FEDIAF/AAFCO: The Standard We Need?

Too early for this. Can you just repeat that last line, Conor?

I'm sweating just saying it. I'm very hot, lads. What temperature is it over there?

It's pretty warm and I've got the window open because it's so hot in this room that I need the window open. But Pete is going to go crazy because he's going to be able to hear the birds. So I'm really sorry, Pete. The flapping of my fan.

Conor's officially having a hot flash.

We are the Raw Pet Medics. Yeah, when we can finally settle down to do an introduction to this year's show. We're the Raw Pet Medics and we do this every week and you're very welcome to come along. There are a lot of people who help us on Patreon and we're really grateful. You just go to Patreon, put in Raw Pet Medics and we are there and you can help us and we really appreciate that. We are on your podcasts and you can get it anywhere and it's, it just means you can listen to us when you're mowing the lawn or going to the bathroom or— well, I didn't want to say anything, anything where you can just put some headphones on and we will join you in all our glory. So there you go, it's great to be here. Guys, how's your week been? Any, anything strange or stuff?

I've got news, I've got news, I want to tell you my news. I've got two newses. First, I've got this online. If you're wondering Why am I wearing a lady's chain? Well, the reason was I was looking—

I've got an idea, but I won't say.

And safe in the knowledge Elaine doesn't listen to the show. This lady gave me this chain. No, I saw her on Etsy. It's like a DIY type thing. And I wanted my logo on a big long chain thinking I'd just like to have my logo on a chain and see what it looks like. But you don't check the diameter, the dimensions. So I just bought a medium size and it's like a joker. It's like this tiny little— it's not what I imagined. So if you're wondering why I'm wearing a lady's You're actually saying it wasn't Etsy at all, it was Temu. Yeah, yeah, it was Temu version. Yeah.

So are you wearing that permanently? No.

Well, I'm going to wear a slightly more manly one when she— I got on to her and said, what's the story? This is a child's bracelet. So I'm making a bigger, heavier one soon. So I just thought that'd be kind of cool just to wear your brand a bit more. So that's going to come out.

You're going to be like one of these rappers with the big gold chain.

Yeah, big gold chain. West side, west side. And so the second thing is, do you remember our conversation, Nick? It was maybe 2 or 3 months ago, and I was saying, I really hate my black fillings, and I just cannot believe I've got mercury in my face, and I want it gone. And you said, oh yeah, man, I noticed. And I was like, you noticed my black fillings? I felt like such a dirty old man. And so I instantly— yeah, no, sometimes people need to be told, look, you know, sort it out. And so be honest. Yeah, yeah. So I just said, no, listen, I can't, I can't, I can't let this go, go degenerate. Um, so I contacted some natural dentist, uh, the person. And, uh, yeah, it's some of the things that I can fix. And so, uh, yes, this dentist, she's, uh, she goes, oh yeah, no, I do that every day, it's all people ask me to do. And then she had a look at my teeth and she goes, oh, we can make a few improvements here and I can take all those fillings out. Look, she did a few scans and she goes, look, a little bit of decay under that one. She goes, just take them all out to replace them all. I'm like, oh yeah, cool. And she goes, I can fix the crown on that tooth. And she goes, do you want an implant as well? Because I needed an implant. And I think, yeah, I've been thinking about getting one, but they're very expensive. And she goes, here's the price. And she gives me all the price. And I thought, oh my God, this is great. And I was showing other dentists I know too. And I said, what do you think of those prices? And they said, they're a bit too good to be true. And I thought, oh no, what do you do with that? It's such a conundrum because I like being cheap. And I don't like spending money. And but they are your teeth. So then I spoke to a couple of people that use it and said, oh no, she's starting off and she's got people that come into her and do like a day here and a day there. And she owns the business, but she gets it done cheap to get people in the door for the first year. So she goes, get on it. So I'm in there and I got my teeth done, the first half of my face done.

Let's have a look. So this is Conor for the podcast people. He's just opening his gob and we're having a look at his molars. So on the— it's looking white, white as a—

this is the missing one, this is the missing one. That's— it's been bad since, um, since, uh, a blow to the side of the face.

Yeah, and then your upper left, let's just have a look at that. This is—

this is— how do I get the—

just put your head up and down a bit. There you go. Right, there's— so there's a line of black which is the fillings, which the amalgam fillings, which look kind of black, but they're mercury.

Who got the mercury black?

Who had the idea to put fill, fill children's heads, and Conor, with mercury?

That's nuts. It's absolutely nuts.

It is, it is. You know, they found in, in Scandinavia about, I don't know, 20-odd years ago, not because of people receiving it, but because of the, the, the mercury vapor from putting them the amalgam.

No way.

People see it was affecting technicians, dentists.

They didn't think putting it in living bone would be like a potential way of picking it. And it is. People have amalgam fillings, have higher mercury readings in hair tests, and it drops after you take them out. So yeah, I'm looking forward to the health benefits of that. I have 2 here, I've got 2 there, I have 2 there and 2 there. Well, one of them is a missing tooth now. So I'm getting it all done and I got the midazolam. So it puts you out and then you come to halfway through and I just woke up with a snort and I was like, oh, sorry, I must have dozed off. As if you're going to doze off when you're getting all this work done because you just talk yourself into it. And then I started feeling all the work she was doing. I said, I'm feeling it again and back at it. Then I wake up and Elaine's there and I'm like, no way, Elaine, what's going on? I came home, I collapsed onto the bed at 6:00 and I woke up at 4:00 in the morning, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. And now I'm feeling it again. So it's very strange stuff. It's— I've never had it before.

But did they do local anesthetic as well?

A little bit to start. I can take all that. Like, it's just, it's just the drilling and stuff. I don't want, I don't want to experience it. €150. Why wouldn't you spend €150 and skip all the agony? 3 hours of work, all one side of my face cleaned and fixed and all the bits and pieces. You wake up 3 hours later and it's done. Highly recommend a bit of midazolam, guys. It is just awesome. So there you go. That's my tooth experience. I'm feeling great. I feel like I want to smile.

Ketamine. It's a wonderful—

Yeah, totally. I'm sure it was a good time for somebody. I'm not going to go down that road. But yeah. What about you, Bren? Any news that can compete with my white teeth?

Oh, no, not at all. No, I think that's just pretty much—

That's a showstopper.

Ouch. Yes, it is a showstopper. Hats off to you. I'm not sure. I appreciate waking up sort of 3 hours later, not knowing what happened in those 3 hours.

Check your wallet.

Check a lot more than your wallet.

I didn't want to say. I didn't want to say.

It's too obvious. It's too obvious a joke.

He just felt a bit uncomfortable. He just thought it was piles.

Yeah, I thought I was sitting on my wallet. But no, I've no wallet and I'm uncomfortable. So that's double bad. Anyway, so that's all.

Did Elaine go to the dentist with you or did she just turn up?

Yeah, when I say when you finished, I actually, I had walked down the stairs and there were stairs there and I'm holding the assistant's hand and then she's there. So that was it. It's not like she was standing over me. I had enough wherewithal to meet her, but I don't remember the car ride home. I don't remember going into the spare room and going to— she said, I'm going for a rest, is what I said. And I just lay face down on the pillow and just woke up at 4:00 in the morning, 10 hours later. So it's crazy stuff. It's just, you know, maybe your body's probably a bit sore from all the bits and pieces and the scraping and drilling. It's not nice, you know, but to anybody that's afraid of the dentist, just get drugged.

It's awesome. Did you do a detox? You know, because obviously they're going to mobilize all that stuff.

I'm going to. Definitely.

Okay. What's your plan? What's your plan with the detox?

I'm going to go to ChatGPT and I'm going to say, what would Neil Nathan do for post-amalgam filling removal? And it'll tell me exactly what Neil Nathan would do. So that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, I don't know what is some sort of clay, some sort of chlorella, chlorella or clay. I'm not sure. It's one of the two, isn't it?

Yeah, I don't know. Colloidal.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, there is chlorella, but I think there's colloidal in there as well. You get some.

Oh yeah, I need to do that.

You've got to do a chelation thing. There is that thing that comes up.

So yeah, that's a very topical, very topical for tonight. Chelation, that is the buzzword for tonight.

Chelation.

We're going to be talking. Let's get into it, guys.

Let's get into Fedyaev and Avko, the standard we need, question mark. A very well-placed question mark, Brent. Good work. Good work.

Yes, very nicely done. For those on the podcast, it says Fedyaev and Avko, the standard we need. Inflection up. Only an Irish would do that.

Inflection up. Or is that the Canadian? I can never remember.

Irish people know.

Do we do that? The Aussies do it.

Oh yeah, I'll get it. So who wants to start us off? Fedyaev and Avko. Who are they? I mean, Bren, you use them in your work and Nick, who wants to start us off?

Okay, I'm going to start and just say, okay, so, so AFCO is the American— it stands for the American Association of Feed, not Food, Feed Control Officials.

Okay.

And basically they watch over what goes into pet food in a very, very simple and FEDIAF And I don't even know what FEDIAF stands for, something French. But basically they are the European equivalent and they, they regulate what you can put in pet food and what you can't. And, and I'm not sure about FEDIAF, but I'm sure they do work with pet food manufacturers, the ultra-processed manufacturers. But also they actually— FEDIAF, to their credit, they do have a a raw wing as well. So that's wonderful in terms of FedYaf. Yeah, because Greg Van Praagh, who's at Benefit Natural, he is very high in FedYaf now. Yeah, so he's on the committees and he is a raw food advocate.

Yeah, I thought it was PFM UK he was in.

No, he's gone, you know, elected into Europe. So that's good. So we've got somebody there. However, AFCO, they are pretty much in bed with the ultra-processed manufacturers, the Marses, the Purinas, the Hills and Royal Canin and everybody else. They invite those people to their meetings to decide what goes into pet food. That is to say, if one of the manufacturers says, oh, that's going to cost us quite a lot if you do that, then they will negotiate such that it is, it is more comfortable for the pet food manufacturer, which I think is— I think that really stinks. It means that the, the manufacturers of pet food are writing the rules themselves by lobbying AFCO. Any, any, any thoughts on that, guys? I'm pretty cynical about these things.

One word you said there, Nick, I'm going to pass it over to Brent because I've got something else ready, but, um, One word you said there was regulate. But AFCO regulate. But the key is AFCO and FEDIAF don't regulate, don't regulate in any real way.

They've got— no, but they, they know how to— they put up these are the— these are— this is what we would like—

guidelines. They put guidelines and the local veterinary departments, Department of Agriculture, really enforce it. So FEDIAF and AFCO never check products. They don't have any laws. You will never meet them in a court. They've no teeth whatsoever. They've no legal justification, nothing. So are, and you're right to say that they've got pet food manufacturers sitting on their board. I assume it's the same with FEDIAF. You might say, oh, it's a necessary part of the whole thing. But for sure, if you look at some of the things that have gone on, even the fact that you picked up AFCO feed, the difference between feed and food is that you're allowed to use 4D meat in feed, dead, diseased, dying, disabled animals that haven't been checked by a vet. Like, it's the absolute waste ground of— and that doesn't apply in Europe because since BSE, we burn everything that's you know, not human consumption. Yeah. So we're a bit tighter here, but in the US, feed is something you definitely don't want to be feeding. So AFCO are feed officials. Anyway, Bren, what do you know of AFCO and FEDIAF? You use them with your work with Bell Duke, don't you? Yeah.

But, you know, at some point you've got to draw a line. Okay. At which point, you know, the downside is we've got so many organizations, so many professionals which hang their hat on those standards set by those two organizations, FEDIAF and AFCO. And it's a shame because we'll go on to talk about are they actually the right standards that we should be looking at for nutrition? Because let's face it, where did they set up from? You know, if we wind back to when everything started, you know, unraveling when they found a calorific baseline that they thought they'd create out of excesses that were around in the '70s and then thought, oh boy, there's a few issues coming up here. Certain animals get problems with deficiencies if we just feed this. So you ended up with all of those effectively advices coming through and they set up, well, we better start advising that there's certain levels of taurine going in, there's there's certain levels of vitamin A going in, there's certain levels of, you know, and, and so it builds up. What always makes me chuckle is that people hold these to the gold standard, but every 2 or 3 years they're suddenly adjusting them because, oops, we made a mistake and we now need to change the advice. And I think one of the latest ones was talking about vitamin D and which vitamin D should be appropriate for dogs and cats. And yeah, we'll talk about that in a bit, but For the last 20 years, I've heard people in the UK saying Fediaf is the thing, but yet none of them have talked about the adjustments that they've made in that 20 years because they got it wrong. So I don't think we should be saying that they know it all and that they've got it right. And the reason that they're getting it wrong so much is because they're taking a vegetable matter baseline calorific-rich, usually grain, but some sort of baseline food, and they're trying to adjust it as much as possible to emulate meats. Yeah, and when you do that, you've got to then keep adding stuff in to try and make it up to what's nutrient appropriate for our carnivores.

Yeah, are they trying to emulate meats? Because it's impossible to emulate meats with, with a high-grain carbohydrate food. What trying to do is they're trying to start with a, with a starchy base because it's dead cheap. Yeah, and the American farmers make too, you know, too much maize and too much wheat and too much soy, and so they, they can use those things as the base because they're dirt cheap. And then that they will add some meat protein— I'm not going to say it's meat because it's, it's from meat meal, and we've spoken about meat meal and bone meal. But then because it's so far off, a dog eating a rabbit, they have to then tinker with the iron and the copper and the selenium in order to make this approximation. It's like making a kite into Frank— you know, all the modifications you have to do to a kite to make it into an airplane. That's what it is. You know, it's a little bit here and we need an engine on here. Yes, it's still a kite. Still a kite.

No.

And it's got— yeah, yeah. No, exactly. It's that kind of thing. It's absolutely crazy.

So it's kind of like trying to make a car, but you're actually taking the engine out, really, because like the nutrients they use is key because real food and synthetic nutrients that come from a conical flask are absorbed very differently by the body. They come in by themselves. They've no cofactors with them. Ultra-processed food has all these other ingredients in there. So zinc and calcium and iron fight for the same transporters to get across the gut membrane. So when you have lots of one of those present, so they put in lots of zinc, oxide. And so it's not just the nutrient, like, you know, um, the best zinc supplements are chelated to a protein, as we've said numerous times. Now, just for people to understand, we're talking about the feed guidelines. It says 100% complete and balanced on the packet. So when it says that, 100% complete and balanced, they're adhering to the AFCO and FEDIAF nutrient profiles. So they— this is where they tell you how much protein, zinc, uh, you know, calcium, vitamins, amino acids should be these are minimum guidelines. You've got to hit the minimum. And as of 2017, 160 different products tested, two-thirds of those products failed to provide the minimum for your pet. So this is showing the lack of regulation. They're advising about these guidelines that we wish you would put these in to avoid the minimums, to avoid all the catastrophes that have happened in the past, as Nick has highlighted. But only, but two-thirds of dry pet foods are failing So you've a 1 in 3 chance of buying a complete pet food and they're providing the minimum nutrition to get your dog through a 6-month period.

Was that the 2017?

That was Davies. Davies 2017. So the problem that these guys have, aside from the fact that they don't even put in the nutrients correctly in the first place, is that the nutrients they use. So for example, the best zinc supplement is like chelated to a protein, as we've talked about many times. So zinc oxide is crap, poorly absorbed, 10 to 20% is absorbable. It by the dog. What you want is the zinc that's been chelated to a protein, because minerals are in the soil and the rocks on their own— zinc there and calcium there and iron there— by themselves. The body doesn't take things in like that. They need to be made organic. So the only things that make them organic is the plants in the soil, and they take up the minerals, and then they— the plant chelates them to a protein, and then somebody eats the plants, and then we eat the animal, and now the mineral has become organic, and you can now take it into the body. When it's inorganic in the soil, you can't absorb it. So you can eat lots of iron filings, and that is the iron that's put into pet food. It's put into kitty's breakfast cereal. YouTube people putting magnets on iron-supplemented breakfast cereal. YouTube. So poor quality minerals are used because they're cheap. You could buy good quality zinc supplements that are already chelated and then considered organic supplements. So that'd be like your proteinates and your sulfates and your, and your big glycinate. These are great mineral supplements, but they're expensive. So only good companies use good quality minerals and the vast majority. So they use poor quality minerals. They compete with other minerals at the membrane processing, ruins their absorption. And even then, as I said, two-thirds aren't even the right amount. So there's mega problems with the way they're trying to frank and prey this pet food and they are not doing it correctly. They're trying and then enter fresh food to try and use these ridiculous profiles as if they bear any relevance to real food.

Okay. I'm just going to jump in there and just say Anyway, if anybody wants to have a look at these nutrient guidelines, you can get them if you just put in FEDIAF nutrition guidelines 2024. Off you go, you've got, you're off to the races. It's really interesting because to their credit, and I don't really like doing that, but you know, credit where credit's due, it says iron, because of poor availability, iron from oxide or carbonate salts that are added to the diet should not be considered sources contributing to their minimum nutrient level. That is to say, they recognize that iron oxide and iron carbonate are not very well absorbed. So you're putting in a supplement in the food, which then goes into, into the, the animal, which then will come out the other end. Okay. I.e., making absolutely no contribution to the iron benefit, the nutritional level of iron there. However, when it comes to zinc, no mention whatsoever. So you can use—

but that's because, yeah, what will happen in about 2 years' time, somebody will finally point that out. And after they've decided the flavor of coffee that they want as to whether it's got, you know, vanilla syrup in or not and whether they're going to have 2/3 milk or 1/3 milk milk. They'll then get on to the point of deciding some of the nutrient contents and somebody will point out maybe it's not absorbed as much and they'll make a policy of, oh, we need to tell everybody it's not absorbed as much. And they'll get on to selenium because it's a bit down the way. Iron's higher up in the alphabet, so they've already made that decision. Have you also noticed that the thing about the iron is what they therefore say, because it's not absorbed as much, they just increase the levels that they think, and this is what's relevant.

This is a massive problem. That's good. So yeah, this idea of, so they use more zinc because, you know, the pet food is so, it's so hard for the dogs to absorb. So the, when you test pet foods, what are the nutrients they're really high in? It will be zinc, lots of zinc oxide, because it's harmless, isn't it? It's harmless, but it's not, because all that zinc is competing at the membrane for these transporters. And what happens is inadvertently the zinc can get to the gut membrane and cause copper issues. They compete for the same, they clog up the transporters, your body no longer takes in copper. And so you can get copper deficiency from that. And not only that, but the body, when it's going into copper deficiency, sends out more transporters for copper. Give us more copper, give us more copper, we need copper. Now your gut membrane's primed for copper. If you feed a food now that contains copper sulfate, which is the dirt-poor copper that they put into pet food, copper sulfate is 100% soluble. It's as close to a toxin you need to talk about, and that is 100% absorbed. So if you've got lots of receptors out for copper, boom, you're going to get a copper issue. Same with iodine. If you're short on iodine, the transporters will be at the gut membrane. We need iodine. If you put in a pet food that's grossly high in iodide, which is very common when you test them, you'll get this sudden shock to the thyroid. So this is how these— it's such an impossible Franken-task to get this ridiculous, you know, it's like a ridiculous— you're making Pinocchio with a couple of plastic straws. It's just not going to work. It's too complicated. It, you know, too complex. You know, it's ridiculous. The studies even for zinc, check this out. People always say Fediaf, the gold standard, all this. Well, listen to the studies. Don't forget Fediaf's figures are preprocessing. So when you look at prey, for example, prey has 8 to 10 times less vitamin D than what Fediaf say has to be in the product for 1,000 calories. So you have to have this 10 times higher figure of vitamin D in your pet food food for FEDIAF to give it the minimum standard when actually prey doesn't have a tenth of that vitamin D. And the reason for that is FEDIAF knows processing annihilates vitamin D, utterly annihilates it, 80-90% gone in processing. So they say you need to use 8, 9, 10 times more because these are pre-processing figures. So here are us dummies come along trying to formulate and we have to add vitamin D to hit the minimum FEDIAF standards so the Department of Agriculture will allow to manufacture pet food. So these standards have zero bearing on real food. But listen to the science behind zinc, okay? Guess how many studies support— they are in the nutrient requirements of cats and dogs, okay? This book here, which is what the whole thing is based on, which is really fascinating. Yeah, it's very— and it's not that intimidating, the book, compared to some of the books I have down there. But when you go to nutrient requirements of cats and dogs and you go to the requirements for zinc, so the requirement studies in dogs where they worked out this requirement of 80 milligrams, whatever, per kilogram of food, how many studies did they use to support that, the requirement for zinc? Most important mineral out there, surely, boy.

Something like 2, but only on pregnant bitches and an iguana or something.

Oh, you're so close. You're thinking of the protein. The protein, the low protein figure is based on 4 studies of pregnant bitches. It's based on 4 studies. So all the vets saying that there's so much science behind this, there's 4 studies. Okay, there might be 4 amazing studies with thousands of dogs involved. Check out the ages of these studies. In the first one, Robertson and Burns, 1963, 2 groups of unspecified number of pups were followed for 7 weeks. One was fed 33 milligrams, which would be considered very little, and one was fed 133, and they found the one on 33 milligrams got zinc deficiencies. Okay, so far, 33 milligrams, which is seen as quite a little— it's not a lot of zinc— gives zinc deficiency to pups.

What form was the zinc in?

Oh, dirt crap. You know, just crap.

You know, does it say zinc oxide?

I'm sure it does, but I've only taken 3 or 4 lines on each study to get through. Okay. Sandecki, 1982. 2. Okay, so I love when people say we only use modern studies. Well, your whole book is based on tiny old 6-week-old puppies were fed, uh, zinc-deficient diets, uh, and followed for 4 weeks. And after 4 weeks, they had skin lesions. That's the second study. Okay, they knew it was a zinc deficiency. 3. Sandecki again, 3 years later, 4 puppies were fed a zinc-deficient diet of corn and soy for 5 weeks, and the zinc-deficient puppies developed issues. Fourth study. This is the fourth study to defend that the requirements of every cat and dog eating every complete pet food out there is based on this fourth study. It must be a gem. This is the good one. Here we go. Buell et al., 1991. They love mentioning it. They compared how well dogs can use different types of zinc, 4 different types of zinc in 4 different dogs. They followed the dogs for 20 days. So this was a measure of how well well, zinc glycinate is absorbed versus zinc oxide, which is an okay study, but it's not something to bloody bet the house on. It's just like, okay. And they found that the dogs on zinc oxide had a major issue and the dogs were excreting more zinc than the others. Hair growth was best on the chelated normal zinc. That was the conclusion of that study. None of those 4 studies followed 100 dogs, 50 on this, 50 on that for a year, 2, 3 years, check structural integrity, behavioral issues, like, no, there's nothing that supports it.

Yeah, all that stuff.

Yeah, the figure, like, they measure nothing. The way they picked out initially the 120 milligram figure for growing pups, here's what they had to do. The Sandecki study that I mentioned, 1982, they compared a deficient diet and they just picked out of the air the figure 120 milligrams as the normal zinc. And AFCO said, that's now the normal amount of zinc. Sandecki just pulled it out of the sky. That's what we'll use to make sure the pups have enough. And so they use the figure 120 milligrams based on a study of 4 puppies. The guy plucked the figure out of the air. It is twice the amount of zinc than any prey animal can possibly provide. And they've been running with that figure ever since. But the science behind it is utter garbage. So, and this is just zinc. You can apply the same things to manganese. All of us were running around trying to find enough manganese for our raw dog food. People are doing Solutions pet food, you know, in fairness, they're putting up saying, listen guys, 80/10/10 diets aren't patient. And the vitamins and minerals they name are zinc, which is just a ridiculous figure. Vitamin D, which is impossible. Liver doesn't have a 20th enough vitamin D. Like, it's just not possible to make a raw diet with enough vitamin D. And each of the minerals was like, yeah, there's no studies for manganese, there's no studies for selenium of any value whatsoever. So this is the science, in inverted commas, that Fedia are basing their stuff on. It's just, it's absolutely horrific.

When you say there's not enough vitamin D in liver, that's, that's when you're talking about raw liver, for example, when you compare it with the recommendations. Okay.

Yeah.

Which take account of the, of the degradation of the vitamin D in the processing. Okay.

Yes.

But if you feed proper liver, even lightly cooked liver to the dog, they're going to get oodles of vitamin D and it's going to be D3. D3, not D2. In the FDF recommendations, they don't differentiate between D3 and D2. D2 comes from plants and is useless for carnivores. I think it's just that it's super useful.

2024, they differentiated and they started to declare that you should be using D3. Okay, the foods, but they didn't adjust the vitamin D level. They just said, we think that D3 is going to be utilized more readily by dogs and cats.

It is 10 times better.

And actually, but then they must have taken a break for coffee or for the next meeting and forgot to adjust the vitamin D level that they advised to go into the food. Also, I don't believe that they— that whole thing of pre-manufacture, pre— so in effectively looking at formulating the product, there isn't a lot of work, I don't believe, in many of these companies are looking what is coming out the back end.

Absolutely.

So actually checking what is coming out in those, and that then becomes a bit of an issue because a lot of people are taking those standards as they are what should be coming out. And even David said, oh, that study was, well, I tested the end product and then compared it to the guidelines.

Yeah.

And they're deficient. But then if the guidelines were based on formulation, not on output, right, how could he compare them?

So that's the pop we're being sold. We're being sold the idea that these guidelines, the manufacturers are considering all the nutrient clashes, the crap uptake, the 4 or 5 times being cooked, sitting in storage for 6 months. Yeah, you want to check your fats and vitamin E after storage, vitamin B. You cannot store those things at ambient temperature, sweaty cargo hold, open bag in the cupboard. Like, it is— listen to the studies on vitamin D, guys, because, um, I just, I had these two ready. Guess how many studies support the vitamin D of all vitamins? How many studies, guys, support the vitamin D requirements in the nutrient research, uh, manual. How many studies?

2?

3? You're getting closer. 3 studies. Okay, here's it. Let me read them. I've got one line in each one. The first study was from 1939, looked at a handful of Great Danes, unspecified amount, I can't access the study, fed some canned meats because vitamin D is annihilated in cans. And so containing cold calciferol, which is a good version of vitamin D, in fairness. Second study, another study from 1965, we're getting better now, using an unspecified type of vitamin D, to Bren's point, likely D2 by the sounds of things, because the pups had poor absorption on this vitamin D. That's 1965. And the last study supporting the use of vitamin D in your dogs and your pups and your breed bitches, and the final study the NRC cites in support of their insanely high figures, was a weird study by— I'm probably writing this for myself and not for you you guys. Well, I hope I don't curse. Was a weird study by Keeley et al., 1991, that compared two groups of laboratory dogs fed two kibbles, one with zero vitamin D3 and the second with some D3 added, D3 being the good stuff. They followed the dogs for two years, and the dogs not getting any D3 didn't suffer a deficiency. When they measured at the end, both both groups of dogs had the same blood values for D3, even though the dogs got a zero D3 diet for 2 years. That's one of the 3 studies that the NRC is presenting to us as evidence of the dog's requirements, which suggests they need bugger-all D3 in their diet, something like what raw foods provide in 20 to 30 IUs as opposed to 160 or 180. So there could be a dangerous level of vitamin D being used in pet food. You know, so we don't have these answers. We don't have the studies. We don't have— there's no evidence for what they're putting into dry pet food. Studies show they don't even contain it. Hill's pet food, don't forget, 2019, 22— to Bren's point— 22 million cans went out the door of one factory, excessive in vitamin D. And if you get excess vitamin D, you're going to get kidney issues. Flood vitamin D into your body, it tells the body to suck up loads of calcium. Calcium. And if you suck up loads of calcium, you, you're going to deposit that in the kidneys and get kidney disease. So like, it's, it's, it's shocking. There's just no, there's no regulation. There's no—

I've raised this because I had a recent case that came in to me having been fed on a particular brand diet and it's come down with a DCM. And I raised this—

dilated cardiomyopathy.

And I raised this with them saying, just wondered if you'd checked any other of these particular diets, because obviously I do know that in the past you've had a few issues with nutrient levels. Oh my God, the absolute rage! That was over 10 years ago. How can you possibly come back at us about this? You know, it was proven. We voluntarily withdrew that food. It It was never an issue. None of the stuff about the fact that, you know, it's currently in court and they're, you know, getting scrutinized for what happened in those circumstances. And that there was a second recall in 2019 following the original one that was 9 years ago. Didn't want to absolutely, you know, twist the knife, but, you know, from that point of view of they absolutely hate the fact that somebody highlights that, let alone that whole 2017 paper saying, you know, 90%, they're all saying, well, it was our food, you know, when it was, you know, for the kibbles, I think it was, as you say, two-thirds, I think for the cans it was even higher.

94%, 94% of the cans. Absolutely ridiculous. Two-thirds of the prescription diets. Two-thirds of prescription diets for sick dogs are deficient in nutrients to get dogs through a 6-month feed trial. Two-thirds. So if a one-third chance your prescription died. Let's hope that your vet picks up the right one.

So we talked about vitamin D just a couple of weeks back. You made the query out there and we were having a chat and we started to look and I looked at a paper that was 2023, I think, because it was all to do with one of the vegetarian diets looking at, well, is there an issue with using D2 versus D3? And they did that whole comparison. I think with half a dozen dogs, but you know, still a little bit more than the ones quoted in Feriaf. But they came up with after 3 months there was no difference. And I made that query back to you. I don't think we've had the answer yet, which is how I'm going to ask you live. Is 3 months really enough to see a deficiency in vitamin D?

The 3 studies that the NRC uses for vitamin D requirements in your dog, one of them shows dogs fed zero vitamin D for 2 years had the same amount of vitamin D in their blood as the dogs eating the vitamin D supplemented diet. That is unexplainable. But what it does tentatively suggest is that dogs need bugger all vitamin D. In other words, or they're going out hunting because the diet is so deficient. Yeah, no, these are specifically laboratory dogs. Wow.

So how do you explain that?

What's your thoughts? I can't explain that. Some sort of synthesis that we don't understand, but I can't imagine it. I just—

Yeah, we talk about the requirement for it all the time. We've even talked on this show about, you know, we can synthesize this.

We can synthesize it. We say dogs can't, but for all we there's something going on there because those dogs should be dead. You can't go sick 2 years without it, without a vitamin, you know. Uh, so, well, that's what I've heard of. I don't— this is— these are laboratory dogs fed 2 kibbles, one with, uh, um, zero vitamin D3 added. So they suspect there must have been some vitamin D in the ingredients they used. I'm thinking, bugger all.

Yeah, why didn't you do your homework first of all? Yeah, just, just, just a thought, just in the last 5 minutes, just to say This is so, so, so the manufacturers of food will amass their ingredients. They will then put those together and put them through, through the processing. But there is no accommodation for ingredients from different sources, different farming systems, different times of day, how long they've been out in the yard getting rained on, getting, you know, all sorts of exposure. And so it strikes me that there is this— this whole thing has a veneer of guidelines and regulation and science and what have you. But actually, it's the Wild West. They, they, they will get, you know, the formulation says it's— they've got to have, um, uh, I don't know, if you're making a really big batch, 6 tons of meat meal, and it's got to have, uh, 20 tons of wheat, and you put those together and then you add various bits and pieces, okay, because you're following a certain formula. But that is going to vary on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah, okay.

And if you're, if you're if you're using a computer to do your formulation as opposed to, you know, any other formulation that's been through some kind of food trial. Yeah, we actually feed it to dogs. Then it's again, it's that whole thing about the recipe does not equal what's in the final product, which is what you said earlier. Yeah, Brent. So I just think there's— it is, it is. And I think the only thing that defends our dogs from excess and deficiency is the fact that most people will change the food on a fairly regular basis.

Variation. That's the only way. Like, like we do the kids. If it was any other way to do it, we'd be doing it with the kids. I want to say on the bottom here for people on the podcast, it says DCBformulator.com. And the best you can do, if you, if you are into this complete nonsense, and you want to go with the AFCO and FEDIAF kind of guidelines, I have developed the best formulator tool available, in my opinion. It's certainly the easiest to use, is incredibly intuitive. We spent a lot of time on it. So it works from your phone. It's not this ridiculous big spreadsheet. And you can go on to DCB Formulator, and I want all of the RPM nerds to go on there and check out that and use it. And you can put in your dog's details and you can pick thousands of different ingredients. You can use US or UK ingredients. You can use grass-fed animals or indoor-fed animals because they're different, because stall-fed animals are fed higher copper sulfate, which is why, uh, a CAFO beef is higher in vitamin in copper and whatnot. So I'm going off on one. So you can pick AFGO or FEDIAF, you can pick health conditions. You want to make up a low protein meal? I'll make you up a low protein meal. You want to make a below phosphorus meal? There's purine data coming for your Dalmatians and everything. So all that stuff can be accounted for. And then you analyze your ingredients, you pick who you want to balance it to, AFGO or FEDIAF. Now we've just destroyed the fact that AFGO and FEDIAF bear very little relevance to reality. It is an utter Ronald McDonald's nonsensical 1950s approach to nutrition. It just doesn't apply anymore. So I am developing a third profile there, which I'm going to call the Real Nutrient Profile. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to analyze— I've got— I've been stuck into this for the last 3 weeks. It's made me sick. I'm looking at all the wild prey I can get my hands on, and I'm checking out the vitamin and mineral levels of those and making some assumptions in that department. The figures are— it's sometimes actually— I've gone fed, I've got a close close enough, but other times they are so far out. So I'm going to— and then there's things like carnivore ingredients like creatine and whatnot. I've got a protein quality score system so you can check it for anti-nutrients and digestibility and all sorts of stuff. It's absolutely cool. Check out that formulator tool. I want you to use it and let me know if you find any little bits of bugs and whatnot. All the premium features are there for free. Every question costs me money, but I'm just gonna— I want it out there and being used while we find out about it. So I appreciate that. Thanks for letting me do the plug, lads.

And thank you for sponsoring us tonight.

Yeah, thank you very much, Conor.

You're more than welcome.

And it's called, for the podcast people, www.dcbformulator.com.

Yes, that's right.

Delta Charlie Bravo Formulator.com.

Yeah, Dr. Conor Brady would be an easier way to remember. Dr. Charlie Bravo.

Declaration of interest, he's officially sponsoring tonight's drinks.

Yes. Anyway, water, water all around. So that too would do as a starting point. And it also, it doesn't just use USDA data, which has mega problems when you look into it. It uses this UK search databases. I've got French and German data. It also has— I've got about 1,400 studies. And so it'll tell you exactly what percentage of data took from the literature and where else. I've got bone data, I've got all sorts of things. I make recommendations at the bottom. Like, it's, it's pretty powerful, I have to say.

So thank God you explained that because I was a little bit worried that you'd spent 3 weeks of your life in the deep dive of creating this with AI. And then we were going to in 45 minutes destroy your whole marketing plan.

Yeah.

And then you're going to come up with another option.

Look, in Patreon, when we go in there, I want to explain to people the difference between pups and adults. Do people not wonder, like, you know, we need a different profile for puppies? It's like, do we? Do you think mum comes home with with and regurgitates a slightly higher zinc meal for the puppies? You know what I mean? Do you think she separates out the mouse when she's digesting this to make sure that the certain bits get to the dog? That is just nonsense to think that. They are on high nutrient milk and then they're eating the same thing as mum from week 3. That is a fact. That's what they eat. So I'm going to show you how that process works, which is really quite simple and beautiful and interesting that you don't actually have to worry too much about that end of things.

Do you know where that first came in, that whole idea about this is a puppy food and this is an adult food? Do you know who started that? James Spratt, who was the— he was, he was an electrical engineer from Cincinnati, and he came over to England and he saw the, the dogs eating ship's biscuits on the, on the docks of Liverpool, possibly, and he thought, oh, that's great, I'll just make that up. He called it Beef Febrine, and it didn't contain any It contained beef blood, okay, possibly even horse blood, okay. But the important thing is he thought, oh, this is dog food, right? Dogs go from, from nought to 15 or probably 20 in those days. And, and he thought, genius, I'll make, I'll make this food, maybe slightly different, I don't know. But he made this other food and he put it in a slightly different bag and he called it puppy food and and he charged a premium for it.

Yeah, there you go. Stick a puppy on the front and that's about— I'd say the same amount of science is used today, honestly. It's just like, it's like there's no studies of pups that we can hang our hat on. There's just— and there's certainly no studies of adult dogs. A lot of the recommendations are based on books. When you see the calcium stuff, I mean, there's every single nutrient. It's like, that is what you're basing— studies of Great Dane puppies, studies of Great Dane puppies, 3 here, 4 there, followed for 2 weeks. That's like, that's the lifetime recommendation for an adult dog and senior dog. What are you talking about? It's just, it's a car crash. So it's just, once again, it's, uh, it's people holding up giant books like this and going, we have all this science behind us. Look at the weight of this book, the Small Animal Clinical Nutrition. Of course dry food is the best. It's like, have you opened that book and read anything inside it? Have you gone to the protein section of that and looked at protein requirements for dogs. As Nick said, 4 studies more than 50 years old of reproducing bitches. It is utterly irrelevant to your dog's health and optimum health, longevity and wellness. Not measured, not a consideration.

Yeah, I think it's the, the, the, the processed pet food industry started with deception and, you know, riding by the seat of their pants, and have been doing the same thing ever since with this thin veil of science over the top. But I think the reality is it's just a— can I say before we flip over?

Because I think we, you know, we're pretty much there. We're going to discuss a little bit more on, um, uh, and yeah, um, I want to thank Conor Brady for the sponsorship tonight. Um, mine's a Châteauneuf-du-Pape cap and—

Oh, lovely. I love it. I like the cheaper one.

I like the cheaper one.

A Krug champagne, please.

Yeah, yeah. That sounds expensive. I don't know what that is. Look at that. How much is that? How much is that?

Chat, DVD.

Yeah.

How does anybody buy a bottle of wine for over €50? Honestly, what is the point? I'm just too miserable to myself. It just tastes the same to me after €10 You know how much I bet you—

how much is that?

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I did a Midazolam.

I haven't looked. Last time I looked, it was about 80 a bottle.

Oh, that sounds— something sounds magical.

I mean, look it up, look it up, guys. Anybody, anybody know? Anyway, listen, guys, I'm gonna have to run. I've got a big project on this evening, uh, so I'm not going to be able to join you over in Patreon.

I know what your project is. I know, I know, I know, but it's very important.

Me, if you want to see me alive next week, it's very important I get this one done. So I'm going to say adieu and adios. What are we doing next week? Oh, it'll be Q&A.

Q&A.

It'll be Q&A. It's not Q&A already, is it?

Yeah.

Q&A.

30 days has September, April, June, and November. Oh yeah, it does.

Yeah.

Right.

Bloody hell. That's quick. I feel like it's Q&A every week. The months are just flying past. I can't believe it's the middle of summer already.

My God.

Well, we're going to be talking puppies and mums over on—

I've got something interesting to say. Yeah.

What, really?

Oh my God. Yeah. This is my field. This is my field. This is where I'm strong. Sorry if I coughed a lot tonight.

This is a strong hand.

This is, yeah, it's my strong hand, child. Nick doesn't know what we're talking about because he's not strong. Great stuff.

All right, Nick, I'll see you. All right, guys, take care. See you next week. Don't forget to put your questions in on the post about Q&A. For all of you other guys, if you want to join us over on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, pay a small fee and you will be able to hear us chatter on a bit on the side. So look forward to seeing you over there. Take care.

Fabulous, guys. Thanks a lot, and thanks for everybody who's watching.

Toodle-oo.