By Julie Lauzon, agr, MSc, Pet Nutrition
At Big Country Raw, we work very hard on the quality of our product, and on sharing education and knowledge on raw feeding to the pet community. It always saddens us when misleading, alarmist claims are made against raw food.
We would like to reassure our customers about the safety of our food. Just like most of you, we saw the news articles titled “Raw dog food may be fueling spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria”. Antibiotic resistant bacteria is a real concern that we should all take very seriously, but raw dog food is in no way the bad guy. Over prescription of antibiotics without actual bacterial testing, in both bad farming practices as well as in pet health care, are the main source of the problem. It is a major industry concern, and health specialists need to review their practices to reduce the spread of antibiotics resistant bacteria.
We are more than aware of what those bad practices can lead to, this is why we give such importance to pasture raised, human grade, wild caught, free range, etc. All the food we use is the same we can find in high quality grocery stores, where we buy the food to feed our own families. We also carefully test our food to ensure there is no harmful bacterial contamination, and we invite you to consult our Food Safety Plan available on our website.
What is misleading in this is that only raw dog food is targeted, while the past decade has showed us that processed foods are much more prone to be contaminated with harmful bacteria, as per the numerous recalls. In fact “since 2007, at least 132 people are known to have contracted Salmonella from dry food” and none from raw (Feeding Dogs, 2020). Another study made on fecal bacterial profiles on dogs showed that 96% of dogs (132 dogs between 2005 and 2006 in Ontario) were shedding antimicrobial resistant bacteria, and since raw fed dog are far from being 96% of the population, we can clearly see that commercial high processing practice doesn’t solve the issue (Feeding Dogs, 2020).
We will keep on promoting fresh, raw diets for pets. This only shows us that we are all at the mercy of farming and health care practices, and that we have to make educated decisions in regards to the quality of the food we give to our pets.
As always, if you have any questions about our products, our customer service team is happy to help!
Give us a call: 905-957-2717 or send a message to: info@bigcountryraw.ca