The BC Veterinary Medicine Association has a coming event listed:
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 6:30 PM
Nutrients vs. Ingredients
Separating the Science from the Marketing Spin & BARF and Update.
Location: Best Western Inn, Kelowna, BC
Date: April 11, 2007
Time: 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
CE hours: 2
BARF, btw, stands for biologically appropriate raw foods (or bones and raw foods, depending on whom you ask). The CVMA continues to be opposed to both raw foods and home prepared diets. They will tell you over and over again that commercially prepared food is more scientific, it's tightly controlled, it's tested. (What a bunch of crap, as North American pet owners are finding out this week.) So I was a bit surprised to see this seminar being offered and wondered whether the more open minded among the profession were finally making some inroads on this topic. And then I read this:
Sponsored by: Nestle Purina Petcare
Right. That will be in an impartial seminar presenting the science of BARF. Presented by Nestle Purina?
As some of you know, I'm an IBCLC, and some of the most important actions being taken in the lactation field are aimed at getting formula companies OUT of teaching doctors and nurses, OUT of offering infant feeding inservices, OUT of the universities, OUT of the conferences. Because formula manufactures come in with tons of advertising, and with sophisticated marketing techniques. One of the problems is that physicians and veterinarians, like many intelligent people, bristle at the idea that they would be subject to manipulation and advertising. Their argument seems to be: only stupid people are subject to that kind of manipulation, I'm not stupid, therefore I can be impartial. It doesn't work that way. These companies are spending tons of money to buy your allegiance and your support. Believe it.
Until veterinarians stop allying themselves with food manufacturers, stop marketing - & sometimes downright pushing, these products in their offices, I'm going to be very sceptical of what a veterinarian says about a particular food. Call me cynical - go ahead! But when you've been wined and dined, and chummed up by a rep, and then stand to profit from selling the product, you're not impartial. Even if you don't stand to profit, I think you have to admit you may have been biased by the information presented, which was not impartial to start with.
Check out some of these links:
Your Whole Pet: Real food for dogs is easier than you think
We cheerfully accept that kibble is a wonderful way to feed our dogs, when we rarely choose to live on Ensure meal-replacement drinks ourselves. ...
... the human race and its assorted domesticated animals have managed to survive and reproduce for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years, without the assistance of the modern food-manufacturing plant. This isn't a license to feed dogs a poorly constructed diet -- but rather a little reality check on the idea that your dog requires such a precise, nutritionally specific diet that you need finely calibrated laboratory equipment and a degree in nutrition to make his dinner. Aside from the willingness to do it, you really just need a few balanced recipes and the same measuring spoons and cups you'd use to make a cake from a mix.
Pet owners have been sold the idea that there's something inherently different about "people food" and "dog food." There isn't. Food is food. Recipes are recipes. It doesn't need to be processed into pellets to be "dog food." Putting together a varied, nutritious canine diet in your own kitchen takes some awareness and some thought, but it's genuinely no more (or less) difficult than putting together a healthy, nutritious diet for yourself.
PetConnection.com is maintaining self-reporting database of people whose animals have become sick or died after eating the recalled food. Yes, it's self-reporting, and they have several statements about the possible pitfalls of this system, but nevertheless, it's eye opening. As I write this, the total is over 1000 pets reported deceased.
They also report that the poison has been identified: rat poison in the wheat, which was apparently imported from China (which seem incredibly strange to me, being in Canada! You'd have thought we'd have enough wheat here.)
And they link to a business professor talking about the shattered illusions that if you were buying the premium expensive brands, you were getting something special and different.
The Dolittler - a blog of a vet, discusses the feelings of vets at getting no advanced warning from the manufacturers here.
From this veterinarian’s point of view—and from my insight as a former marketing executive—they f----- up big time. Unless Menu Foods didn’t inform their own customers (the likes of Iams and Eukanuba whose production was outsourced to them)—and I don’t think that’s likely—these brands should have done back flips to set up company-wide protocols for dealing with the crisis.
And vets should have been informed—if not on Friday (or sooner) then at least by Monday morning. Yet even our distributor was caught off guard. One finally faxed us a list of their products on recall. But our Eukanuba distributor? Not a peep. Our Hill’s distributor? Silence. Calling them reveals more confusion than it offers answers.
And if you're in Canada, the foods most likely being pushed by your vet are the "exclusively available through your veterinarian" Royal Canin and Medi-Cal (which is owned by Royal Canin). Royal Canin is the subject of a class action lawsuit claiming deadly amounts of Vitamin D in their food. This is completely unrelated to the current pet food recall.
In the end, it's like everything else - you need to educate yourself, read, learn, listen to advisors you trust, and make up your own mind.
I'm still feeding my animals a commercially prepared diet but I'm not certain I'll continue. I'm very aware that the entire industry got its start just like the artificial baby milk industry - waste products that couldn't be used somewhere else + enterprising companies + convenience + marketing = BIG INDUSTRY. Both industries have grown, both have changed, both do produce useful and valuable products which have improved quality of life. But both are also driven by profits and strongly divisive marketing aimed at convincing the consumer that it's not possible to feed your baby or your pet without their products.
What do you think? Have you been affected by the recall? Do you think differently about pet food now? What about the entire food supply safety, what with the spinach and peanut butter etc recalls? None of us are self-sufficient so how do you look out for the safety of your loved ones? And just how much do you trust the experts - the scientists, the vets, the doctors, the FDA?
9 comments:
O.K Cynical, I have a comment. Just joking - I couldn't resist. Actually I will try to limit my comment to a small space here but this has made me so mad too. My dog was very ill last year and one of the things that the vet suggested was changing to a vegetarian kibble available from her office. Now I am the kind of person who usually works through problems by thinking of the most simple, most common sense kind of solution - and feeding veg. kibble(the equivalent of cheerios, if you ask me) to my dog did not make sense to me(even though I am a veg. and in theory would love to not have to use any meat products) Instead I decided to go with a raw diet- part meat with bones, and part ground veg- I am so glad that common sense prevailed during that upsetting time. His health has improved so much, he looks like an entirely different dog. I also recently put my old, decrepit cat on a raw diet and her health has improved so much that she has gone from not being able to move much at all to able to go up and down stairs. I am so convinced that I have even become determined to increase my family's consumption of raw. The funny(as in strange, not ha ha) thing is that when I told that vet that I would be using a home-made diet she immed. told me about some supplements that they sell for home diets. Guess they didn't want to miss out on some kind of sale. Needless to say, we also have a different vet now. Whew, guess I didn't keep that as short as I had planned. ;-)
Amazingly, I'd never seen the issue of manufactured petfood vs. raw as being so similar to formula vs. breastfeeding. It's so obvious now that you mention it. It helps that we've tended to have vets that say cats should be eating a certain amount of, oh, you know, small free-range rodents that've just had their heads ripped off, and things of that ilk. As I think of it, though, I've been sort of selective, not putting up with vets who strike me as misguided on this account.
As with formula, though, there are those who would have a hard time providing raw, homemade food for their pets. My neighbor is in her 80s, and doesn't even prepare food for herself (note of interest -- she did breastfeed all 5 of her kids back when formula was sweeping the nation as more scientific). She needs a source for inexpensive store-bought that she can trust.
*whimper* You make too much sense. I'm doing all I can to get my family eating real food...frankly the pets never occurred to me. Darn internet! :)
I have a friend who is an animal nutritionist. She formulates feed for the farming industry and is head-hunted world-wide for her abilities. Guess what she feeds her dogs? Yup...the BARF diet. (Makes me want to puke! LOL). It was actually a vet friend who suggested she try it. Unfortunately, the vet's own finnicky felines are refusing to make the switch from kibble.
Glad to see you are back to blogging.
Bridget =O)
I'm glad you posted those links, Hornblower. I'll be taking a vacation shortly, and my family will be caring for our new puppy (yay! We finally did it!), so I'll not be switching her to whole foods yet.
I'm not sure we'll go with raw foods, but a home-prepared meat and vegetable diet is the plan when we return.
Well, now I've checked, and Bo's Pedigree is okay! I breast fed one kid for two years and the other for three, and I do my best to make sure they eat right, but my dog eats some brand of lamb & rice for big dogs from Walmart, dressed up with a tablespoon or so of Pedigree. He does well on it. If I didn't have kids, I might cook for the dog, but probably not. Is that too honest?
I started feeding a stray cat one of the affected foods around Christmas time, she was abandoned by some neighbors but otherwise healthy. She died during the second week of Jan. I have a feeling the food caused her death.
Dot
"And just how much do you trust the experts - the scientists, the vets, the doctors, the FDA?"
About as much as I trust the local school district to educate my children. :)
I haven't heard much about the recall since our dog died more than a year ago. She was on a natural diet during her early years, though we didn't maintain it for a number of reasons (some good, some bad). When we get another dog, I imagine we'll be feeding her a natural diet.
Thanks for posting this. I have been trying to convince my family on more natural ways to feed their animals and their selves but that doesn't always do the trick if cnn or some other world news doesn't say otherwise.
I have always felt the type of food animals are fed is definitely unnatural. It just doesn't seem right that most animals do not die of just old age, but rather of some type of cancer, liver/kidney failure among others. (Obviously in my opinion this also goes along the same line as human food.) My family are always saying how lucky the pets are to be living with a loving family compared to who knows what. Sure that is true, a loving family, but nobody really thinks about the food they feed them, what it could be doing in the long run.
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