The Cruella de Ville school of doggie dishes
I’m sure most of you have heard about the nation-wide pet-food recall after contaminated products caused the deaths of hundreds of cats and dogs. I sincerely hope that your animals weren’t affected by it!
In the wake of such a disaster, pet owners all over the country are looking for alternatives to processed pet food. Most of them are turning to their own kitchens to prepare their own homemade chow, hoping it will guarantee a happier, healthier dog. The problem is, most of the advice out there on preparing doggie dishes will do just the opposite.
Just this week, the cookbook Real Food for Dogs moved into the list of top 200 best sellers on amazon.com. In economic terms, that means a million or more books sold. But I don’t care if that number were in the billions — this book is nothing more than delightfully written trash by authors who want to anthropomorphize your pets. Most of the recipes in the book involve some sort of cooked food, which is about one of the worst things you could give your pet.
Another book that’s soaring in popularity right now is Home-Prepared Dog & Cat Diets by Dr. Donald Strombeck, a retired professor of veterinary nutrition at the University of California, Davis. I’m telling you right now: Don’t waste your money on it. His basic argument is that if the table food you eat is OK for you, then the scraps are OK for your dog or cat. I’ll say it again: The food you eat is not good for your pet because it’s cooked.
I’m not the only one concerned about home cooked dog food. Veterinarians and the pet food industry have sounded the alarm as well, but for an altogether different reason. It’s unfortunate, but vets have been completely taken in by the pseudo science of the pet food industry. They’re perked and petted just like the doctors of humans are perked and petted by the pharmaceutical industry. There are, in both cases, reasons for going along for prestige and financial gain.
The Associated Press tells us: “Veterinarians warn that making balanced meals for pets can be complicated and should only be a temporary remedy until the scare passes.” The “scare”? Hundreds, and possibly thousands of our pets are dead or dying and yet they’re calling it a “scare”?
So what’s their solution? The FDA and the American Veterinary Medical Association are urging pet owners to switch brands if they’re worried. “Switching brands” from one commercial pet food to another doesn’t even begin to get to the heart of the problem. They’re all bad-cooked, laden with fake grain protein (gluten), and almost always containing soybean extracts that aren’t really food at all. Would switching from Coca Cola to Pepsi improve your health?
“The veterinarian group also warned that many common foods are not safe for pets, including salt, garlic, onions, grapes and chocolate,” the AP article says. Finally, some good advice! It would have been even better had they added the following to their restricted list: boiled potatoes, pasta, sugar, and all commercial pet food, wet or dry. But his doesn’t even begin to reveal their ignorance.
FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza said that making pet food at home is “kind of like canning: You have to think about bacterial contamination. And how do you make sure it’s nutritionally appropriate and balanced for the animal?” She added that it’s important to be knowledgeable about what you need.
Well, Julie, you could be a little more knowledgeable yourself. “Nutritionally appropriate and balanced” is pet food factory propaganda to convince professionals-like FDA spokeswomen, university nutritionists, and veterinarians-that their pet food industry serves an important need; that is, to determine the arcane and “complicated” science of cat and dog nutritional biochemistry.
In actuality, factory food is a serious public health problem for our pets. The only appropriate food for your pet is raw animal food, i.e. the flesh of other animals, whether they be fish, fowl, or mammal.
Ms. Zawisza remarked that you “have to think about bacterial contamination.” I hate to pick on the FDA’s spokeswoman, but I cannot let the remark about bacterial contamination go unnoticed. Do modern vets, their university nutrition teachers, and medical bureaucrats ever go out into the countryside-or in the back alleys of the cities, for that matter-and observe the secret life of dogs and cats? Here’s a perfect example: When my Doberman Greta gave birth, she chewed off each of the nine umbilical cords as she delivered the pups, licked them clean, and ate some of the placenta. Talk about the potential for bacterial contamination!
Animals love rotten fruit, rotten vegetables, and rotten meat. They delight in rolling in the poop of other animals, licking their butts and other dogs’ butts. Sorry for this repulsive elucidation of the secret life of your pet, but its time you came out of the laboratory and your immaculate kitchen to learn what your pet really wants: fresh (or rotten) raw animal tissue-the bones, the blood, the fat, the liver, the whole disgusting mess.
Fortunately, these animals are highly resistant to bacterial infection, especially of the intestinal tract-IF they have been raised on the proper raw diet. It’s not that hard to do, either.
For a balanced diet, dogs and cats only need raw meat and raw animal fat. It’s that simple. My two cats, Paint and Pistol, never had a thing to eat but raw chicken liver during their entire lives. They were never sick. They never went to a vet.
