More Pentobarbital In Brands That Include Cat Food

Dr_D said:

As a veterinarian, however, I'd much rather expose my animals to trace levels of pentobarbital than feed them raw foods,

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There's a reason why my vet and I don't discuss pet nutrition.

It doesn't take much phenobarbital to kill a pet. I'd rather not expose my cats to either that or unnecessary bacteria. I'll never ever by a thing from Evangers. This problem is not their first. It's a small company that clearly has trouble with quality control. I also think raw feeding has its problems as well and human pet owners have trouble with quality control.

As for the longevity of stray or feral cats, it's about 2 years correct? Pet owners would do well to stop comparing feral animal nutrition and life with their own pets. Hopefully the conditions are very different if one is remotely responsible. My vets don't like people to feed their cats raw or dry and suggest home-cooked or wet with big cautions on the obvious problem of adequate nutrition should the home-cooked recipes not contain the correct nutrients.

Re:FDA and conspiracy theories on "witchhunts" for raw foods. I think that Primal and Rad Cat saw the problems with their own batches and re-called on their own. Here's news: the FDA is not a big agency and doesn't have the people power to test human food. So all of you eating imported chicken from China good luck. Also honey from Costco---probably also from China with tons of pesticides banned at least until now in the U.S. Honey is smuggled in and then processed with U.S. honey and honey from other countries in the same plants. There are not enough FDA inspectors.

There are not enough FDA inspectors to protect your beef supply from downed and diseased cows either. So....as far as witchunts for raw pet food companies...right. They can't protect you, let alone your pets.

I'm comparing their diets as the same species, not their longevity based on environmental circumstances. With that said my feral cats have lived years. I have one that's a great hunter and rather enjoy killing and eating raw prey. Rad Cat has repeatedly said their own third party testing has not shown any of the bacteria the FDA claims their testing showed, so if you want to trust the shady FDA over a raw pet food company, that's your own issue. My cats have been eating Rad Cat for years without issue. In fact, I have a cat on chemo eating raw, and all three of his vets know about it and don't have an issue with it.

Laura Mae, I agree with everything you said. While I know my cats are "obligate carnivores", it's not like they are out catching their own dinner like the ferals. Nope, they are lounging the day away.

As for the FDA conpiracy theories, I believe they are just an agency trying to do their jobs with too few workers and far too much to monitor.

Good point about the honey! I won't even drink tea from China their ground is so polluted.

I think people should be free to choose, of course, how they want to feed their pets. I respect differing opinions and I respect veterinarians. They are in the business of saving pets lives and that is good enough for me.

sweetblackpaws said:

While I know my cats are "obligate carnivores", it's not like they are out catching their own dinner like the ferals. Nope, they are lounging the day away.

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They would if they were outside and hungry. Your house cat is no different than a feral cat. Your house cat is a wild cat.

When my cat was allowed outside she was an avid hunter. She always had a full bowl of food at home, but beheading pigeons and songbirds were apparently more fun and tasted better. When we lived somewhere with more rodents and fewer birds, I'm pretty sure a good chunk of her diet was made of rats and mice. I doubt they were all healthy rodents, some were probably sick and full of worms and disease, but she has never had issues. I'm sure even now, as an old lady with achy hips, sub-par teeth, and not having been outside in 5 years, if I let her up into the attic she would clear up the rat and mouse problem quickly (obviously I wouldn't do that). The same goes for the unfished basement. I'm positive that if a rodent somehow got in the house, between her and the dog it would be toast before I could do anything. If she was allowed outdoors I don't think we would still be having an issue with a mole in the yard. Cats are cats, whether indoor or outdoor, though some are better at hunting than others.

violetxx said:

And yet dry food has been recalled for years for salmonella, aflatoxins/mycotoxins, antibiotic residues, improper vitamin/mineral levels and much more.

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Check the FDA pages. Not nearly as much as raw food is recalled. Commercial raw is recalled at least 10 times more often - that's my impression after following recalls for a few months.

Bringing a list of pages from so-called holistic vets does not help much. You can do the exact same thing in a vaccine argument. Bring 10 pages of people with the Dr. title before their name who oppose vaccines (even though most are not real MD's but that's another problem). That doesn't change the big picture which is that 99% of doctors are pro-vaccines and - more importantly - that they are because of overwhelming evidence presented by a large corpus of scientific evidence.

Now, feeding raw is a relatively new practice (compared to vaccines) so it has taken a couple of decade for evidence to build up around it and the process is ongoing. There are many cats who are fed raw and live good healthy lives and many owners who are happy to feed raw and who are not affected (i.e. don't catch infections themselves, or at least are not aware of that). On the other hand, there is a growing number of case studies about cats (and sometimes humans) who were ill because they ate raw food.

IMHO (feel free to ignore my site owner badge here, I'm just expressing a personal opinion), as the years go by, more evidence against feeding raw is accumulating. That does not necessarily mean that it's a bad choice for a specific cat or a specific owner. Only that when you look at it from the public health angle, it's not as safe as feeding dry food and definitely not as safe as feeding canned.

Personally, I think that feeding raw is still a legitimate choice, especially for a cat who's already used to the diet. Just do so with a clear understanding of the very real risks so you can do your best to mitigate them.

Anne said:

Now, feeding raw is a relatively new practice (compared to vaccines) so it has taken a couple of decade for evidence to build up around it and the process is ongoing.

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Cats have been living in proximity to humans for 6000 - 10000 years. Processed cat food with all the carbohydrates and synthetic vitamins has been around for 60-70 years. One could argue that it has taken several decades for evidence to build up against the processed pet feed industry and their products.

I remember visiting my grandmother and watching her put scraps of raw meat trimmings and a chicken wing tip or quail bones in the cat's bowl, along side a bowl of kibble which was out 24/7. She worried the cat never touched the dry food. That cat also went out at night to hunt prey, bringing her a "gift" every morning, and lived to the ripe old age of 23.

Hunting prey and getting extra scraps of meat from humans was the traditional way of feeding cats before the huge rise in UTI's, cancers, IBD, and obesity leading to diabetes and arthritis seen in the last 50 or so years.

Three things happened simultaneously with the rise in chronic disease in cats (and dogs): vaccines, processed foods with ingredients which are inappropriate for cats, and a sedentary indoor-only lifestyle. We can't pinpoint any one of those changes as the sole villain (or as a major hero) in our cats living longer but less healthy lives, but those are the variables we added during the last half century.

Dr_D said:

As a veterinarian, however, I'd much rather expose my animals to trace levels of pentobarbital than feed them raw foods...

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Wow, really? I won't get into the yay or nay re raw food debate but you would rather expose pets to a euthanasia drug instead of food they evolved to eat?

Even exposed once at trace amounts is one too many times.

Anne said:

Check the FDA pages. Not nearly as much as raw food is recalled. Commercial raw is recalled at least 10 times more often - that's my impression after following recalls for a few months.

Bringing a list of pages from so-called holistic vets does not help much. You can do the exact same thing in a vaccine argument. Bring 10 pages of people with the Dr. title before their name who oppose vaccines (even though most are not real MD's but that's another problem). That doesn't change the big picture which is that 99% of doctors are pro-vaccines and - more importantly - that they are because of overwhelming evidence presented by a large corpus of scientific evidence.

Now, feeding raw is a relatively new practice (compared to vaccines) so it has taken a couple of decade for evidence to build up around it and the process is ongoing. There are many cats who are fed raw and live good healthy lives and many owners who are happy to feed raw and who are not affected (i.e. don't catch infections themselves, or at least are not aware of that). On the other hand, there is a growing number of case studies about cats (and sometimes humans) who were ill because they ate raw food.

IMHO (feel free to ignore my site owner badge here, I'm just expressing a personal opinion), as the years go by, more evidence against feeding raw is accumulating. That does not necessarily mean that it's a bad choice for a specific cat or a specific owner. Only that when you look at it from the public health angle, it's not as safe as feeding dry food and definitely not as safe as feeding canned.

Personally, I think that feeding raw is still a legitimate choice, especially for a cat who's already used to the diet. Just do so with a clear understanding of the very real risks so you can do your best to mitigate them.

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I am very curious about whether you can give us some links for studies showing the adverse effects of raw food for cats? As a raw feeder I am always looking for new studies on the topic and would like to be informed. From my own research, I have only found studies showing that commercial raw food often contains pathogens, which is a bit of a no-brainer to me since it's raw. The whole point of why we feed raw food to cats is that their digestive systems can handle the pathogens, so it doesn't scare me that pathogens are in raw food. And besides this, I have also seen a couple studies showing that raw food is more digestible than dry food for cats.

What I say above also goes for the FDA recalls. Most (if not all) of the recent raw food recalls have been because of small amounts of pathogens found in commercial raw, but many of these products recalled were distributed to retailers up to a year ago and no cats have been reported sick, which implies to me that they can handle eating it and that the level of pathogens in the food was low.

There are a number of dry food companies that are currently "under investigation" with the FDA for reports that their food has actually been killing animals. These companies have been under investigation for months with no word from the FDA. The problem is that the FDA can pick and choose what it tells the public and what it doesn't. As far as we know, the FDA hasn't even randomly sampled and tested kibble in a very long time.

As orange&white stated, it's not new to feed cats raw food. What's new is feeding processed and synthetic foods to cats. Again, if there are studies showing the adverse effects of raw food for cats I would very much like to know about them, but I also think it's important to take a critical view on these matters and also realize that logic is a powerful tool of knowledge and sometimes more powerful than empirical findings. I always see people who don't like feeding raw using the argument that science is on their side, but given that there are so few studies on feeding raw to cats, science cannot possibly be on either side. It is problematic to draw such strong conclusions based on a few exploratory studies.

orange&white said:

Three things happened simultaneously with the rise in chronic disease in cats (and dogs): vaccines, processed foods with ingredients which are inappropriate for cats, and a sedentary indoor-only lifestyle.

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Mostly the latter of the three. And it's the one most likely to have the most effect, as we know from general health studies.

Cats hunted mice and small birds for millenia. They did not eat raw meat that comes from chickens, cows and pigs raised and slaughtered in an industrial setting. Unless you happen to be feeding your cats wild mice and birds, the plethora of pathogens is bound to be different and a far cry from their natural history.

A Azazel the studies are mostly case studies showing that cats become sick and die of salmonella. Quite a bunch of them and growing in number -
raw cat salmonella - PubMed - NCBI

I'm really sorry that I can't go into more detail. I'd love to discuss this in depth but I'm super busy this week - sorry!

Anne said:

Mostly the latter of the three. And it's the one most likely to have the most effect, as we know from general health studies.

Cats hunted mice and small birds for millenia. They did not eat raw meat that comes from chickens, cows and pigs raised and slaughtered in an industrial setting. Unless you happen to be feeding your cats wild mice and birds, the plethora of pathogens is bound to be different and a far cry from their natural history.

A Azazel the studies are mostly case studies showing that cats become sick and die of salmonella. Quite a bunch of them and growing in number -
raw cat salmonella - PubMed - NCBI

I'm really sorry that I can't go into more detail. I'd love to discuss this in depth but I'm super busy this week - sorry!

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Why are you guessing that an indoor lifestyle is more harmful to cats than processed foods or vaccines? That doesn't make sense to me.

Thank you for providing the link to the articles. Yes these are several case studies where cats became sick and it was linked to salmonella from eating raw food. But I would like to correct how you have phrased the implications of these studies. They don't show that "cats become sick and die of salmonella." We already know that cats can get sick from salmonella. What these studies show is that these particular cats got sick and it was concluded that the source of the sickness was salmonella poisoning from raw food. It is definitely a risk of feeding raw food, like any other food, that a cat may become sick. No raw feeder would argue that this is not possible. What we can learn from these studies is that it is very important that raw feeders know the source from which their foods come from, just like you would want to trust the source from which your canned or kibble food comes from. None of these studies state the source of the raw foods. It would be just as silly to conclude from several case studies that all raw food is bad for cats as it would be if there were several case studies showing that cats obtained salmonella poisoning from kibble and we concluded that all kibble is therefore bad. At least one of the cats in these case studies also may have had a compromised immune system as it was stated that they had battled with FLUTD and infections for years of their lives.

While on the topic, it is prudent to point out that there have also been many cases and class-action law suits against kibble foods for causing poisoning and death to animals.

I would love to feed my cat whole prey mice but that's just not a possibility for me at this point so I source raw poultry meat that is, to the best of my knowledge, as safe as possible. I would also like to point out that cats have actually been eating raw poultry for a long time. In many cultures around the world it is common to feed cats raw scraps of poultry and this is a practice that has been going on since cats were first "domesticated" in North Africa. Feeling uneasy about feeding raw food to cats is really a North American thing, I have found that people from Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe believe it to be a common sense practice.

Anne said:

...

Cats hunted mice and small birds for millenia. They did not eat raw meat that comes from chickens, cows and pigs raised and slaughtered in an industrial setting. Unless you happen to be feeding your cats wild mice and birds, the plethora of pathogens is bound to be different and a far cry from their natural history.

...

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Me, I'm still waiting for the Powers That Be to manufacture some canned food for my kitty called, "Bushtits & Robins and Pumpkin in gravy" or "Minced Finch with extra Taurine" or "Mice Stew with a dash of Halibut".

A Azazel these case studies show exactly what I said which was that cats do get sick and die from salmonella poisoning linked to eating raw food. That the statement I had made. You asked for the references and I provided them. I am not trying to argue with you or anyone who feeds raw food. You happen to know that feeding raw comes with a risk. Not everyone knows that and I think it's important to educate people about it so they can make their own decision.

I'm not about to get into the vaccines argument here. Understanding how vaccines actually work is complicated. I've taken the time and effort to study that, actually, including taking an entire course in epidemiology for that. Vaccines are never 100% risk free but they are about 1000 safer than not vaccinating. It's just a question of understanding how vaccines work and not falling for the fear mongering hype Mercola and co. are (literally) selling.

Anyway, the last thing I'm about to do is get into a vaccine debate here on TCS, sorry. I am not even arguing about feeding raw. I still think it's a legitimate choice at this point as long as the owner is aware of the risks both to the cats and humans in the household.

I do think we're not only going off topic though but into clear IMO territory too. I'm reporting my own post to the mods so they can make the call and will now bow out of the thread so I can get some work done.

Anne said:

Mostly the latter of the three. And it's the one most likely to have the most effect, as we know from general health studies.

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You're saying there are general health studies stating that indoor-only lifestyle has more negative health effects specifically on cats than either diet or pharmaceutical vaccines? Or do you mean "general" studies which apply to humans and then extrapolated to apply to felines?

I wouldn't suspect having an indoor "lounge cat" would impact urinary crystals or IBD, food allergies and intolerances. Obesity perhaps, but I still think the poor quality carbs in dry food play at least an equal part in the obesity crisis with out pets.

orange&white said:

Cats have been living in proximity to humans for 6000 - 10000 years. Processed cat food with all the carbohydrates and synthetic vitamins has been around for 60-70 years. One could argue that it has taken several decades for evidence to build up against the processed pet feed industry and their products.

I remember visiting my grandmother and watching her put scraps of raw meat trimmings and a chicken wing tip or quail bones in the cat's bowl, along side a bowl of kibble which was out 24/7. She worried the cat never touched the dry food. That cat also went out at night to hunt prey, bringing her a "gift" every morning, and lived to the ripe old age of 23.

Hunting prey and getting extra scraps of meat from humans was the traditional way of feeding cats before the huge rise in UTI's, cancers, IBD, and obesity leading to diabetes and arthritis seen in the last 50 or so years.

Three things happened simultaneously with the rise in chronic disease in cats (and dogs): vaccines, processed foods with ingredients which are inappropriate for cats, and a sedentary indoor-only lifestyle. We can't pinpoint any one of those changes as the sole villain (or as a major hero) in our cats living longer but less healthy lives, but those are the variables we added during the last half century.

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Scientific evidence outweighs anecdotal evidence. Everyone can point to the practices you cite with cat feeding. The cats didn't go to the vet either. While some cats may have been long-lived, most did not live long enough to develop age-related illnesses. The "huge rise" in diseases you mention--is it a statistical increase or a increase due to reporting? In other words, in the age when grandparents fed their cats food scraps (my grandmother did the same) who knows what killed her barn cats? Bone in the throat? Untreated UTI? Urinary blockage? Cancer? Most likely distemper for sure but these other diseases surely occurred but the numbers and diagnostic tools for pet animals has advanced. For virtually any set of symptoms or disease, a google search will turn up multiple peer reviewed veterinary medical journal articles on the conditions.

Not only can we not pinpoint the things you mention: vaccines, foods or indoor lifestyle as "villains" we cannot point to them as cause and effect either. In other words, the development of vaccines, commercial pet food and bringing animals indoors may have increased in the last 50 years, but those occurrences very likely are unrelated to the rise in disease in pets. What if it is related to simply reporting because people involve their pets in medical care more than they did in the past and so there are greater numbers to report about diseases that simply killed animals in the past without any diagnostics?

I think everyone who does what they hope to be the best for their pets is just fine in pursuing what they feel comfortable doing. Your cat eats Friskies or Fancy Feast? GREAT! keep doing it. Your cat is getting vitamins and minerals and he won't go blind. You are a careful, mindful raw food preparer and your cats eat it? Great! Keep doing it. Your cat refuses wet food and you refuse to starve them and feed them kibble? Great! Get a water fountain to help with hydration.

I see tons of questionable "science" by websites that have a certain truthiness about pet foods and pet vaccines. The sites have a lot of alarm about pet food ingredients that seem specifically designed to make a conscientious pet owner question her own judgment about food choices and vet care. And in other venues, conscientious pet owners look for confirmation bias of their own assessments and practices.

Like everyone else, I'm concerned about questionable ingredients and how they managed to get into the supply chain (like phenobarbital in pet food or melamine in place of wheat gluten). I'm also concerned about premium brands run by very small companies who may have challenges in testing the safety and nutrient value of their foods.

I am concerned that when I search for legitimate sources of information about why certain ingredients are added and why they may be problematic the only thing I can find is some b.s. Mercola-type site and nothing else discussion its merits or problems from a veterinarian perspective.

And here lots of judgment about people who are vets and their lack of training in nutrition. It seems to be accepted as fact that vets don't know much about nutrition. I say all this not to defend "big pet food" but rather to say that scientific inquiry and its principles don't belong just to scientists but help non-scientists make some reasonable judgments that they aren't being snookered.

I'm less awed and impressed by "scientific studies" after having learned how objective research should be conducted, and then getting in the real world and seeing how data is easily skewed to come up with the "correct" results which support one hypothesis over an opposite hypothesis. Research companies get fired for coming to conclusions which differ from the people funding the studies and a different company gets hired who will provide the "right" answer. Happens all the time, sadly.

laura mae said:

Scientific evidence outweighs anecdotal evidence. Everyone can point to the practices you cite with cat feeding.

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Anecdotal evidence is a legitimate form of scientific evidence. We are living in an age of naive empiricism where people believe that "data-driven" science is the ultimate form of knowledge. This is one way of thinking about science and philosophers of science call it a "naive" empiricist view because even a true empiricist wouldn't hold such a rudimentary perspective on science. Science is a powerful tool but when people begin to tie science to one specific way of obtaining knowledge of the world it becomes dangerous. Not all questions of life are empirical questions and there are different ways of obtaining empirical knowledge.

Anne said:

A Azazel these case studies show exactly what I said which was that cats do get sick and die from salmonella poisoning linked to eating raw food. That the statement I had made. You asked for the references and I provided them. I am not trying to argue with you or anyone who feeds raw food. You happen to know that feeding raw comes with a risk. Not everyone knows that and I think it's important to educate people about it so they can make their own decision.

I'm not about to get into the vaccines argument here. Understanding how vaccines actually work is complicated. I've taken the time and effort to study that, actually, including taking an entire course in epidemiology for that. Vaccines are never 100% risk free but they are about 1000 safer than not vaccinating. It's just a question of understanding how vaccines work and not falling for the fear mongering hype Mercola and co. are (literally) selling.

Anyway, the last thing I'm about to do is get into a vaccine debate here on TCS, sorry. I am not even arguing about feeding raw. I still think it's a legitimate choice at this point as long as the owner is aware of the risks both to the cats and humans in the household.

I do think we're not only going off topic though but into clear IMO territory too. I'm reporting my own post to the mods so they can make the call and will now bow out of the thread so I can get some work done.

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I apologize if I came off as argumentative but this was not my intention. I often get passionate about feline nutrition because I have had cats that have had medical issues that have been benefited very highly from raw food. I think in this case I will agree to disagree with you.

Anne said:

A Azazel these case studies show exactly what I said which was that cats do get sick and die from salmonella poisoning linked to eating raw food. That the statement I had made. You asked for the references and I provided them. I am not trying to argue with you or anyone who feeds raw food. You happen to know that feeding raw comes with a risk. Not everyone knows that and I think it's important to educate people about it so they can make their own decision.

I'm not about to get into the vaccines argument here. Understanding how vaccines actually work is complicated. I've taken the time and effort to study that, actually, including taking an entire course in epidemiology for that. Vaccines are never 100% risk free but they are about 1000 safer than not vaccinating. It's just a question of understanding how vaccines work and not falling for the fear mongering hype Mercola and co. are (literally) selling.

Anyway, the last thing I'm about to do is get into a vaccine debate here on TCS, sorry. I am not even arguing about feeding raw. I still think it's a legitimate choice at this point as long as the owner is aware of the risks both to the cats and humans in the household.

I do think we're not only going off topic though but into clear IMO territory too. I'm reporting my own post to the mods so they can make the call and will now bow out of the thread so I can get some work done.

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Anne, of the studies you posted, two of them are about the same cats, and the others are not about cats who died. One is a opinion - studies shouldn't be opinion pieces.
If you researh further about these cats that "died of salmonella" you will find out that both were kittens, had their immune system compromised with advanced pneumonia, and weren't taken to the vet timely.
Yes one can be under the impression that there are "far more recalls of raw" this year - but is anyone reading and questioning these recalls?
These recalls are NOT because cats are getting - they are all done as an abundance of caution.
Sometimes it will take the FDA going to several different stores, testing over 20 samples of an HPP - which is treated to kill bacteria - product, to find a sample that is contaminated, and recall the entire batch.
Doesn't that make you think? No?
How about that raw is a tiny fraction of the pet food industry, but the FDA is spending over 90% of its time testing raw? Does that not sound disproportional?
There have been far more sick animals with salmonella from kibbles than from raw - that's unquestionable. Not only animals, but humans. Just facts.
As pentobarbital, those recalls were done after pets were actually KILLED for eating that food. So it absolutely boggles my mind that a veterinarian will say that feeding a food contaminated with the same drug she uses to stop a pet's heart in her office is ok.
As for raw being from cows, pigs and chicken.... Well... The meat is still made of high quality protein, amino acids, fats, vitamins, and moisture... We do analyze our diets - raw feeders are a smart bunch, and we know what we are doing. The meats in commercial raw diets are USDA inspected - you simply can'W say the same for kibbles and canned. We know what the analysis of prey looks like. We know what the profile of a mice looks like - I don't think it will surprise anyone that it doesn't look anything like what's inside of a bag of kibbles.
You can say anything about a cat, but facts will always remain - they are obligate carnivores, and they need moisture in their food.
It's sad that something like pentobarbital is even being compared to raw.... Ludicrous.