kitten on raw food has giardia

[lovesmekitties]

My youngest kitten at 3 1/2 mos., JohnnyMac, has been diagnosed with giardia.  The vet said it's possible it could've come from the shelter where we got him 2 1/2 weeks ago, but that it is one of the main concerns with feeding raw.  She reminded me giardia comes from the wild.  He wasn't having diarrhea, he'd had firm poops (they'd been sloppy when we first got him and transitioned him off the kibble) but I noticed he excreted some bloody mucous and took in a fecal sample to the vet.  I haven't seen any irregular stools since then. One of my other kitties, Stewie, hasn't seemed himself for about a week and a half and threw up bile one time.  I want to take in a stool sample for him now too. 

I'm horrified to think I could've exposed us all to giardia through their raw diet.  I feed commercial raw, but did give them raw beef and chicken (not ground) once or twice.  Could that have done it?  Other than that I"ve had them on Nature's Variety and Primal raw frozen as well as tried freeze dried raw by Stella & Chewy's, Sojos and Vital Essentials.  I feel so discouraged and I'm not sure how to respond.  I had felt so good about feeding raw and now I'm not sure how to feel.  Any insights?

 

[ldg]

First of all, I'm so sorry about your kitties. :heart2:

I'm also sorry your vet scared you about the raw food. Giardia is endemic in the environment. It is sooooo common for rescue kitties and shelter kitties to have giardia. The most common source is water. In the human food chain supply, the most common source is vegetables, having been contaminated by the water from irrigation. It is so very, very unlikely it is the meat, I'm really kind of shocked your vet even suggested it was the diet. Almost any other parasite or bacteria, and the odds do go up.

But infections of giardia from supermarket meat in the US are basically unheard of in the literature.

I am posting from my phone, and because it is a direct link to a PDF file I don't know how to post the link. But a University of WI study from 2003 indicates how incredibly unlikely meat as a route of transmission of giardia is.

Add to that you have been feeding primarily pathogen-free foods treated with high pressure processing, and the odds become almost astronomical that the source was diet-related.

The simplest answer is usually the right answer. And the incidence of shelter kitties with giardia is high, so that is far more likely the source.

My vet has no one else feeding cats raw (that she knows of). She doesn't know much about it, but is open minded. When I first started feeding homemade, any time anyone didn't feel well, I thought, "raw," and we were off to the vet. But thank goodness she's so level headed and not biased against raw. Not once was any of the various issues my cats have had over the past 1.5 years food-related. She was always the voice of reason, calming me down.

I'll post links tomorrow, and you can give them to your vet.

I hope Stewie is OK. Has JohnnieMac been separated or integrated? Whenever we brought rescue kitties home, we had no way to separate cats, and someone usually got sick with something. Actually, round worm was our bane for a while. ...and no vet would blame that on raw.

 

[lovesmekitties]

Thank you so much Laurie for coming to my rescue yet again! And from your phone too I know how tedious that is! You made me feel so much better about it. And I appreciate the forthcoming links. That would be helpful with my husband too since he hasn't been quite as sure of the raw diet.

 

[lovesmekitties]

Oh I forgot - no I haven't separated JohnnyMac from Stewie and Louie. Should I be doing that? Or did you just mean while we were getting them all initially introduced?

 

[ldg]

Well, there's no point in separating them now. But whenever a kitten comes home, both for introduction purposes and for quarantine purposes, it's always best to keep a kitty separated for about 10 days. Of course, that can be nearly impossible. And it's not advice we ever took.

OK, here are links for your vet:

The Univ of Wisconsin piece on parasites (note that this does NOT include bacterial pathogens - thus no salmonella, E. coli, etc.): http://fri.wisc.edu/docs/pdf/parasites.pdf

Please look at table 1, "Parasites found in different foods." Giardia is not found in meat. It is in fruits, vegetables, and water.

Also of particular note in this piece:

Foodborne giardiasis can result from the use of contaminated water for irrigating or washing fruits and vegetables. A survey, in the U.S. and Central America, of 25 samples of water used to irrigate food crops traditionally eaten raw revealed that 60% contained Giardia (261). Giardia cysts were detected in 2% of seed sprouts tested in Norway; source of the contamination in the sprouts was not the water used
for sprouting but the unsprouted seeds themselves (235).

Food handlers who are infected themselves or have had contact with the feces of infected children have been implicated in some foodborne outbreaks. An outbreak in 1996 was traced to contaminated ice cream, and poor personal hygiene was cited as a contributing factor (40). Prepared foods such as sandwiches, salads, canned salmon, and ice have also been implicated in foodborne outbreaks (201;241).
G. lamblia cysts have also been detected in flies that may serve as a vector for contamination of foods (109).

Notice no mention of raw meat? Giardia is principally a water-borne illness, that then spreads via the oral-fecal route. As I said, it is endemic in the environment. Whenever you see "raw food" discussed in relation to Giardia, the issue is vegetables, usually, and from contaminated irrigation water.

As an example, this article: http://www.marlerblog.com/legal-cas...dy-to-eat-packaged-leafy-greens/#.UjSvgEB9GWw

More on "raw food" and giardia: http://www.fightbac.org/about-foodborne-illness/causes-a-symptoms

Most frequently associated with consumption of contaminated water. May be transmitted by uncooked foods that become contaminated while growing or after cooking by infected food handlers. Cool, moist conditions favor organism's survival.

The bold is my emphasis. This obviously refers to vegetables or greens and fruits - not animals.

If you google "recall giardia," all you will find is reports of daycare centers with problems, and water parks being closed down - and a few municipalities with contaminated drinking water.

Now, for the issue of prevalence. Here are three pieces, two of them from IDEXX labs:

First, the brochure on Giardia by IDEXX: http://www.idexx.com/pubwebresource...rdia/giardia-in-dogs-and-cats-quickcourse.pdf

Giardia is an important cause of outbreaks of waterborne infection due to contamination of raw municipal water, backcountry streams, and lakes with human effluent or infected animal feces.1 The overall prevalence of Giardia in dogs in North America has been reported at about 8%, with much higher levels in puppies (36% to 50%) and in animals in shelters and kennels (up to 100%).2 The prevalence in cats tends to be lower, at about 4%.2 As with dogs, infection in cats is more common in animals younger than 3 years of age.

The official report by IDEXX: http://www.idexx.com/pubwebresource.../prevalence-giardia-symptomatic-cats-dogs.pdf

Results from 16,114 dogs and 4,978 cats were submitted. Analysis of the data showed a Giardia prevalence of 15.6% among tested dogs and 10.8% among tested cats. The results of this study show that Giardia is a common enteric agent among dogs and cats with gastrointestinal signs.

THIS many animals are being fed raw???? Um... the problem isn't raw meat.

From the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/giardia/giardia-and-pets.html#infecthow

The CDC is always quick to point out cautions of pets being fed raw meat (I can provide those links too if you need them. :lol3: ). NO mention of raw meat in the source of giardia in our pets.

No, the problem is simply that it is a common, primarily waterborne parasitic infection, easily spread via feces: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871365/

Giardia is now considered the most prevalent intestinal parasite in dogs and cats (1–4,8,10).

The problem with Giardia is density - where it is more easily spread. That would be catteries and shelters:

http://www.cathospitalofchicago.com/online-cat-health-library/giardia-infection-in-cats

Infection is relatively rare in healthy cats. It is more common in densely populated groups of animals, such as in a cattery, pet store, or animal shelter.

Prevalence in catteries: http://jcm.asm.org/content/42/6/2707.full

The prevalence of Giardia sp. infection was 31% (36 out of 117) among the individual cats and 35% (31 out of 89) among the catteries tested. Diagnosis of Giardia sp. infection was made on the basis of results of fecal enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for Giardia-specific antigen (36 out 36). Giardia sp. trophozoites were not seen by direct smear examination of feces from any cat. Prior reports on the prevalence of Giardia have ranged from 2.4 to 60% depending on the source of cats, means of testing, and geographic location (9, 12, 17).

I didn't find studies done with shelter cats, but there's no reason to think it's different than with catteries.


There are risks with feeding raw meat, certainly. But giardia really isn't one of them. It is far, far, FAR more likely that you, your husband, or your vet will get giardia from eating salad. ...or going to a water park.

Hope this helps!

 

[lovesmekitties]

THANK YOU LAURIE!!!!

 

[ldg]

No problem. It was a fun research project.