomach pH goes to a highly acidic pH of 1, making it very difficult for these organisms to survive. Furthermore, the short digestive tract of a carnivore enables the food to be digested, packaged, and ready to go (as feces) within 6 hours. It is not until hour six that E. coli begins to multiply significantly.
The second concern is for public health and the spread of Salmonella and E. coli to humans. These are real concerns which make the feeding of raw foods an undertaking that should be handled prudently and only when the people in contact with the dog (and some cats) are in good health. The main method of transmission of these pathogens is fecal-oral. In dogs and cats, this would occur through the removal of feces followed by inadvertent contact of the hands to the mouth. Since feces can carry many other harmful organisms, including worm eggs and larva as well as toxoplasma oocysts (in cats) that can infect people, humans should always wash their hands thoroughly after cleaning litterboxes and picking up outside after their dogs. (And a special note here: humans should ALWAYS pick up their dogs' feces outside!).
A theoretical concern is for the transmission of pathogens from the animal's saliva to the humans in contact with them. No one has thoroughly studied the survival time of zoonotic pathogens in the animals' mouths. Some speculate that factors like washout by saliva (dilution and swallowing) might serve to remove the pathogens within minutes. In any case, it is prudent to minimize your dog's licking of humans. We do not recommend feeding raw foods in households with small children and with immunocompromised contact individuals (for example, AIDs, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunosuppressive drugs, and general poor health.)
Regarding choking on bones, while this event is rare, it is still possible. Most dogs “know” what to do with chicken backs and other meats containing bones. However, some dogs still manage to eat raw bones and choke on them. In our practice, in spite of converting hundreds if not thousands of patients to raw diets, we have not seen this problem.
If your pet is sick or debilitated, we advise you to first have one of our doctors examine your pet before you embark on feeding it a raw diet. In actuality, feeding raw diets is one of the best ways to rebuild your pet's health. Contrary to popular medical opinion, cats in kidney failure, cats suffering from Feline Leukemia Virus and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, and dogs with many conditions such as “food allergies” improve markedly while on raw food diets.