Episode 26 - Raw Feeding? You Might Be Over-Thinking This. Raw Diets for Puppies

Episode 26 - Raw Feeding? You Might Be Over-Thinking This. Raw Diets for Puppies - Part Two

10/29/2024

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This is part two of my podcast, answering many questions one of our fans sent in about raw feeding puppies.

In this episode I cover:

AAFCO’s “Complete and Balanced” designation and why it’s relevant to kibble but not relevant to you if you feed a varied raw diet.
Safety suggestions for feeding, sourcing, and handling raw dog food.
Special considerations when feeding raw diets to puppies.

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

EPISODE 26 - Transcript

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist, And this is a Puppy Culture potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

This episode is a continuation of the last one. One of our followers wrote in and asked a lot of questions about feeding raw. So many, in fact, that I couldn't tackle them all in one episode. So if you want to go back and listen to episode one, it's the episode before this one.

But here we go. We're going to jump right in with complete and balanced and AAFCO. And the reason I'm starting with this is that when someone doesn't want you to feed your dog a raw diet, one of the first things they're probably going to trot out is, well, it's not complete imbalanced. So I think it's really important to understand what AAFCO and complete imbalanced is and is not. And why, in my opinion, it's irrelevant to you if you're going to feed raw.

Complete and balanced is a designation created by AAFCO and AAFCO also created the criteria that dog food companies have to meet before they can call their food complete and balanced. So a lot of people think that AAFCO is some kind of government agency that oversees pet nutrition, and it's not.

It stands for the Association of American Feed Control Officials. Now, you would think that the FDA or the USDA would be the ones that would regulate pet food. You would think that there would be something sort of like the surgeon general, but the veterinary general that is part of the U.S. government that establishes nutrition guidelines for our pets.

But that is not the case. In fact, very explicitly that is not the case. AAFCO is a volunteer organization staffed by members of the biggest pet food companies in the world. Hill's Pet Nutrition. Nestlé. Purina Nutritional. Cargill Animal Nutrition. It's the pet food companies governing themselves. There's no adult in the room here. There's no government oversight. In fact, to the contrary, the FDA, who you would think would be the ones that would be in charge of the safety of the food for our pets has explicitly said, we're out.

And in fact, AAFCO can do our job. On the FDA's website, it says, and this is a quote, AAFCO is vital to the continued regulation of pet food products because FDA has limited enforcement resources that are focused on human food safety issues. So, okay, let's just start with the fox is watching the henhouse. Don't get your knickers in a tangle if you feed kibble.

I'm not saying that the fox is always that bad and we're going to talk about that, but we do have to get it out of the way that the pet food industry is governing themselves and making the rules up as they go along. So right out of the box, there's a credibility issue here with any of their recommendations.

Again, I'm not saying that automatically means that AAFCO designations are useless or that every food that is AAFCO certified is bad. I'm just saying that relying on the recommendations of AAFCO as dispositive on the topic of pet nutrition is, in my opinion, ill advised because of the significant conflict of interests involved. And I'm sorry, I'm going to hammer this a little bit because I'm not saying that they're always wrong.

I'm just saying that you have to take whatever AAFCO is telling you with a grain of salt because of that conflict of interest. And we're going to talk more later about that.

So back to the complete and balanced designation. For a food to be complete and balanced it has to meet certain criteria. It has to meet AAFCO’s nutritional guidelines, and it also has to pass a feeding trial.

There is an exception for foods that are identical to other foods that have already passed feeding trials, but it has to pass this feeding trial. And that's another thing that pet food companies will tout. And people will say, well, you know, I mean, they've done feeding trials on this food. So we know it's nutritious. And, I'm just going to tell you what these feeding trials are. Okay? And then it's up to you to decide how much credence you want to lend to their feeding trials.

So a feeding trial has to include eight dogs, six of which have to complete the trial. During six months those dogs can eat only the food that's on trial. None of the dogs can die from malnutrition. None of the dogs can lose more than 15% of their body weight and their blood is checked for four metrics only.

So six dogs have to survive for six months on the food. And I think survive is the operative term here. Okay. They can't die of malnutrition. But listen, there's a lot of food related illnesses that you can get. So just simply not dying of malnourishment for six months on a food, I mean, that doesn't mean that it's a healthy food. It just means that it's not actually fatal to eat it for six months.

So I'm just going to say it's my opinion that if you are feeding a whole food diet, well, first of all, that feeding trial to me is meaningless. I mean, any of us are doing a feeding trial like that. If you're a breeder and you have a lot of dogs in your house, we're doing more dogs than that every six months. And our dogs are living and thriving and living beyond average for the breed. So the feeding trials to me are meaningless. You can form your own opinion.

Now, the nutritional guidelines are more interesting because, you know, you have to realize that when they're putting together dog foods, they're using what they have available to them, which is the byproduct of the human food industry.

So it's the sweeping off the floor, it's feathers, it's, you know, meal. I don't exactly know what this meal is, but some byproduct, it's meat meal, some byproduct of the food industry. But again, you can look it up. There's lots been written on that. I'm not getting into it. But what I'm saying is, when you're cobbling together a food out of these byproducts that are not really the things a dog is meant to eat that are not necessarily nutritious in there because they're not a whole food in a whole form.

Yeah, I mean, you need some nutritional guidelines because otherwise you don't know you need some guidelines that you can measure this stuff that you've put together and know whether it's going to sustain a dog. But, you know, we don't really need a nutritional analysis of whole natural foods to know that they sustain life because they do. I mean, that's not, okay, I'm going to use another example again, going like the last time I used a human example. So let's just say when you are feeding your family, you know, they change food guidelines. I know the food pyramid has changed from time to time, but basically it's the food pyramid, right? Your eating whole foods, you're rotating through foods and over time, and that's the key word over time, you're getting a wholesome, healthy whole food meal.

You're getting your nutrition. There is no utility in testing every single meal and saying, oh, well, this meal that you're eating is rejected as non nutritious because it doesn't meet all your nutritional requirements, because that's not how food works in the real world. In the real world, you know, you eat and you put good food together and over time, it's healthy and nutritious.

I mean, I suppose you could engineer a dish of food using whole ingredients that truly did meet all your nutritional requirements in each meal. But it wouldn't be very palatable. First of all. And second of all, it's just it's nonsensical. It's not how we're designed to eat. But if on the other hand, you were going into outer space and you were going to be eating food out of a tube for six months, well, you bet your bippy, they better be analyzing that food to within an inch of its life and know exactly what the nutrient components are in it because it has to sustain life artificially. It's not a whole natural food. So, yeah, it needs analysis, it needs guidelines. And that is my analogy that I use with kibble versus a whole food raw diet. Yes, you have to have nutritional guidelines for kibble.

And by the way, AAFCO although they are the fox watching the henhouse, most pet food companies are very, they make very good foods. I mean, they have a vested interest in making a food that your dog will thrive on. So it's not like the nutritional guidelines of AAFCO or all pet food companies are, it's completely meaningless and bad.

It's meaningful if you're sort of playing in that sandbox of a highly processed food that's cobbled together from random ingredients. But if you know, if you're going to feed raw, complete and balanced and AAFCO it's irrelevant to you. At least that's my opinion. And by the way, you can find foods, raw foods that are complete and balanced. So, you know, if that makes you feel better, you can find them. But to me it's not relevant.

So now let's move on to the next question that our fan had, which is a question about the dangers of salmonella and listeria and such with raw feeding. So I think you have to separate this into two parts. One is the safety for the dogs and the other is the safety for the humans feeding the food.

As far as the safety for the raw meat of the raw diet for dogs in general, there is virtually zero issue because dogs are designed to eat meat and carrion. They're actually designed to eat rotten meat. In fact, the enzymes in carrion are helpful to a dog's digestive system. Now, relax. We're not going to feed your dog rotten meat.

But my point is, any concerns about bacteria or salmonella? You know, dogs are designed just to make short work of that kind of stuff. And I'll tell you why. Their intestine is extremely short compared to ours. And their stomachs are extremely acid compared to ours. At one point in the digestive cycle, a dog's stomach acid is equivalent to the ph of battery acid.

They are carrion and bone eating machines. So the whole salmonella or listeria or whatever other pathogen people drum up to instill fear in you, it is totally a non-issue for a dog that is not in some way seriously immunocompromised. I'm going to put up links on the show page at madcapradio.com. It's a long topic. You can do a deep dive for yourself.

Now. Parasites are a bit more tricky. We do freeze our raw food solid for at minimum a month and we keep our freezers at -15 degrees Fahrenheit, which is -26 Celsius. And that does kill virtually any parasite. I would not feed my dog food that had not been frozen solid for a month. Does it ever happen that some weird parasite survives a hard freeze process like this?

Sure, it can happen, but it appears to be extremely rare. And from the cases I've read, it's always been unknown or unclear how the raw food was sourced, handled and stored. That having been said, I can call out two things that I definitely would not feed my dog even if it was frozen solid for a month. The first is any kind of fetus or placenta from any livestock, particularly cattle, because that carries a high risk of neospora which might be resistant to freezing.

Again, kind of unclear whether freezing at the right temperature could really kill all neospora or not, but I would not take a chance. And by the way, that's an argument for going to a source that uses human grade food because they won't be including any kind of placental material in their mixes. The other thing I wouldn't feed my dog, weird I know, is seal meat, but if you live up north, maybe you have access to seal meat, because the parasites that infect seals have adapted to live at very, very cold temperatures so they don't get killed when you freeze them solid in the freezer.

Now, that does not appear to be a problem with fish. It seems to be a problem limited to seal meat. I don't know. Maybe penguins, too, but I don't think anybody sourcing penguins to feed their dog. So those are two definite hard nos for me for feeding my dogs. The other thing that I really I just don't do anymore is I don't feed wild game to my dogs.

I don't do it because of the increased risk of parasitic contamination. Yes, freezing should kill those parasites, but at this time I feel more comfortable with farm raised meat from a controlled source. But I feel like with the wild game, you know, it's a judgment call. So to sum it all up, it's my observation and experience that sourcing raw food from a commercial source that's using human grade food ingredients and freezing that food for a month to 15 below zero is about as safe as you can get.

But no food is 100% safe. Every time you put something in your mouth, every time your dog put something in their mouth, you're taking some kind of risk. Dogs die and get sick from eating tainted kibble all the time. There was that whole thing in 2007 where the dog food had melamine in it to increase the protein content.

Dogs were dying from that. Hundreds of dogs. In 2021, Hill's pet food settled a lawsuit involving dogs dying from an excess of vitamin D in their foods. There was also that sportmix food sometime in the early 2000s that was tainted and dogs were dying from it. I mean, I'm not a tracker of these kinds of things, and I'm just pulling three random incidents out just to say that you're never no matter what you eat, there's a risk something could go wrong.

I think these are not irresponsible companies. I mean, it's just it's food and things get into the food supply and tainted and, you know, whether it's raw or whether it's kibble, you're taking a risk when you eat something, but you got to do it. It's a risk you got to take. I actually have never heard of a dog getting sick from something like listeria or salmonella in eating raw food, which is, again, what people will always say, oh, there's salmonella, listeria. The dog can get sick. I've never heard of it. And I don't know of any comparable, I've heard of pet food recalls because of levels of salmonella, salmonella and listeria. But I've never heard of a dog getting sick after eating it. I mean, I'm sure it's happened somewhere sometime, but I would doubt probably that it was from something like salmonella or listeria.

I would be much more inclined to think that if a dog ever did get sick from raw food, it was probably chemical tainted food or something else. I mean, just not the things that typically people fearmonger about when it comes to raw food. To me, the biggest danger of feeding raw is the choking hazard. The only deaths I have known from me or any of my friends or acquaintances, of which there are a multitude that feed raw.

The only deaths I have known both involved choking on chicken necks. One was a sixteen week old puppy that was left unattended in a crate with a chicken neck, and the puppy didn't chew the chicken neck properly and choked to death on it. Probably couldn't chew it properly because it's sixteen weeks. It was teething and didn't have sufficient teeth, but that's one case I know of.

And another case was a giant breed of dog that was given a huge plate of chicken, chicken necks. And the dog attempted to basically hawk back an entire mouthful of chicken necks and choked to death on it.

My dogs are gulpers not chewers, so I only feed raw mix. I mean, it's better to feed some chicken necks if you can because it's going to clean their teeth. But my dogs, I mean, they don't chew them. I only give them a chicken neck if I'm there to supervise consumption and make sure that they actually chew it and don't choke to death.

Anything that requires more chewing than a chicken neck is totally off the table for my bull terriers. But my cattle dogs that I've owned, I mean, I could give them a stripped chicken frame and they just systematically shred it from one end to the other perfectly safely, perfectly sensible dogs. They were safe with any raw bone. They would never attempt to eat something they might choke on.

I had a bull terrier almost choked to death right in front of me on a chicken frame because she literally cracked it once between her molars to fold it in half and then attempted to hock the entire carcass back in one gulp. So your dog's breed is going to play a lot into whether you need to grind your raw food or buy ground raw food.

Now, as far as the danger to humans from pets that are fed raw, it's crazy. I have no idea why it's such a big deal. If you can prepare raw meat and fish for your family, you can feed your dog, raw dog food. I mean, the same food safety rules apply. I wear disposable nitrile gloves when I handle food just because I just don't really like to touch it. And I pick up the dishes after the dogs are done eating. It's really a non-issue unless you yourself are immunocompromised.

Now, one of the questions that the original poster had asked, and I'll repeat it because I didn't repeat all the questions at the beginning, is whether she would need to wash her miniature poodles face and feet after she gives the poodle puppy a raw, meaty bone.

I do wash the bedding after my dogs have had bones, raw, meaty bones. I pick up the bones when they're done with them, and I put the bones in the freezer for another time if there's anything left on them. I have short coated dogs, so I don't wipe them off unless there's some kind of visible blood or meat on them.

The adult dogs will generally wipe their own faces on the bedding, and then the bedding is getting washed. So it's all good. You know, if it makes you feel better, you can wipe off your dog after she's had a bone. But honestly, unless she's visibly dirty, I don't feel it's necessary. In my house we've survived up till now, and that's all I can really tell you.

I would not go crazy sterilizing things because I believe that does more harm than good. Soap and water is the best cleanser and it's not going to add toxins to your environment or overly strip your environment. So you're not getting any of the beneficial flora in your environment. But you know, I'm not squeamish about raw food in general.

I can't even be trusted to make hamburgers because I'm going to be salting it and eating some of the raw burger meat as I'm making the burgers, oysters, clams, sushi. I love raw food. If you find raw food upsetting, you have a bigger emotional bar to get over, regarding food safety in general. In that case, you know, you might want to clean off your dog completely after eating or restrict bone chewing to a crate without a pad and then sterilize the crate and so on. I'm not recommending that. But if that's what you need to make yourself comfortable, I'm not judging you.

Okay. To wrap up, let's talk about her last question, which was feeding raw to puppies versus adults. So I already touched on the fact that when you're feeding raw, it's just like when you're feeding your family in the sense of you're not aiming to have a balanced diet in every meal you're aiming for balanced over time.

And the biggest difference with puppies is that you want to be closer to a balanced meal in every meal than you are with adult dogs. In other words, you're still somewhat balancing over time, but a much shorter time because there are these nutritional windows that open and close and you want to be sure that you're getting complete nutrition in, in all of those windows.

The other thing I would say that is different with puppies is that you're colonizing the gut biome. So where variety is important with adults, really variety is crucial with puppies because you're colonizing that gut biome, which it's beyond the scope of this to explain what the gut biome is, it's, there's so much written on it in the internet and you can search, but it's really important and it's really important that it's colonized. And the way it gets colonized is giving your puppy a variety of whole and fermented foods early in their life. While that colonization period is still open.

Circling back to the balancing more or less each day instead of each meal, I'm not talking about AFFCO and their complete imbalanced designation because that's their own thing and their own guidelines, which I think we've established, really doesn't have anything to do with RAW.

I'm talking about, per your raw feeding model that you want to try and hit more balance each day rather than over time. Now, you can certainly do this yourself if if you're really attentive to what you're feeding your puppies. But for me, I find it easier with puppies to go to a commercial raw mix. And the bigger companies now all make puppy mixes, which is fantastic because there are a few other considerations, nutritional considerations for puppies, which again is beyond the scope of this podcast.

But if you get one of those commercial mixes, I keep my puppies on the commercial mix for the first six months of their life. I do also supplement with my own fermented foods and stuff from the garden and so forth, but at least I use as a base that commercial puppy mix. So as far as resources, there are a bunch of good brands I think I might have mentioned.

We feed BJ's Raw. I believe they do actually have a puppy mix. We have used Darwin’s as our puppy mix in the past and I do really like their product. Unfortunately, Darwin's has an annoying subscription model which is terrible. If you're a breeder raising a litter of puppies, you have to register a pet and then they tell you what they're going to send you and what you should buy.

And you can't just order what you need as you need it. When you're raising a litter of puppies, that's really unhelpful because the amounts vary and the variety varies and the needs of the puppies change week to week. But it's a small quibble. I do think Darwin's makes a very good product. Their food is excellent and maybe if enough breeders contact them, they'll change that subscription model for us.

If you're going to DIY your puppy food, there are other nutritional peculiarities for puppies that you do need to know. I do recommend Doctor Billinghirst's books. There is a group called Raw Fed University on Facebook run by a woman named Ronny Lejeune and she's a certified nutritionist and she also has a wonderful website called perfectlyrawsome. I do not know Ronnie personally. I don't have any affiliation with her, but I have followed her group for a while and I appreciate her because she's pragmatic and willing to work with anyone. She doesn't freak out if someone wants to do a hybrid kibble and raw diet, She always seems to be looking for the best under the circumstances for the pet and the owner.

So the final question is about recipes. And I don't have any raw food recipes to share, but I think with all those resources I gave you, you know, that should give you a really good start. And there are some recipes in those resources. But I do have to videos that will be very useful to you. One is on making fermented vegetables for dogs and the other is on making kefir for dogs.

And you can find those both at madcapuniversity.com, click on the free resources tab and then you'll see a free to view section and the videos are under there.

So thanks to that listener for writing in and requesting this podcast. I really enjoy talking about this because I feel like a lot of proponents of raw, well people can be put off by them because they tend to present it really more as an ideology than as just it's food, it's healthy food for your dog.

So I hope I made this topic a little more approachable for you and I encourage you to follow through with some of those resources that I recommended. If you liked this podcast, you'll love our puppy bundles at puppyculture.com. We have breeder bundles, we have puppy owner bundles, we have pet dog bundles, we have show dog bundles. Check them out a puppyculture.com.

Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.