FEEDING FIDO

by Tracy Frisch

Issue 42 (August-September 08)

[Copyright © 2008, The Valley Table]

Last year, Americans spent over $15.7 billion on dog and cat food, according to the Pet Food Institute. Most of their money went to giant conglomerates that are household names--Nestle (Alpo and Purina), Proctor and Gamble (IAMS), Colgate-Palmolive, Del Monte, and Heinz. But in the last decade, raw meat pet food as an alternative has been gaining traction and a small but expanding market share.

Commercial pet food as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon. It was not embraced by the preponderance of pet owners until a couple generations ago. Even in the early 1960s, pet food manufacturers were running ads aimed at discouraging American consumers from making food for their pets, according to Melinda Miller, president of the American Raw Petfood Manufacturers Association. She says that commercials denigrated the foods people prepared as "table scraps," inferior to the complete and balanced diet the pet food industry claimed to have scientifically devised. This industry argument corresponds perfectly to Michael Pollan's thesis in his 2008 book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Penguin, 2008), in which he shows how the belief in "nutritionism" over traditional foodways has served as the handmaiden of the processed food industry.

Like its counterpart for humans, the processed pet food industry has aggressively carved out a market in order to take advantage of the abundance of subsidized agricultural commodities, like corn and soy, and of waste products that could be transformed into profitable products for mass consumption. For instance, Miller found that in the early 1950s, when the soap industry started making detergents out of phosphates, the dog food industry reformulated products (requiring preservatives) using the new surplus of animal fats.

A quick survey of dry dog foods available at a local supermarket will reveal that ground yellow corn ranks at the top of most ingredient lists; typical products contain upwards of 45 percent grain, despite the fact that dogs have no requirement for, and little capacity to digest, carbohydrates. (No wonder that approximately two in five American dogs meet the definition of "overweight" or "obese," according to American Veterinary Medicine Association data from 2002, and last January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug to treat obesity in dogs.)

Toxicity scares like the March 2007 pet food recall by the Canadian contract manufacturer Menu Foods spurred many pet owners to look more closely at what they are feeding their pets, notes Jim Zgoda, the owner of the Otterkill Animal Hospital, in Campbell Hall. The foods were contaminated with melamine, a chemical used in plastic countertops, glue and fertilizer; melamine was added to Chinese shipments of wheat flour in order to make the protein content appear higher, and then the adulterated wheat was passed off as wheat gluten. The recall affected nearly 100 brands, and countless dogs and cats were sickened. The Food and Drug Administration estimates that 8,500 animals died, mainly from renal failure.

While the veterinary establishment issues assurances of the safety and nutritional completeness of these "industrial" pet foods, veterinary critics are charging the industry with harming pets with the animal equivalent of junk food. And a growing chorus is questioning whether the highly processed dry and canned products on supermarket shelves and in vet clinics constitutes healthy canine and feline diets.

For more than a decade, pet owners and breeders have been creating a "real food" revolution in the pet world. Their diverse, alternative feeding practices mirror the seemingly endless dietary choices that their human owners grapple with. People give their pets any number of homemade concoctions, raw and cooked, from leftovers to special preparations. Some mainly feed raw meat, including organs, and bones that they store in the freezer. Inspiration comes from advocates like Ian Billinghurst, the Australian vet who introduced the Bones and Raw Food diet in The BARF Diet: Raw Feeding for Dogs and Cats Using Evolutionary Principles (4th ed, SOS Printing, 2001), and Tom Lonsdale, the English vet who wrote Raw Meaty Bones (Dogwise Publishing, 2001).

Lately, many disaffected consumers have turned to the convenience of frozen ground products from the raw pet food companies that have sprung up. Some of these firms use hormone- and antibiotic-free (or even organic) meat that may be from exotic species like quail, duck, ostrich, venison, llama and buffalo, as well as from more typical livestock species like lamb, beef, chicken and turkey. Other meat is sold through networks of small, sometimes home-based retailers and buying clubs. The nation's two largest raw pet food brands, Oma's Pride and Bravo!, operate from Connecticut.

Raised on a diet of raw grass-fed meat and bones from a young age, Threshold Farm's dog Sake has prospered. At ten she is "in incredible shape--as sprightly as a puppy," says Hugh Williams, who raises fruit, vegetables and livestock biodynamically with his wife Hanna Bail on their long-term leased land in Columbia County (see "Up Close: Hugh Williams and Hanna Bail of Threshold Farm," Valley Table 37). As a working dog and an integral part of the farm, Sake enjoys the companionship of a menagerie of ducks, chickens, pigs, cows and cats. "She puts her scent all over the farm," says Hugh, pleased that Sake's presence has safeguarded their poultry from predators.

Soon after the Bails acquired Sake a decade ago, they stopped feeding her regular dog food. Hanna suggested that they give her some of the lesser cuts of meat they had in the freezer from their own grass-fed cattle. They haven't looked back; the decision fits their overall philosophy and has been good for Sake.

Sake gets fed only twice a week, at most. "She tends to binge," says Hugh, who was raised in Australia. Dog relatives--scavengers like dingoes and hyenas--also don't eat every day. Whenever Sake catches something, like a groundhog, she buries it until it gets "a little rank," Hugh observes.

Melinda Miller, who is also the administrator of a holistic animal hospital in South Salem and a former partner in the number two brand of raw pet food, says, "Dogs didn't evolve to eat a diet that kills them." She notes that the grey wolf, a close dog relative, may cache a deer for up to a year.

Wendy Durso, of Beacon, used to be a compliant pet owner, following what seemed to her a rule--that you must feed the same dog food every day of your pet's life. But during the past four or five years, Durso has thrown caution to the wind. Now she feeds 80-pound Bugsy the same foods her family eats. "As a human, I wouldn't eat the same thing every day," she says.

Around age seven, the Durso's big, fluffy dog began to become infirm with hip problems. Wendy couldn't bring herself to give him the injections ordered by the vet. Bugsy was prescribed another drug, but soon developed life-threatening breathing difficulties. His coat was also a mess, with hot spots on the skin where it was very irritated.

By this time, the Durso family had started eating minimally processed, mostly organic and local foods (Wendy even mills her own flour using local organic grain). Having their son diagnosed as mildly autistic was an impetus for their dietary shift. They traced his problems to food and dye allergies and his condition improved.

In her search for alternative food for Bugsy, Durso first attempted to feed the sick dog raw meat, but he was reluctant to eat any meat but hamburger. At a loss, she decided to give him more or less whatever the family is eating. Breakfast is oatmeal or scrambled eggs; for dinner he gets lightly cooked meat and sauteed greens and other vegetables. He also enjoys some of her homemade bread. In a pinch, or when the family orders out Chinese, they keep a bag of very high quality dog food on hand. Wendy says it lasts them six months. Though Bugsy is 12 and gray, he is lively and appears much healthier than he was before.

Valley Table farm columnist Keith Stewart's two dogs, a non-specific hound and a Meremma, often dine on venison. Their prime responsibility on his vegetable farm is keeping deer from getting into the habit of coming onto his fields. Not a hunter himself, Keith gets gifted with deer, freshly killed by vehicles or hunters, because he has a reputation for using the venison. It's up to him to butcher the carcasses and freeze the meat. Venison and other meats supplement the high-grade dry dog food Stewart feeds the animals. They also give the dogs some leftovers and food residues that would otherwise be discarded, like chicken skin, cartilage and safe bones that won't poke holes in their digestive tracts.

"Anytime meat comes along, they prefer it ten times over other food," Stewart says of his dogs. He laughs about how they act uncharacteristically aggressive toward each other when given meat, baring their teeth and defending their prize with low growls.

Growing up in New Zealand, Stewart doesn't remember there being any choice but to feed dogs and cats meat. On his uncle's sheep farm, he remembers, the border collies got fed when an old ewe was slaughtered, skinned and butchered for their sustenance.

Terri Kavakos, a Welsh springer spaniel breeder in Orange County, also relies on venison as a big component of her dogs' nourishment. Every fall she picks up a free windfall of about a thousand pounds of venison from a man who processes deer for hunters (otherwise, he'd have to pay to have the offal and other unwanted parts hauled away for rendering).

Kavakos has subscribed to the raw-food diet as a key to canine health since 1999. Admiration for raw-fed dogs on the dog-show circuit led her to the practice. "The dogs looked so phenomenal--they would stand out in a lineup," she says. Her commitment extends to educating her puppy buyers and requiring them to adopt a raw diet. Ironically, the diet has propelled her to think more about what humans should really be eating. "A lot of my puppy buyers started feeding their families better, too," she says.

Kavakos says her veterinarian is impressed by her dogs' good muscles, clean teeth, and shiny coats. Like other raw feeders, she claims that the regime has enhanced her pets' vitality and minimalized visits to the vets. The dogs only see the vet for an annual physical and heartworm check.

Nine breeding dogs (each eating a pound of raw meat a day), as well as three litters a year adds up to a lot of meat, so Kavakos forages for inexpensive sources from a variety of sources. Doing "detective work" to identify multiple suppliers has paid off, and she says it costs her less to feed the dogs raw than it would to buy premium dog food. With two 25 cubic feet freezers in the basement, she only needs to buy a load of meat about every three months.

For some of her meat, Kavakos may drive a couple hours--sometimes to a small processor who specialized in meat for pets rather than for humans. She also buys food through a raw pet food co-op in Connecticut. For a change of pace, she occasionally goes to Chinatown, where she can get "all sorts of interesting meats and fish." When she lived in rural North Carolina, a dairy farmer gave her a stillborn calf. "I didn't realize it would weigh 80 pounds," she recalls.

Responding to the warnings about potentially dangerous pathogens in raw meat, Kavakos says she is not worried, emphasizing that the most recent salmonella outbreak in dogs came from dry dog food. Kavakos laughs about an obedience training exercise designed to teach a dog to ignore dog food. "My raw-food dog walked right past," she says. Her animal didn't even recognize the manufactured product as something edible.

For reasons of economy and health, the eight dogs of Sap Bush Hollow Farm, in Schoharie County, never get dry or canned dog food. Instead, raw chicken feet and heads from the farm's pastured poultry operation (mixed with a little chicken mash) comprise much of the dogs' ration. "They love it," says Jim Hayes, a retired SUNY Cobleskill professor of animal science who, with his wife, daughter and son-in-law, operates the grazing livestock farm. Sometimes the dogs also get the trimmings from the farm's beef and lamb, which the family processes in their state-inspected processing room. In season, a family member might make up batches of a dog food recipe that calls for pureed winter squash.

If not for the farm's meat, Jim says, "It would cost us a fortune to feed them." The alternative, he asserts, would have to be a very high quality product.

Apart from a couple family pets, the dogs of Sap Bush Hollow work for their keep. Several border collies help move livestock, and a few Meremma-Great Pyrenees crosses fend off coyotes and other predators.

At one time the Hayes's toyed with the idea of selling pet food made from certain organ meats and other less desirable portions of their livestock. However, once they learned about the regulations that applied, they dropped consideration of a sideline. All their farm meat for sale has been inspected for the human consumer. "We sell people food," Jim emphasizes, adding that some customers do buy the meat for their dogs.

Surprisingly, there appear to be more hoops to jump through if you want to make and sell dog food than if you are selling similar prepared foods for people. For the human audience, you must cook in a certified kitchen. Meats must be processed under government inspection and dairy products have to come from a licensed facility. But pet food made for sale comes under stricter rules and there are no exemptions for direct sales or small-scale producers.

In New York State, every product must be registered individually (cost: $100 a year each); each item must have a nutritional analysis and an approved label, and different batches must be identical in analysis. Further, to operate legally, a producer would need a license in every state the product was sold in. (One woman who had tried a homemade a pet food venture called it quits rather than get licensed: "The regulatory nightmare makes it impossible to be a viable small business," she says.)

The only regulatory leniency is for pet treats, like dog biscuits. As long as no risky ingredients (like meats) are involved, the producer can use a home kitchen, just as baking cookies at home for sale at a farmers market is allowed.

When it comes to raw food diets, Dr. Joseph Zuckerman, of the Village Animal Clinic in Ardsley, takes "the middle ground." His concerns echo those of the veterinary mainstream: potential pathogens in uncooked meat and the difficulty of guaranteeing a nutritionally balanced diet without the addition of vitamins and minerals. He says he will not consider bringing raw meat pet food into his house, as his two young children have lots of physical contact with the family dog. He goes so far as to suggest that those who want to give their pets a raw food diet should use irradiated meat to be safe, and add a vitamin packet.

Dr. Zuckerman views the main benefit obtained from raw diets is eliminating "excess allergens." The nation's pet population suffers from a myriad of maladies brought on by allergies to many common pet food ingredients. Most commercial pet foods contain meat byproducts from more than one animal species, and carbohydrates and additives derived from corn, wheat, and soy, to name a few. And pets eat the same formulations day in and day out. Zuckerman agrees that "we use way too much corn [in pet foods]."

But where lay people tend to believe that the biological appropriateness of a largely raw meat and bone diet helps heal their pets, Zuckerman attributes any improvement in health to the simplicity of the diet--usually just one species of meat at a time, maybe a couple vegetables, and no grain. However, he asserts, feeding a hypoallergenic product manufactured by a major pet food company likewise could alleviate allergy symptoms. "My dog does wonderfully on commercial dog food," he says, admitting that his allegiance to Science Diet dates back to vet school, when he and fellow students received a free supply from the maker, Hill Animal Nutrition. Now he buys it himself. (Academic departments and professional organizations have come to rely on the bounty of pet food manufacturers like Hill, which became a patron of the American Veterinary Medicine Association in the 1980s and has been the highest (platinum) level sponsor of the organization's convention since 2003.)

Zuckerman acknowledges that sponsorship by such companies can be a conflict of interest, but says he has learned to think for himself. Near the end of our conversation, he expressed regret that he didn't have more nutritional background and a wish to have the chance to return to school for more study.

The process of researching dietary issues for her dogs ended up politicizing Gayle Watkins, a Cold Spring resident who has bred golden retrievers for 30 years. She took the plunge into raw feeding in 1997 as an experiment, before there was much support; she handed each of her three dogs a thawed chicken and watched them figure out how to eat it. Afterwards, she worried that the chicken bones might kill her animals, though she learned later that cooking makes poultry bones more brittle and splintery--and thus dangerous--for dogs. In her research, she discovered that almost all canine nutritionists receive financial support from the pet food industry. Her sources in academia told her there are only about three independent scientists left in this field in the world, which led her to establish a nonprofit that raises money through agility trials to fund unbiased studies of raw diets.

Eight years ago, Watkins became a raw pet food retailer. From a building on her property she sells up to three and a half tons of frozen pet food a month. Her vet, Jim Zgoda, DVM, even refers pet owners to her when they want to explore raw feeding as an alternative for their sick or hyperallergic dogs.

Dr. Zgoda believes his profession's uneasiness about raw feeding stems from the lack of controlled studies. Distancing himself from that view, he explains that he feels comfortable with the raw food diet because, "It seems to make biological sense." He has a number of patients who have fed their pets raw food for a long time. On the issue of pathogens, he cites a reassuring study that found pathogen levels in the homes of raw feeders to be no higher than in the homes of people who feed their pets regular commercial pet food.

Dr. Tina Aiken, a holistic veterinarian who co-owns Kilshannagh Veterinary Clinic in Ancramdale, is generally a proponent of raw food for dogs and cats, though "not for every pet." She counsels her clients to introduce it gradually--some pets, she says, have intestinal or other health problems that prevent them from dealing with the bacteria that are present in raw meat, though these animals "are meant to deal with salmonella and E. coli." (In principle, Zuckerman, who does not recommend raw feeding, agrees. He says that with their short gastrointestinal tracts and highly acidic stomachs, "dogs supposedly can handle pathogens.")

For pet owners who decide to stick with a non-raw diet, Dr. Aiken recommends what she considers to be the best of the super premium foods, and suggests her clients add something raw or even home-cooked to every meal they feed their animals. Aiken's perspective differs from many U.S. vets, perhaps because of her European education. At her vet school in Germany, dogs in the animal hospital were fed muesli with freeze-dried vegetables and raw meat from the slaughterhouse next door--a diet that is a far cry from the rations the pet food industry pushes.

In the Hudson Valley, Aiken has found a local slaughterhouse that will sell bones and organ meats (including tracheas, tripe, lungs and hearts) to dog owners, though the plant sells most of these parts to a regional raw dog food company.

In Pleasantville, Eileen McFadden began feeding raw after she bought a golden retriever from a breeder who encouraged her to consider raw food as a way to prevent the allergies the breed is prone to. Of all the dogs in the litter, hers was the only one fed raw. "My dog had a better coat, better bones and was healthier than the others," she says.

That was ten years ago. Since then, she has taken in six more dogs through Golden Retriever Rescue. "Our dogs don't smell and their teeth are clean," she brags. To ensure her dogs get a full complement of nutrients, she adds vitamins and brewer's yeast to the prepared raw pet food she buys. Her cats also thrive on a raw diet of ground rabbit (including the bones).

Like so many other raw meat converts, McFadden is willing to pay a little more for food that keeps her pets healthy and allows her to avoid vet bills. Appalled by decline in dog health, she asserts that "Feeding poor quality food is like feeding your kids McDonald's."

Five years ago, McFadden became a local retailer for Oma's Pride, the Connecticut company that accounts for close to half of the raw pet food market nationally. Every month she sells over a ton of frozen pet food to customers who find her by word of mouth. Some are vegetarians who accept that dogs need meat.

It was Stanzi Allan Pouthier's interest in healthy eating that led her to a raw meat diet for the two family dogs, Kiva, a wild Carolina dog, and Lily, who has terrier and dachshund in her ancestry. About 10 years ago she and her husband transitioned to a raw food vegan diet themselves. With their own nutrition in focus, keeping their dogs on regular dog food became untenable.

First, they switched them to a natural grain mix for dogs but it didn't agree with Kiva. Realizing that the dog could not tolerate grain, she explored the bones and raw-food diet. Now a holistic health counselor, Pouthier finds that different things work for different individuals. Her experience caring for two dogs of such divergent backgrounds bears this out.

The dogs were eight when Pouthier put them on raw meat. "Within two weeks they were acting like three-year-olds," she says. She credits the diet with resolving Kiva's arthritis and Lily's incontinence and cloudy eyes. At 14, the dogs are still doing well, with no major health issues. Besides beef (which her dogs prefer over lamb, poultry or game) and bones, the dogs get a raw vegetable purée and some raw eggs.

Knowing the source of the animal products she feeds is important to Stanzi, though it hasn't always been possible. When she was still living in New York City, Lily, the more domesticated of her dogs, got very sick during the big blackout. She blames a raw egg of unknown origin. Moving to Garrison has made it easier to feel confidence in suppliers. Stanzi tries to get meat at the Cold Springs farmers' market (where she's a board member) or a food co-op. If she doesn't know where the meat came from, she follows the advice of her former vet in the city and flash heats the meat to kill surface bacteria.

"The amount of money we have saved on vet bills is incomparable," asserts Pouthier. "At their age, people are usually spending thousands on medications for their pets."

Generally, the dogs' diets profiled in this story would not pass muster with veterinary nutritionists. And the owners' testimonials about their animals' health and well being would likely be dismissed by most of the animal health profession as merely anecdotal. Yet, the real food movement for pets continues to gain ground, despite the lack of official recognition. Given the ever-increasing awareness of the relation between health and food (for both humans and animals) and the love and affection people feel for their pets, interest in this often-invisible movement is likely to keep growing.