I am having difficulty in understanding why people cannot see the risk of feeding your dog raw meat when the dog then carries of therisk of getting a serious infection itself and also of shedding these live pathogens in their faeces. These pathogens are not normally passed in faeces but result from the dog having ingested them. We are told to handle meat in a certain way, ensure it is thoroughly cooked etc to eliminate the risk - that is why raw meat carries an element of risk. It is not the dog - most pathogens that live in dogs do not affect humans, but those causing food poisoning do.
This is an increased risk for children because they do not deal with these pathogens as effectively (we have all heard the stories about the nurseries and the e-coli scares), and also because they are much more likely to be in contact with dog faeces than adults or dogs mouths or toys or feeding dishes. Not feeding raw meat reduces the risk/ How many of us would actually consider feeding raw meat to children.
Look I think this is getting a bit silly also - I believe it to be a genuine risk. This is not just my opinion but the considered opinion of many vets and environmental health experts. We can argue until we are blue in the face - but there it is. It comes down on how big a risk you judge it to be. I judge it to be an unnecssary risk when I have 2 small children in the house. None of this takes into account the risk to the dog - which may be minimal, but still exists. Nobody can predict which meat or animal will be affected.
i've been reading this thread with intererest, and i (as you know) would prefer to feed barf to jarv and am heading that way - not only because at least i'd know what he has in his food, but also ethically i'm not convinced that the large dog food companies have our best friends interests at heart - the testing dog food on dogs has been done before on here so i'm not going to start that.
kb, you've researched this thoroughly and i understand the risks you speak of....but i'm not convinced that the 'risk' transfers directly into cases of these diseases occuring in humans...is there documented proof of barf fed dogs transferring disease onto humans? and if so a percentage would be helpful to measure the risk? i would think more of a risk would be a dog eating a rotting carcass on a walk, or discarded infected 'human' food, or fox poo, or a mexy rabbit, or another dogs poo etc etc....
and isn't the risk of disease everywhere you turn these days?? it's probably more likely to get salmonella from your local take out house than something from your dog, or mrsa from your local hospital....
what really is in the commercial dog food? (apart from burns or arden grange or autarky which seem to be 'ethically' good and use decent food products...) we all know that there are additives in foods (such as bakers), that can affect your dogs behaviour - it's been mentioned here before many times, and i know that some commercial treats can send jarvis hyper - i don't want to risk that...i would rather go back to basics and raw, on balance, is my preference.
