As of 2013 the pet Food Industry was dominated by only 5 more taken glamour companies. When a consumer walks into a store its easy to assume that there is a vast array of choices for their dog or cat and the ability to choose that one perfect food. But just how different are these choices and whats really going on inside of those bags is whats inside really as healthy as the shiny side labeling would have you believe. My name is karen becker and im an integrative veterinarian here in bourbonnais illinois. This is a commercially available raw food diet this is a i am im also going to give the boys in a. Great 1st approach. Is. Very dire. But time is it. First. So theres a problem in the pet Food Industry and most pet owners are aware that theres a problem and unless you have an interest in Digging Deeper and finding out what those issues are you can go through your whole life eating the exact same food assuming what youre doing is healthier pat and once you start digging the evidence becomes overwhelming that the industry has significant issues. The human animal relationship is deeply embedded in our society. It is estimated that 80000000 dogs are in the United States with 96000000 cats. Americans alone has been an estimated 60000000000. 00 on pet expenses every year and that number is growing exponentially. Its always a 1st of all to buy something youre. Something that will make them happy and live a help you are we give them exercise clean water and lots of love. Weve always purchased food from a Grocery Store or a pet food store that provided convenience the promise of nutrition in familiarity with the brand. The industry at large survive for nearly 100 years without a single thought from consumers as to what was going into the pet food. That all changed in 2007 when a toxic ingredient made its way into pet food killing thousands of pets nationwide melamine is used as a fertilizer in asia and also has several industrial commercial uses including a component of kitchen utensils and placing the association between melamine in the kidneys and urine of cats that die and the melamine that was in the food they consumed is undeniable additionally melamine is an ingredient that should not be in that food at any level. Following the 2007 recall one central question began to resonate among consumers. What are our dogs and cats actually supposed to eat its confusing because the pet Food Industry is telling us what to feed our pets more based on what they want to sell us than whats necessarily good for the pet she is Oprah Winfrey is about mary and now an author and her new book is called their war yell treatment please welcome dr barbara while good morning a thank you so much for being here so let me ask you this what are the things that we are giving them that we should do and then what should we be given them that we are so no corn no wait no so way after many years of r. And d. We have found that corn is still the best available source of carbohydrates when processed and refined properly those are the things that cause overweight diabetes arthritis chronic Skin Infections allergies things like that thats the precursor for a lot of that if youre feeding for nutrition and theyre eating a lot of those things that mess with the body they just dont stay healthy let me ask you this doc there are those the things that you find in dogs that are youre talking to people who are giving table food today i know its and on food. During the war there was a moratorium on using. In the metal cans for canned food so they said you cant use metal cans for dog food anymore you have to use that for ammunition. To somebody that we need to make the dog food something we could put in a paper bag and thats how they did it and nobody thought at that time that making a camel and eventually the way that we process it now could ever be a help detriment to the dog. Now because of the way that the world is corn and wheat have become so subsidized and so chain its a super cheap way to make a food for somebody who cant say no is a good thing theres definitely an epidemic of problems now in animals that i dont think weve seen anything like it in in history every animal that comes in to see me theyll say oh theyre basically healthy but the list of problems is immense so its not that theyre healthy theyre actually suffering from so many many maladies a lot of the same maladies that we see in people we have animals that have you know diabetes in arthritis they have auto immune disorders theyve got allergies and part of the reason for that is because we are actually creating these problems its a huge epidemic of problems all of them i believe can be linked to very simple problem of diet. And. 2 i have heard for the top 10. To 12 years old you know you dont know 12 you know you know why you know thats why theres a lot because your parents feel extra food if you put this down on every side they can arrows just right on it absolutely the best and they can imagine theyre so excited about it and its gone. And i worry about them eating raw food and then liking me no i do not. Because the fact is. There arent any happenstances. I think raw food is is weird to a lot of people when i 1st mentioned it to people they sort of say raw food to have to feed raw food to make my diet healthy like are you crazy and i well you know you dont have to do it itll make a difference in making huge difference. One of my hobbies and passions is wildlife rehabilitation. This is her did. You see the current. I have been fascinated with nature and life something can remember. 2 i became a license to wildlife rehabilitator when i was 14 and i knew that i would have a life long career helping animals all when i was 14 i heard about a woman that had tremendous success with wildlife rehabilitation your name is Barbara Harvey and she was a who are kind of concent and i called her and i said barbara my name is karen bakker and 14 years old and i want to know how you became so successful. Long story short she invited me to her home in her account wisconsin she lives in a beautiful log cabin during the winter months and she lived in a teach me on 13 acres during the summer months she invited me to live in her teeth on her 13 acres and see how she rehabilitates cox eagles hours and falcons barber has the best success rate in the country with raptors and the reason she has such an success she feeds biologically appropriate all wrong living mice rabbits rodents to those animals to be able to help the body recover from injury. So when i went to bed in her school years later and i sat to these nutrition courses and when. They gave me the laminated chart that told me what food i should feed with what disease process things did. Before i went to vet school i worked for years in zoo medicine. The most important thing i think i learned from that is every species has its own requirement each species must eat what it is supposed to eat its developed evolved to have a specific diet that keeps it healthy. Animal has its own biologic requirement for certain nutrients a species appropriate diet for worms is dirt and a species appropriate diet lets say for hummingbirds would be nectar if you cant feed earthworms nectar and you can feed hummingbirds dirt both of those animals would simply die it gets pretty confusing with dogs and cats however because dogs and cats are nutritionally much more resilient than other species and what that means is that we can nutritionally abuse them for lack of a better term and they dont die immediately they just have an overall vitality decline and overall degenerative changes take place in their bodies from feeding them food that are not biologically appropriate cats being obligate carnivores have to consume meat to be able to thrive they do not have a biologic requirement for any type of carbohydrate very high protein require a very high moisture requirement and a moderate fat requirement cat originally we thought were domesticated to guard the grain race because cats dont consume green cats consume ice that consume the grain and so by domesticating cats we assume that there was a mutually beneficial relationship we do know in the last 100 years since we have produced cat food on the market that cats have experienced significantly more Kidney Disease and we know that they have experienced obesity organ failure and diabetes at a much higher rate and certainly we need to begin evaluating what role nutrition has in some of those degenerative diseases. Kidney disease is the number one killer of cats and we know that asking cats to process and entirely to hate rated food such as kibble can be very detrimental to Kidney Health dogs evolved from the gray wolf and we know that dogs came. Out of the order carnivora which means theyre carnivores in 1903 the International Society as a logic nomenclature redefined. Familial laris as just these are the people that define what category what taxonomy animals fit into and why this society concluded that dogs were genetically identical to wolves they shared 99. 9 percent of the d. N. A. We know that geno typically the genome type the d. N. A. Is identical what has changed over the last 2 to 3400 years is the phenotype phenotype is the jacket which is what looked like we have bald dogs dogs of white fluffy hair blue eyes dogs with crazy types of here in the body and no here anywhere else bekele dogs short legged dogs double coated dogs weve created these fantastic varieties of breeds because we like diversity in what we see despite the fact that we have bred dogs to have certain characteristics we have not bred out of their cane as lupus d. N. A. So yes just as you can have brown hair blonde hair or you can have blue eyes or green eyes brown eyes your nutritional requirements as a human being remain the same despite the fact that you look vastly different depending on what your d. N. A. Dictates. Yeah its. Easy to guess that you see it the way you do you think you could i mean we just told you if you think about. Things. Its a good old time was an idealist and that is what you want. Them to sure things lets leave with this is. Just the kids going to. Continue sit there still long on the islams listening to it asleep if you dont sweat just when you push. The food you got the most alone shit out of my handgun ban you from me my sibling afforded to you no more than a slow but also acknowledge that. The Major Companies criticize raw diets warning consumers against the hazards of feeding romita pets claiming it can make your animal sick. However those companies who repeatedly criticize feeding role diet have yet to produce a single study to provide any substantial evidence to support their claims. The problem with the types of Research Studies that you are describing they would go at least 7 to 8 to 10 years in length before you would get a definitive answer within our. Legal requirements and framework said its not f. D. A. Is responsibility to do such studies the research has not been done on raw foods not because there is an interest but because the 1000000. 00 it takes to fund that particular research simply isnt there now into. Great event and areas are working on that but tricia veterinarians will say and tell we see the research were not interested in recommending this particular food for dog and cat owners we just dont believe its safe and healthy the frustration is that we dont have clinically Proven Research demonstrating that dry and canned foods are wildly healthier for pets as well. The larger corporations are not very interested in proving or disproving the value of their food because theyre already making a 1000000000. 00 on it and theres no reason to do that Research Since major pet Food Companies are involved with and have influence over vet student lack of education surrounding world diets exist heavily among traditional vets when science come to veterinarians have who have not been educated about raw foods at all and say im considering feeding my pets raw meat of course the logical conclusion is why theres a lot of bacteria in the raw diet and its kind of a ticking time clock if you could harm them or why would you do that or its risky i think were all food as too much of the potential for negative side effects that its just not worth it peoples biggest question is there could be. Pathogens or bacteria parasites within the food that could cause illness to pets when dogs eat raw diets their feces their poop has a lot of bacteria. Lets talk about. Dogs if given the opportunity will eat. Dogs and cats being carnivores are equipped to be able to process their evolutionary food source which is wrong means. All of their digestion has acclimated and has evolved to be able to process whole living unadulterated protein so from ripping and tearing their dentition is set up to be able to process meat their stomach acid is very acidic in fact a ph of water which is highly acidic that stomach acid is in place to be able to neutralize pathogens or potential harmful bacteria that could be present in the food from the outside the pet Food Industry looks like the perfect industry there are beautiful packaging there are diets for every disease in disorder theres all kinds of different colors and futile pictures and if you look a little deeper unfortunately that isnt what the pet Food Industry is all about. Ive collected a few examples here and were going to go over some labels but 1st example is the food that on the front says be several meals fully prepared and bursting with flavor who doesnt want that in a pet food 1st a previous corn 2nd ingredient is soybean meal starting greeting is feast and bone meal for thing gradient is a growing wheat followed by animal fat preserved ha we can see they are the ha is that toxic preservatives that should not be found in any human or pet foods despite the fact that it is the 1st 3 ingredients are carbohydrates that are totally unnecessary followed by a totally toxic preservatives bank not a car. Next we have a food that has one at. Several packaging awards because its so beautiful there are chunks of meat falling from the sky and im being beautiful here of course here we have a nice array of radioactive colors that have been added in for you the consumer dogs and cats cannot see all these different colors this is added in because you get my cash it looks beautiful my pet would love it but the amazing buzzwords like a full light. One down or doesnt want their pet to have a playful life this is just entirely a marketing 1st thing greeting a ground yellow corn totally biologically unnecessary 2nd ingredient you can buy products meal totally rendered inappropriate in terms of quality to be nourishing your dog with turning green corn gluten meal very allergenic totally unnecessary for think whole wheat flour and then animal fat although this really looks to be beautiful and something youd be interested in nursing or my recommendation is to avoid it over here and they have a special latte right to help with prebiotic fiber theres a lot of these patented words that are trademark words that companies will use to how kind of distorted their products will be Something Special included as a means of you coming back and buying it because other brands youre comparing it to doesnt have to help its a good so good marketing on that because this particular food is b. L. S. Quality if you are a goat. When you add up organic from rice organic own organic millet organic barley or getting grain store go organic peas organic potatoes. Portion of the ingredients in this particular food doesnt outweigh the organic chicken or the chicken mia healthy really what are you supposed to say unhealthy the worst possible food in my opinion you could ever feature dog. Number one ingredient beef byproduct. Of fruit toast corn syrup what is byproduct. My product is whats left over after an animal has been slaughtered and all the edible parts have been removed the criticism lies in the mystery of the meats being used. What is quality quality is a term used when discussing how good or bad the world material that goes into the food actually is whether this protein comes from diseased animals euthanized animals kill human food waste or processing the industry doesnt have to disclose the source of the ingredients. That doesnt prevent them from easily proclaiming that every ounce of their pet food is of the highest quality. The issue is on the back of the dog and Cat Food Bank it doesnt say render terrible quality protein it doesnt say that it also is we also cant less legally grade a u. S. D. A. Inspected meat so this leaves this giant gap for the consumer to have to fill in that void and its wildly confusing the controversy with kibble exists because troy food is 4 weeks of moisture. When your animal eats try to theyre put in a permanent state of dehydration the quality insourcing of where the ingredients came from is kept secret in even if the ingredients were perfect in manufacturing process to make any product shelf stable for extended periods is performed adik sri milli high temperatures. This creates 2 potent carcinogens that are cyclical means in a cruel mind however most companies do not disclose to the consumer what temperature their foods are cooked at and they act as if the trace amounts of carcinogens pose no threat it was a real 948 when veterinarian mark morris decided to create the 1st person correction petfood still recognizable today at a time mark morris was critical of pet foods for lacking Quality Ingredients and he wanted to make a superior product backed by Scientific Research he teamed up with canning manufacturer. Burton hill to fulfill his vision. The result became what we know today as science diet sold in veterinarian offices all across the country. But in 2013 the wall street journal reported hills was starting to see its profits decline because consumers no longer identified with their ingredients. Science diet has since refocused on rebranding their image as more natural creating new product lines and shying away from controversial in rendered ingredients the National Renders Association argues that theyre providing a necessary role when it comes to the recycling of animal carcasses. If there wasnt anywhere to put the animal waste from the human Food Industry where would it go in the earth in the air. In the ocean. It all has to go somewhere. We have a huge Quality Co