the biggest objection to raw feeding is bacteria contamination risk but this vet science survey
states we conclude that potential or probable cases of pathogen transmission
is likely dependent upon hygiene and food safety measures more education surrounding food safety
should reduce the risk so basically it all comes down to how you source
and handle the food hey friends it's jess and jericho's causing some problems behind me on
his scratcher the full study is linked in the description but we'll just cover the highlights
so a total of 5,611 responses were gathered from 62 countries and this is from october
2021 so we have a wide variety of different countries lots of people and it's recent at
the time of recording it's only about six months ago and just a note fun fact aafco
feeding trial guidelines only require six out of eight cats to pass the feeding trial so this
survey already has way more than aafco requires on feeding trials 99.45% were not considered to have
experienced potential transmission of food-borne pathogens based on their responses to the survey
now i want to take a note here to acknowledge that this is a survey this isn't a clinical feeding
trial this is just a survey that they sent out to raw feeders and the raw feeders reported their
responses so the veterinarians that reviewed this didn't meet with these people they didn't
see their cats and dogs they were just relying on the responses households feeding a greater
number of different protein sources including pork turkey duck rabbit and salmon were associated with
decreased risk of pathogen transmission i most definitely agree with this variety is key for
example wild cats apparently they consume between five to seven different proteins just to complete
their diet protein variety is also great to curb picky eating let me know in the comments below
if your cat is picky how many different proteins is he or she eating another reason for variety is
you never know when the company is going to change their formula and aafco gives them six months to
actually change the label so they could change their formula and you probably wouldn't know until
six months down the line you also can't predict recalls or out of stock or maybe they'll just
discontinue the product altogether so it's always great to have multiple proteins multiple brands
that you kind of go through so that you have variety as long as you focus on one change
at a time because cats are sensitive to food changes give me a polydactyl thumbs up if this
is helpful so far so that more cat parents that are interested in raw can see this video thank you
very much additional risk factors associated with pathogen transmission included preparing either
raw diets in a separate location with different utensils than human food this is very interesting
to me because typically you would find people that would say you know separate everything so
that there's no cross contamination i actually use the same kitchen counter that i prepare my
food on to make jericho's raw food i just use a food safe silicone mat to coat the counter
that way if anything falls off it doesn't hit the counter hits the mat and then i can wash the mat
right after i also use the same glass tupperware for jericho's food to thaw and mix it around and
also for my food and i also use the same utensils so it really just comes down to how you wash it
other risks including mixing raw diets with dry kibble diets a lot of people think that kibble
is this magic food that's completely impervious to bacteria but that's not the case if you look
at the last 10 years of pet food recalls kibble is actually responsible for 98% of the pathogenic
recalls and and the third risk is feeding a limited variety of protein which we already
covered based on the results of this survey confirmed pathogen transmission from raw diets to
humans appears to be rare i'm really glad that they said this because a lot of the organizations
like the fda cdc and aafco and avma all advise against raw feeding pets and it's interesting
because they say don't feed raw because of germs but then they also say that kibble and canned
foods can contain germs and again pet food recalls show us that kibble and canned foods are way more
dangerous than raw feeding very very fishy to me potential or probable cases of pathogen
transmission is likely dependent upon hygiene and food safety measures so again it all comes down to
how you source and handle the food only buy from trustworthy clean sources keep it in the freezer
until you're ready to thaw it in the refrigerator don't leave it out for more than 20 minutes
wash and sanitize everything after you handle food and after you clean the litter box pretty
easy stuff that we should be doing anyway more education surrounding food safety should avoid
risk i'm glad that they also said this because a lot of you have said to me that you're afraid to
start on raw because of bacteria contamination risk but the risk is there regardless of the
type of food that you feed so if you're ready to start with raw check out this playlist right
over meow it's my playlist specifically for beginners thanks so much for watching