Partially Cooking Raw

[John Popp]

John, can you provide a link to where you found this info? It's interesting and I've not heard of this potential before.

Sure thing! Here's one from the USDA,

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/FACTSheets/Chicken_from_Farm_To_Table/index.asp

Here is the key portion,

Foodborne Organisms Associated with Chicken

As on any perishable meat, fish, or poultry, bacteria can be found on raw or undercooked chicken. They multiply rapidly at temperatures between 40 and 140 °F (4.4 and 60 °C) — (out of refrigeration and before thorough cooking occurs). Freezing doesn't kill bacteria, but they are destroyed by thorough cooking.

There are lots of other academic and medical papers on the subject as well.

If I hadn't read it on Dr Pierson's raw food site I wouldn't have even thought about it. Just thinking about what the spring will hold when our home is a lot warmer and getting their eating habits a little more ironed out so their food doesn't have all the exposure it does now.

 

[WitchyWoman]

Thanks John.

 

[Sunny]

This is good to know! TY for the info.

 

[Jacq]

The thing is, cats are designed with short digestive tracts, not the many feet of intestines that humans have. This enables food to move through quickly, and doesn't give harmful bacteria time to grow and flourish. The chances of a cat getting salmonella are pretty slim.

 

[John Popp]

The health concerns of salmonella and other bacteria don't pose a lesser threat to cats than humans. For the most part a healthy adult cat or human will just have a stomach ache and diarrhea, while a child or the elderly can suffer life threatening symptoms.

There has been more than a dozen pet food recalls over the last decade related to Salmonella. I'm sure these aren't taken lightly while also happening to prepared and cooked food. The business consequences of having a recall are steep, expensive and can kill a brand. Again, this is happening to cooked and processed food, not raw food that provides a fertile ground for bacterial growth with food reaching room temperature before it's even consumed.

I'm not dismissive about what your saying or paranoid enough to start throwing my chicken in the oven for a few minutes before grinding. At the same time when Dr Pierson who kick started the whole raw food diet for cats here in the states is partially cooking her meat it gives me pause.

We also have an elderly cat who with a mild constipation issue quickly spiraled out of control even under a vets care and was literally knocking at death's door before making a recovery. A bout with Salmonella could certainly be very life threatening for him and despite pretty slim chances the consequences are putting another wood box on my mantle.

 

[Dantes]

There has been more than a dozen pet food recalls over the last decade related to Salmonella.

I've also never been able to find a case of a cat dying or getting sick from raw food. Okay, there is exactly one reported case, although there are doubts that it was directly caused by a raw food diet. On the other hand, my cat used to carry around mice, squirrels, and birds that had obviously been squished and dead in some cases for a really, really long time. For sure they'd have salmonella in them, no? A few other things too lol

My cats used to be crazy for the commercial brand Primal. They won't even look at it these days. I think this is because they changed their processes due to potential salmonella. It was after a "voluntary recall due to salmonella" as a result of an FDA visit that they changed their process--NOT after reports of illness or anything similar--and not long after that that my boys stopped eating the food. I can coat it with bonito fish flakes and they still snub it.

Obviously I'm not a scientist or a doctor or anything, but I'd really expect to see actual evidence--somewhere--that cats get sickened from raw food salmonella, but there doesn't appear to be any. On the other hand, the FDA and the AVMA repeatedly appear to have ulterior motives which to me make them much more suspect than the salmonella itself.

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/...-risks-moves-forward-with-ge-salmon-approval/ (this is only one of a million instances showing the FDA doesn't care about humans or animals/pets)

IDK. It's getting harder and harder to feed ourselves healthfully, nevermind our pets. I don't want to not follow guidelines or do anything unsafe, but when the main regulating bodies are purchased by big business, I tend to lose respect for their advice.

 

[John Popp]

I'm not biting on the black helicopter theories of the FDA, while I am also prone to gathering as much information as I can to make decisions I can live with. Best practices equal best results, and gathering information from a variety of sources is my ambition in this thread.

 

[Jacq]

I think just paying attention to the actual SCIENTIFIC FACTS of animal physiology as compared to human physiology and using good ol' (un)common sense, is the way to go. Processed food for animals or humans is never healthy in my opinion, salmonella or not.

 

[Dantes]

I think just paying attention to the actual SCIENTIFIC FACTS of animal physiology as compared to human physiology and using good ol' (un)common sense, is the way to go. Processed food for animals or humans is never healthy in my opinion, salmonella or not.

This is kinda what I meant.

Forget the FDA and all the conspiracy theories for a second.

How many cases of feline salmonella poisoning have there been? How many fatalities?

 

[John Popp]

When my cat has loose stools, perhaps stops eating for a couple days, even under a vet's care I don't ever find out what actually was wrong. I'm sent packing with some Clavamox, and the truth is they would probably get better in a week with or without it. I don't have a clue where they would pick up a bacterial infection, but the little knowledge I'm armed with is that there is a good chance it was food borne.