This has probably been adressed before...

Postby call2arms » May 31st, 2008, 10:36 pm

I think feeding raw is awesome, but my only concerns would be parasites... Usually, if there are encysted parasites (ex. worm larvae) in the flesh of animals, cooking it would kill them. Same for most bacteria (I remember someone was telling something about dogs not reacing the same to humans to salmonella?). Now, except for a really strict deworming schedule, how do you make sure your dogs remain parasite-free?

I'm also assuming that when you buy direct from a breeder (by example, whoever bought emu or llama from the farm) you ask questions about the animal's deworming program?

Or am I just being anal?
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Postby gayrghts » June 1st, 2008, 3:40 am

I think you're just being anal :)

From what i've been told.... there are no issues like that....

I usually buy meat that is USDA grade.... even though its made for dogs....

I keep it frozen till just before i feed it, thaw it just like i would if i was feeding it to people.... and then feed....
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Postby call2arms » June 1st, 2008, 10:57 am

Well, I know that stuff exists because I saw it in my parasitology class, and that's the way some worms stay alive.

I guess maybe freezing the meat can kill most worm larvae... But then again the stomach acids doesn't kill them so...

Some parasitology sites say that (for trichinellosis, in pork) the meat must be frozen for at least 20 days in order to kill the larvae.

My classes make me paranoid...
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Postby DemoDick » June 1st, 2008, 12:09 pm

A lot of the "parasite" argument is based on comparing our stomachs to theirs. Canine stomachs are much less friendly to parasites. They can break down and digest raw bone after all.

More importantly, as raw feeding is exploding in popularity, why are we not seeing a corresponding increase in the numbers of infested dogs?

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Postby call2arms » June 1st, 2008, 12:41 pm

I'm not trying to start a debate, just asking questions as to which precautions are taken.

Stomach acid in a dog is no different (has the same ph) as a human's, if I'm not mistaken, around 2,5-3. Therefore, the "capsules" where the worms are encysted are dissolved but the worms not killed. Some flukes live and thrive in there, too. So it's not like a dog's stomach is a magic formula that kills everything that's alive in it... Resisting this is their way of living and they're pretty smart creatures, otherwise they wouldn't be around anymore with all the deworming meds we have around.

Take any animal in nature that's eating raw meat and I guarantee you that they have at least one type of parasite.

Now the meat is given to our pets is of different quality (the animals are routinely dewormed in production farms) but there's still a chance that parasites can be present - I don't know of dewormers that can kill a parasite encysted in muscle meat.

And, Demo, we might not be seeing so many cases because people tend to freeze their meat, so that's great. But there might be some that we're not aware of too, some parasites do not give off lots of clinical signs before the animal gets real sick. Either way, I still think feeding raw is great, and I'm sure the dogs enjoy it a million times more than kibble.

Edited cause I'm the queen of typos.
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Postby pitbullmamaliz » June 1st, 2008, 1:12 pm

I believe dogs' intestinal tracts are also much shorter than ours, which I'm sure would make a difference. If they don't take long to digest, the creepy crawlies wouldn't have as much time to get comfortable.
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Postby BullyLady » June 1st, 2008, 2:23 pm

Give me time to do some research, but I do not believe it's true that dog's stomach acids have the same pH as ours. Which is why their stomachs can and regularly do break down bone where as we would end up with a blockage or vomit it back up, and why their bellies can kill parasites that ours can't.

EDIT: Here we go....
Dog's stomach pH is 1-2 compared with ours at up to 5
http://k9joy.com/education/fydquestions.html

http://www.mountaindogfood.com/HealthCa ... tnotes.htm

And please remember that pH is a logarithmic scale, so each .1 on the pH scale is actually a difference of 1000!! :shock:
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Postby call2arms » June 1st, 2008, 5:47 pm

Actually, depending on your sources, some state that human ph goes down to 1 : http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultran ... Tract.html

My source for dog stomach ph is from research, unrelated to raw feeding so it's not too biaised... Go down some, you have the values for all states, ages etc... It is very variable, somewhat between 1 and up to 3.9. http://www.rivm.nl/interspeciesinfo/int ... tomach.jsp

Dogs do have a minimal amount of enzymes in their saliva - amylase - that enables them to digest starch, and also lysozyme, to kill overabundant bacteria (and so do we). K9 joy needs to check their anatomy books... When you eat a tartar steak, you'll still digest it - a ph of 5 won't cut it.
In most animals, the length of the small intestine is roughly 3.5 times body length - your small intestine, or that of a large dog, is about 6 meters in length. Although precise boundaries between these three segments of bowel are not observed grossly or microscopically, there are histologic differences among duodenum, jejunum and ileum. http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pa ... atomy.html


I'm totally ready to believe that dogs have some sort of mechanism for avoiding being eaten alive by parasites, I'd just like to see un-biaised proof of that.
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Postby BullyLady » June 1st, 2008, 7:06 pm

I have a bunch of dog anatomy physiology books, give me some time to flip thru them and I will get you some unbiased info.

But also, not every human stomach can digest steak tartare. You have to work your stomach up to something like that, in essence change your stomach's pH, because it does naturally hover around 5.
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Postby call2arms » June 1st, 2008, 7:55 pm

Here is a research that clearly states differences between gastric ph in dogs and humans, not what we might think! fasted human : 1-2, fasted dog: 3-4! http://abstracts.aapspharmaceutica.com/ ... sionId=482
No matter how acidic the ph, I still recall that most worms larvae will not be killed by this. The adult stage of worms might, I don't know...

Either way, I guess if you freeze your meat for a while, it's all good!

Edited to add: my google search for the gastric ph site was : human gastric ph, so not biaised.

Also, I want to re-state that I'm not looking for a war!!!
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Postby BullyLady » June 1st, 2008, 8:11 pm

http://www.walthamusa.com/articles/cgistomach.pdf
Page 3 "During meals, gastric pH is about 1 to 1.5. Unlike in humans, the secretion of gastric acid
is intermittent in cats and dogs, and during low-fasting acid secretion between meals,
gastric pH can rise as high as 3 to 6.5."
From Waltham USA who manufactures kibble, so not raw biased.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Canine-Digestion&id=590029
"Swallowed food passes down the esophagus to the stomach. The stomach of a canine is very acidic with a pH registering as low as 1."
From another kibble related dog digestion article.

http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/health/anatomy.htm
"The stomach of a canine is very acidic with a pH as low as 1."
Not dealing with food at all, just anatomy and physiology in general.



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Postby call2arms » June 1st, 2008, 10:16 pm

My source is based on research beagles, by Pfizer, this is actually an abstract from a research paper they submitted on variability of gastric ph in dogs. I tend to believe that more than a site on lowchen anatomy...

Inter- and Intra–Individual Variability of Gastric pH in Dogs

Purpose. Gastrointestinal pH in dogs is well documented and often believed to be one unit higher than that in human.
Gastric pH in fasted human is ~ 1-2, whereas gastric pH in fasted dogs is believed to be 3 or 4, and these values are often used as a default value for in vitro experiments and computational simulations. The purposes of this research are
1) to establish baseline measurement of the gastric pH in our own dog colony,
2) to evaluate inter- and intra-individual variability of gastric pH,
and 3) to evaluate gastric emptying time in fed and fasted dogs.

Methods.
Gastric pH in sixteen male beagle dogs was measured using Bravo pH telemetry system (Medtronic). For fasted studies, the dogs were fasted the day before the study after receiving only two cans of liquid diet at 10 am to satisfy caloric requirements.

For the fed study, the dogs received 10 grams or 50 grams of food fifteen minutes before dosing the Bravo pH capsule, following by a 50 ml gavage of water to aid in swallowing. The capsules were calibrated about ten minutes before dosing according to manufacturer’s instructions.

The pH values were then recorded for 24 hours. Gastric emptying time was determined when pH shifted from an acidic pH (1-2) to a neutral pH (6-7). Results. Gastric pH in fasted dogs was ~1-2 in fifteen out of 16 dogs. One dog showed a higher pH (>7) under the fasted condition. The average gastric pH in fasted dogs without this outlier was 1.62 ± 0.29, which is similar to the reported gastric pH in fasted human.

and also: Our stomachs are vessels with .5-1 liter capacity. The contents of the stomach include hydrochloric acid, pepsinogen, and mucus. The pH of the stomach in a normal, healthy human is in the 1-3 range. There are many purposes for the high acidity found in the stomach. One of the main functions of the high acid content is to destroy bacteria that are ingested. Few bacteria can survive in an environment with a pH of 1 to 3! Some do, though, because on an impenetrable outer coat that can resist acid breakdown. http://www.chemcases.com/pheno/pheno14.htm (Kennesaw state university)
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Postby BullyLady » June 2nd, 2008, 12:29 am

Actually my articles showed the same thing, because your article deals with fasted dogs. My articles repeatedly showed that the pH was MUCH lower just after a meal, and even as the food was exiting the small bowel and entering the large bowel the stomach pH remained veeeery low, lower than a human's could ever get. But while not eating/digesting their stomach pH raises to about the same level as a human's. :mrgreen:
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Postby DemoDick » June 2nd, 2008, 12:34 am

Again, I think all you have to do is look at the large numbers of people feeding raw whose dogs do not have these problems and are in fact healthier for it. The asymptomatic argument only holds up until the dogs get extremely sick and die, which should be happening in large numbers given the explosion in raw feeding. I think it goes way beyond stomach PH.

Ask most people scientifically trained in parasitology whether they would eat raw seafood and you'll probably hear about how dangerous it is and how it should be avoided. That doesn't change the fact that the Japanese have been doing so for thousands of years without problems. I'm not giving up sushi; it's my favorite food.

Studies are good but I think it's possible to overthink this. Why would dogs who are almost genetically identical to wild canines (indeed they can breed sucessfully) require radically different food sources? More importantly why are raw fed dogs not getting sick after a few years of feeding?

I could never handle a parasitology class. Come to think of it, I didn't agree with most of what my college professors had to say.

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Postby amazincc » June 2nd, 2008, 12:50 am

My vet says the only parasites to worry about are those in raw salmon from the pacific (I think)... I don't feed raw salmon.

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Postby katiek0417 » June 2nd, 2008, 7:35 am

I have to agree with Demo and Christine, and others on here...I feed raw to several of my dogs, and have never seen an issue with parasite increases, etc. Different animals can break things down differently. We can eat things that other organisms can't; while other organisms can eat things that we simply can't...bone, in the case of raw feeding, is one of those things. We can't crunch bone then have our bodies break it down as a dog's does...

I admit I have never taken a course on parasitology (would have if I decided to go on to med school) so this is just opinion...

Oh, and I love sushi, too...
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Postby call2arms » June 2nd, 2008, 9:59 am

I'm glad that you guys that feed raw have healthy dogs, that's great. My point is just that yes, while canines can handle raw food (if they couldn't, they wouldn't have survived in the wild) but clearly wolves in the wild don't live as long, or are parasite-free.

The way worms work, they HAVE to be able to withstand the animal's digestive system enviromnent, otherwise we would never, ever see an animal with intestinal worms!! Some of them are acquired though eating a transient host - rabbit, mouse, fish , whatever(like a carrier, if you want), by eating the permanent host - like pork and trichinella spiralis, and some are transmitted by other parasites, like dipilydium caninum who is given off by fleas.

All the ones who are given off by eating transient or permanent host, must survive in order to reproduce, therefore be able to go through an animal's digestive system. Their whole life plan is taht when their host will be eaten, that they'll just go around and eat the predator, or reproduce in it and be shed off in the stools or whatever, and comtaminate someone else...

What I'm trying to say, no matter what type of digestive system :wink: (and by the way, my parasitology class was geared towards dogs, cats and horses, we couldn't have cared less about humans except in the zoonose part), is it possible to have worms! I know one or two people who have had them, and hell do we see dogs (not necessarily eating raw) at work and school with worms, not just puppies... They didn't catch them by kissing the neighbor's dog! (I'm not implying necessarily eating raw, either)

I again will say it's great to feed raw, and the instances of dogs being fed raw with worms might be much lower than one would expect, but I'll answer my own question... Cause notice that no one actually did answer - do you take any precautions as far as worms go? - all the answers were basically "no no no, it's not true, dogs don't get worms when they eat raw, they magically disappear, I don't care about it''... Alright!

I mean, proof is there. Worms exist, how do animals get them? Mostly by transmammary and transplacental route for puppies, but how about the rest? There are loads of ways and I'm sorry but eating raw anything is one of the options, whether it happens often or not!
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Postby amazincc » June 2nd, 2008, 10:02 am

Oh, I guess I misunderstood your question. :wink:
I have a worm-free RAW eater... get his stool checked by the vet every so often. :)
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Postby call2arms » June 2nd, 2008, 10:04 am

Thank you! lol (I think it turned into a debate, I know I didn't help...)

And that's great, I know how good Mick is doing!
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Postby TinaMartin » June 2nd, 2008, 2:06 pm

I think that dogs have more of a chance picking up worms from the environment that from food. One dog could very easily pick up worms from smelling at an infested dogs stool. I think that there are to many precautions in the meat industry for there to be much of a problem. I freeze most of what I get anyway. :|
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