Feeding Raw Hamburger

[Sharon Marples]

Our dogs are fed raw hamburger with their meals at least 3 - 5 times per week.

Sharon Marples

[poohbearsmom]

Last I read, beef does not harbor salmonella. It may harbor E-coli, but not salmonella. Chicken = Salmonella. Turtles = Salmonella, Beef = not salmonella.

Food safety is part of my job. Unless the State of Florida Health Dept has misinformed me, I believe your vet needs to get her bacterias straight.


e

[spidey]

You can get Salmonella on beef: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/background/salmback.htm

[joquendo]

my dogs are on 100% raw diet, included raw hamburger NO problems at all.

The problem with conventional vets is they are not nutritionists and unfortunately you can still go to probably 80% maybe even a higher percentage of traditional vets who still recommend Eukanuba, Science Diet, Iams Proplan etc... only becuase of advertising - many of them are unaware of the rendered meat used in these and many many other commercial dried dogs foods - including reprocessed euthanisized dogs - which incidentally INCLUDES the chemicals used to euthanize the animals, all goes to be recycled and back into products mentioned above.

So when I hear vets recommending commercial dog food, I turn a deaf eat, because many many vets will also agree they probably spend 5% of their veterinary teaching on animal nutrition.

My dogs have NEVER been in better health on the RAW diet.

The difference between dogs and humans, is basically humans have an alkaline system, which was designed to eat vegetables - (we evolved to eating meat later) but predominatly our system is designed to eat vegetation...

Dogs and certain other animals, however their system is acidic - which was designed to eat raw meat, break it down and digest it without any problem - because that is what they were designed to do, It is the humans who have decided to feed their dogs dried processed dead food - hence the health problems /cancers in our dogs and other pets today.

[Rottnlove]

I don't hesitate to give her any raw meat, now that I've read this thread. I know that my vet must not have done extensive research into diet. I feel feeding raw is beneficial to dogs.

[poohbearsmom]

I stand corrected. :D

[ptremaine]

It is the humans who have decided to feed their dogs dried processed dead food - hence the health problems /cancers
in our dogs and other pets today.

FACT: my first dog ate Alpo in a can. It was dead beef meat and some fillers. She lived until she was 14 and died in her sleep of old age.

FACT: my last dog before this Rottie I have now, ate home cooked meat and limited veggie food, some kibble, raw bones and he died at 9.5 yrs of cancer.

FACT: science has not proven that eating 'dead things' produces cancers - that's bogus.

FACT: since very few organisms eat live things, most of them by necessity eat dead things. And yet they still live well and die of old age.

My mom was a health food junkie long before many people on this forum were born. She fed us, my sibling and I, while we were growing up, a very fresh, barely cooked diet, no sugar, no salt, no sodas, no candy, no nothing that didn't come from an approved menu. We even had to eat soy beans instead of peanuts.

Guess what? I still have a cancerous brain tumor and my mom herself, who's lived an exemplar healthy life, has had cancer too. Our grandparents all died of it eventually, even at 100 yrs old.
We ate some dead things, since we couldn't find a way to swallow a live cow or chicken, but maybe it was different when you grew up?

It's NOT all about diet for humans or dog - and as soon as anyone in this forum can prove otherwise, you'll win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

As for dogs - same mom - she fed her last Doberman a pure raw diet. Again, long before this was trendy or a fad. Guess what? He dropped dead from.....osteosarcoma. He was 9-1/2 years old and he still got sick, the soy protein didn't help, the special vitamins didn't help, the expensive accupuncture didn't help, nothing helped. He got sick with cancer and he died.

Because no one knows the answers to cancers, though we do have solid research and studies about it concerning humans, and very few for dogs.

I'm more than a tad offended by the cavalier attitude that some here show for cancer as if it can be held at bay by diets or exercise or wishful thinking for any of us - dog or person. Get real would you all? It kills MOST of us, and if not when we're 40 or 50, then most likely by the time when we're 87 or 90.

Lastly, Janet lives in MD along with me. If she wants to be sure to lower her cancer rates in dogs and herself - she can move out of state. Because we have the highest cancer rates for humans and animals in the country. And guess what? THE BEST DOCTORS in the state, at Johns Hopkins know abso-lutely nothing about why that is - and they know that diet is NOT the entire answer to cancers, just a very small part of the jigsaw puzzle that is the cruel reality of cancer in humans and other beings.

And you can bet your bottom bowl of Canidae or raw meat [which does have plenty of pathogens in it that a dog's gut can't kill but that can kill the dog] that cancer is not going to abate in dogs because of what we feed them.

Sheesh - go read up at the NIH site, if you don't believe someone who's shoes you wouldn't want to be in right now....me.

PT

[Anne]

I feed BARF to my dogs. I vary the vegetables and reduce them to a juicy pulp in the vitamiser. I also very the meat, minced lamb/chicken/beef and they get supplements such as flaxseed oil. kelp, yoghurt, low fat cottage cheese etc., This diet is varied so as it does not become boring for the dogs. I could not imagine just giving them the same kibble day after day after month after year. I would get bored out of my mind if I had to eat the same food all my life - so I vary what my dogs get. Vets BTW tend to recommend the food they sell and make the best profit margin on in my experience.

[Judy Chrusch]

My first rottie back in the early 80's ate puppy chow and lived to be 12, Oh and was poorly bred as well, my second was better bred and died of cancer in the late 90's and was given a beter food and now Czar is well, on a special food that IMO is crap but ultimately it saved his life so I think we must do the best we can, not be fanatics about it and just enjoy each day we have. I have friends who did all thr right things, didn't eat red meat and her cholesterol is real high, her husband sits in a lounge chair eat chips, no exercise and his is under 200, go figure. Sorry, my theory is God has a plan for all of us whether we eat all the right things or not, same goes for our beloved pets, JMO. pt I am very sorry to hear your hardship, my heart goes out to you, and speaking of cancer, you live in MD and I live in Pa. hate to tell you but Pa. especially a couple little towns right near me have the highest cancer rate :(. Back to the original thread, which I already commented on, I say, find yourself a good and trusting vet and go with your gut when making any decisions, that's what I do. And I do feed raw hamburg with kibble bc my vet said he was perfectly fine.

Judy

[ptremaine]

and I agree with you about each dog being individual, and I appreciate greatly your kind words.

I'll tell ya all, the most important conclusion I've reached about my dog is this: enjoy myself with my dog and give my dog the best of life that I can, within my means, both financial and physical.

Toward that end, I cook my dog wholesome poultry meat, cooked in bland style for her. She eats kibble too - 75% Canidae and 25% Extra Care/ProPlan Natural Turkey/Barley [she like the taste and the corn likes her for what it's worth]. She's lean, fit and a canine athlete. I should be so lucky - I'm not lean, I'm not fit and I'm no athlete. :D Talk about living vicariously.....

My point is simple: all the focus on what to feed the dog[s] should be tempered with common sense and some understanding of basic biology, disease vectors and food borne pathogens and relaxing. As soon as I stopped reading the Nutrition forum here, my BP went down several points. :D

I do think it's fair to counterpoint against flat out mistruths and misinformation, such as salmonella not being present in ground beef, or being killed in the gut of the dog. But I'm not going to worry if someone else wants to believe otherwise - I figure they also believe lots of other wacky things I would laugh at as ludicrous. :)

Frankly, as important as diet is, and it's important, EXERCISE is as important. I'm tempted to begin a discussion seeing how often and what sort of exercise is provided to the Rotties whose companions post here. I'm sure that exercise, environment and genetics play as key a role in good health or lack thereof as dietary choices.

BTW, according to my doctors at Johns Hopkins, the number one reason that many people develop cancer [it's not caught, it's a process of cell mutation and cell overgrowth that kills healthy tissue via crowding out, to put it simply] is most likely ENVIRONMENTAL. Our world is very polluted. We all live in very polluted places, eat food grown in polluted soil, eat meat grown on grains that are grown on toxic soils filled with pesticide residues, live next to toxic waste sites we don't know are there or we live on them in where our homes now sit, and drink polluted water. Maryland alone has so many toxic "brown fields", that it's no wonder our cancer rates are sky high. Think about that before wondering whether a dog can eat a dead cow or not.....

PT

[ptremaine]

Some here have postulated that their dogs eat raw meat X amount of timed per month/week/day and the dogs are not sick or haven't been sick, therefore, it's healthy and okay to feed raw. That's classic faulty logic.

What is left out of the statement is the part about risk factors increasing per level of exposure.

A man can sky dive without having a loss of a chute 120 times. He survives, therefore, he concludes that sky diving is safe all the time. He advises others to participate. The same man goes up for the 121st time and his chute fails. In that case, he has a 100% failure and he dies. He couldn't have calculated his risk factor of dying unless he examined carefully collected and interpreted data about number of jumps versus numbers of chute failures resulting in human fatality. Most people wouldn't do that, they'd simply believe that they'll make it and take their chances....rather silly isn't it, considering what's at stake?

So do those who feed raw meats to pets. A dog can consume X number of raw meals and survive without incident or without a recognized incident by the owner. He or she can remain disease or parasite free for X amount of time. However, a dog can also become sick from just ONE consumed meal and become sick enough to die, depending on a variety of factors. All it takes is one meal for a 100% failure and sickness or death.

Logical conclusion: It's a calculated risk to feed raw meats to dogs and stating otherwise is like saying that a chute will never fail because you jumped out of an airplane X times and hey, you're still breathing.

PT