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talking, and it's, and it's, and is it anti? It's, it's trying to be balanced, but actually it's anti. It's, it's, it's derogatory, it's demeaning, there are no references, and I don't think it's great science. I'm really happy with people criticizing constructively with scientific fact raw food. Please bring it on, I want to hear that, because then we can develop our arguments. We, the pro-raw-feeding lobby, but I, I just don't think this is a great article at all. What do you guys, what do you think?

Yeah, I think, yeah, let's be fair, I found a couple of references in it, um, but some of them are interesting references to say the least, and we're going to talk about that as we go through, uh, the thing. And I think, you know, we owe it to all of the guys that are watching tonight to really sort of explore, you know, the debate, uh, and, you know, hopefully show the science as to why we've been talking for years about this and why we've shared that over the last 18 months with you guys watching. Um, and we do appreciate you viewing. Um, and, uh, yeah, so I think that's— it's going to be really interesting tonight, I think, between the three of us.

Yeah, it's constructive. Like, you know, that's the problem with today, we don't have any debate. It's not welcomed. Debate is not welcome. It's like, you know, the, the, the rules are handed down now. Science is handed down on stone tablets. I've said that before. And we've replaced bloody, in Ireland at least, Catholic priests with scientific priests. And either way, it seems like you're just being handed the laws and then, you know, don't ask too many questions. And when the information does come out that is seen to debate a topic, it's just so bereft of any solid science. And it's very frustrating because you, you— I'm not promoting myself here, but I wrote a book about this. I said, here's the science that as much as we have. And then like they just don't read it. It's just like, well, no, we won't deal with that. We'll just keep coming up with these, uh, scary pieces, which I think the three of us have done very well to stay away from for the last year because this is their modus operandi. This is what they do. They, they sling poo like chimpanzees in a zoo. And so you just keep your blinkers on and ignore it. But now and again, as Nick is saying, you need to kind of just tackle them and kind of say, okay, here's the latest piece that their side is sharing. Like it's just been like, oh, check it out, this is fantastic. So we're going to go through it as fairly as we can with you guys and show where we might see some issues, or if they score any points, that's perfectly fine. That's what science is about, you know, you're not always going to be right. But this piece in particular is just anger-inducing for sure. So absolutely, listen guys, we're on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, price of a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or a beer even. Uh, in today's, uh, today's rates would be fantastic and we deeply appreciate it if you can. If you can't, no stress, we're here every week anyway. Uh, it's always going to be the same. Um, but guys, should we just get straight into it tonight? I have a feeling that we're going to be going on here. This is a, this is, this is going to take time. It's going to be juicy. Who wants to start us off? Nick, I feel like you're kind of chomping at the bit.

Absolutely. I've gone through it and I've highlighted, and there's more highlight than there is anything else on, on this, this thing. So I think there's a lot I'm really just disappointed that he didn't give us— are they the authors? There's two authors— didn't give us any references. You know, they, they're claiming that to be science, and they're saying— they, they even say that it's, uh, pseudoscience. Where do they mention about pseudoscience? Anyway, somewhere they mentioned that this is definitely pseudoscience. Well, if you're going to give us science, authors, then please give us the references. That's how science works.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I'm going to start at the beginning. The title irritates me. It says raw feeding, so they, they're immediately getting off to a— they're being diminutive, they're being patronizing. The raw feeding trend— it's not a trend, it's been around for 40 years, and prior to that dogs were doing it for 45 million years. So I really, really don't think it's a trend, guys. And then they say the next word is 'can'— 'can cause real harm to your pets and to you.' So they say it's not 'it might' or 'it may' without any references, without any science. They're saying it can cause harm and they're not justifying it. So I find that very, very irritating, quite apart from the fact that if there are between 1 and 2 million dogs in the UK being fed some or all all raw food, where are the casualties? You know, we're not seeing— with 1 or 2 million dogs every single day are getting raw food, where are the casualties? If it's that dangerous— E. coli, salmonella, bones, all that kind of stuff— we're not seeing those casualties. So, um, I— that's my little rant about the title.

Um, and I would say, uh, alongside that, you know, we're back into this whole risk aversion I mean, a light switch can cause you real harm because it can electrocute you. How often will it do that? Very rarely. Okay. You know, I don't know what the stats are on the number of deaths from flicking a light switch, but, you know, I'm sure there are some. And, you know, where do we stop with that? Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's, that's a real sort of science get out, isn't it?

It is.

Could possibly, you know, show me something that can't.

Water can kill you if you drink enough of it. I mean, raw vegetables are one of the most highest choked-on items. Do we cut out vegetables from the diet? Raw vegetables, fresh fruit and veg, top cause of salmonella, E. coli, E. coli. Do you chop them out because they can harm you? Bloody anything can harm you. It's such a, it's such a rough little start. It really is.

It's all allowing your kids to roll on the grass outside.

Yeah.

Might allow them to pick up an infection from dead soil.

I mean, it's like, yeah, I mean, they could say that dry food can kill your pet because it absolutely does, you know, en masse, tens of thousands of pets, cats and dogs killed by dry pet food. I think less than 10, you could count 6 kittens from TB and 1 or 2 dogs from raw dog food perhaps, and that was from irradiated raw dog. So like, I mean, you're talking a body count if you're talking about things that can harm. Let's look at the other side of the debate. But anyway, let's stay on track here. We're talking about this article.

It's too easy to The title, guys, in the old days when I was doing lectures, I would say, you know, there are many things that can cause harm. There is a statistic from the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents, okay, ROSPA, in the UK. For Michelle and all the guys in the States, it's called the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and they have statistics on what causes harm and injuries to people. And there's about 6 people every year are get injuries from putting on their pants in the morning.

No way!

And because of that, we are not all going around commando.

Yeah, yeah, it's just not working.

All the Americans are going, well, why would you be going commando if you're having difficulty putting your trousers on? Anyway, but that means your underpants, guys.

This means—

yeah, yeah.

So what do they call pants in the States? Michelle?

I don't know, I'm sure these guys are going to say something.

We're going to find out.

Your undies.

Yeah, so come on, Nick, let's go through the first paragraph here. It may surprise you to hear that what you choose to feed your dog is a hugely emotive subject. It is. One aspect of that heated debate concerns one of the fastest growing trends, although I'm putting those inverted commas for them, the feeding of a raw meat diet. Proponents of a raw diet are often evangelical about the purported health benefits and believe that—

That's you, Conor.

Absolutely. Believe it to be more natural that is closer to the ancestral diet of the dog and claiming that it is how wolves eat in the wild. If Nick, if you haven't thought of something to say there, can I just say something on the wolves bit?

Absolutely, John. He goes into wolves a bit further down as well.

Okay, so we can skip it when it comes down again. Let's just knock it on the head at the moment. I literally don't know anybody— when I'm talking to you guys, I'm talking to any other canine nutritionist, when I'm in the forums when I'm talking to anybody, nobody talks about wolves. None of us are talking about wolves. We've never used that as an example. Maybe some children at some stage have used it. Doesn't this dog look like a wolf? Yeah, he actually does a bit. So, but nobody in this world is using, holding up the grey wolf and going, well, if the grey wolf ate it, we can eat it, or the dogs can eat it. That would be like holding up a chimpanzee and saying, well, you know, we were them 5 million years ago, like, why don't we eat leaves? Nobody is doing that. Nobody's talking about wolves. A couple of raw feeding companies will put a picture of a wolf on the front of their packet and dry foods will call it wolf tucker. So there's a couple of tenuous links to people using the terminology, but I'm telling you, nobody, no book that's been written in the last 20 years is making too much insinuation about wolves. But the fact remains, these were wolves, let's say 40,000 years ago, which is not a long time ago. And today everybody is looking at the dingo, not the wolf. We know the wolf is a complete carnivore. We know the 37 subspecies of wolves. Wolves are all carnivores that have popped out from the grey wolf in the last, whatever, 100,000 years. All carnivores, we'll ignore all that. But in the last 4,000 years ago, we have a dingo, which was a domestic dog 4,000 years ago. So nobody's really talking about the wolf. Now we're looking at dingoes going, well, if these guys are domestic dogs, clearly Papua New Guinea singing dogs who came down from that little bit down into Australia 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. And these guys, total carnivores. And now we're only talking 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. So gone is this 40,000, 50,000 years ago proto-dog, wherever he came from. Now it's like, well, we could look at dingoes if we're talking about ancestry, but so few of us even spend any time talking about ancestry because you have biology and physiology and all the other cool stuff, diet studies of what the dog actually eats when he's left to his own devices, all this useful stuff that is thrown in there by the opposite side as a red herring. The other side talk about wolves all the time. No, they bloody don't. That is BS. That's why he hasn't linked the point. There hasn't been like the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society holding up gray wolves and rattling on about them. There's no link to any reputable canine nutritionist going on about wolves, they can't come up with one because it doesn't happen. They use it as well, well, he's obviously not a wolf, and they go, and everyone goes, yeah, of course he's not a wolf, yeah, great point, but totally unlinked nonsense. It really annoys me. It's like, this is what they always talk about. Have you ever listened to us? Have you ever engaged us in the conversation? It's like, it's just such a nonsensical thing to be saying, talking about the wolf. So it annoys me, and the fact remains, he was a wolf 40,000 years ago. It is a long line of carnivores. The gray wolf was a carnivore for 5 million years. Before he branched out. So like a perfectly valid point. It is interesting that he came from a long line of carnivores. So that's my, that's my rant. Talk about the dingo, which is only 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. Let's not talk about the wolf. Only the opposite side seem to do that. Such a fixation they have on it.

And they do have that fixation, but they are determined to use the genetic argument of there is a possibility that they can produce certain enzymes because they've got the genetic makeup to do that. With the amylases that could therefore process carbohydrates. Well, that's actually fairly common across a number of mammalian species. But more importantly, you don't have the anatomy change to allow them to function like that. You literally— dogs still chomp, chomp, swallow. They do not— they cannot move their jaws from side to side. It's up and down and swallow. That's it. There's no grinding out and creating a bolus for that amylase to be active on the food. There is a stomach that's a simple stomach through to a small intestine and large intestine, which has got no areas for fermentation of any significance. Yes, of course they can become flatulent, and yes, there is a degree of bacterial activity, but there's nothing which will create loads of butyrate and fatty acids from that digested carbohydrate sourcing. And you've ended up with a situation where they've only got a gut length 2.5 to 3 times their body length. They've not even got a gut length the size of an omnivore, you know, of 11 times their body length, and certainly not a complex herbivore of, you know, 18 times their body length. So I think, you know, they're being a bit disingenuous to say, oh, look how we've managed to evolve these dogs in 4,000 years or 10,000 years if they want to go a bit further back, because I've heard some quotes for, you know, dogs being kept that long ago, that actually, you know, we would in that shorter period of time truly be able to evolve a dog to change its ability to eat different materials significantly.

It's ridiculous. Dogs have been choosing their own partners. Everything about them screams meat eating. When you let them off the lead, they want to eat meat. Like, studies of feral dogs show they eat meat. Everything about their physiology, every other process in their body is carnivory. And yet they've taken some tiny little evolutionary steps, which is interesting, and Darwin would have given his eye teeth to see that. But is that a reason to force-feed them 60% corn every single day? I mean, it's bloody idiotic. As everyone says, I can digest ethanol and sucrose. It doesn't mean 50% of my diet should be rum and cookies. That's Doug Newman said that. So it's so obvious and we know it's just ridiculous that they leap onto such a tiny little evolutionary step and that is used as the defense for this food. And it's like, okay, well, what were you using for the defense from 1950 to 2014 when that study came out. What were those 64 years? What was the reason for you doing it? You know, so anyway, Nick, sorry, what was— what's your next paragraph that you wanted to get at?

Paragraph, let me have a look. I've just been looking for the Axelsson study because they look at, you know, a dog has got about 20,000— you know, humans got 20,000, 22,000. Dogs got a similar number of genes, which is a lot less than they thought they were going to find, but that's another story. And of those, 3 are to do with the digestion of starches. 3 genes. As Conor says, just because you can digest it doesn't mean it's good for you. Dr. Patton comes along and he says it's actually by feeding dogs a high-carb diet, you are not only changing their metabolism and, you know, predisposing to weight. Yeah, 80% of dogs are overweight or obese. But not only that, you're changing their, their microbiome because they are not designed to eat that much carbohydrate. Therefore, you are causing the dog harm by affecting their microbiome. You change the microbiome, you change their mind, their behavior, their, their, their, their, their brain processes. You change the microbiome, you change their immunology. Look at the amount of autoimmune disease we've seen over the last 30 years. So these kibble foods are responsible for much, much, much disease. And we know that because the three of us take dogs from kibble onto raw on a regular basis, and we see remarkable improvements in health. And also, everybody you talk to who have done that same process of going from kibble to raw, they say— 99% of those people will say, yes, within 2 weeks we saw remarkable and long-lasting improvements in the dog's health, you know, all the time, all the time, all the time. Anyway, sorry, I am—

and more generally, starches, you know, there's those dogs, not just kibble, I think, you know, starches, just, you know, so many different starches that are being fed in treats, you know, so many different things that we should be getting away from that are causing inflammation within our dogs. So great. Okay.

I've got another one. These diets have been developed by scientists and tailored to the lifestyle, size, age, and activity level of various dog breeds. Yeah, right. So, uh, so Skinners, that's, you know, that's, that's been tailored to, uh, different ages, breeds, activity levels? I don't think so. Um, uh, Bakers, has that been tailored? No, it's just cheap. Most people buy their food on price and when I say price, they go for the, the best value possible, i.e., the low price. And these are not really that tailored. Royal Canin, when they came out with their Collie food, you know, they do it for various breeds, which I think is pretty much rubbish, by the way. But the, the, the, the, uh, Collie, the Collie formula in the UK was different from the Collie formula in Canada. So, yeah, what kind of What kind of nonsense is this? So I reject that for the most part.

He says that like, you know, these diets have been developed by scientists. I love saying, okay, so scientists, can I see the science that was used behind it? Tailored to lifestyle, size, age, activity, dogs that turn left more on Tuesdays rather than Wednesdays, and all this kind of bullshit. And it's like, okay, well, so what if you've got a range of products that say they do different things between Labradors and Golden Retrievers? Show me the science behind that. That kind of dictates these two animals should be fed separate kibbles made by the same candy company, you know. Why is that? Like, just saying it's science and developed by scientists— scientists can develop anything. That's like, so there's— that means nothing. It doesn't mean there's good science behind it. It's just another product to make you think an air of science is behind this, this nonsensical product. Some of these diets are even adapted to manage certain medical conditions.

True.

And they try to put prescription label on it, and now they're backing court for the second time because the prescription indicates there's a medicinal quality to the products, as this person is implying. But of course, there is no medicinal qualities to the product, hence newsagents can sell the pet food. So it's bullshit to call it a prescription pet food because you should need a prescription to buy it. So to say that these foods are even adapted to manage certain medical conditions, it's just nonsense. The science behind those medical condition claims, you know, Magic Dermal Care, this is good for skin conditions, It's the difference between 20 dogs fed your regular kibble crap and another 20 dogs fed the same kibble crap but with a drop of fish oil in it. And these dogs were slightly less itchy after 30 days. Magic dermal care, 3 times the price, and the vet reaches for it every time the dog gets atopic dermatitis. And it's just so— it's called an unfalsifiable comparison. That science is bullshit, but it's science. It's been clinically proven. You can say it on the label, but it's just saying that that's been done for your product. That doesn't mean the product is good. That just means you have used science. It's being used today as a bloody marketing tool. And this person that wrote that line saying we've got so much science behind our products, show us it. Show me one of those studies that convinced you that that medical— it's high carbohydrate diets are good for pancreatitis, cancer. Show me the science you're talking about. But they don't. They just say there's plenty of scientists and scientists, you know.

And this is— and just in case you think this is just us ranting about this, some of you guys will see me posting some of the references under your comments. So have a look at some of those references if you want to go back and have a look at them at some point. This particular reference isn't written by anybody who's pro-raw. This is written by Mike Davies, one of the board nutritionists that's in the UK. He actually went out and tested all of those scientifically put together Tafediyev guideline foods. And what did he find? You know, there was only 38% of dog foods that were actually at all compliant. And actually, I believe it was something ridiculous like 90-something percent which had some mineral imbalances within them.

Yeah, 94% of cans didn't meet AAFCO minimum nutrient profile, and 62% of dry foods failed. 62% of complete dry food formulated by amazing scientists failed to meet the minimum nutritional standards and you feed that product every single day of the dog's life, you are in big trouble. But those pieces never get mentioned by that.

And there were some the other way which were to the excess, and we know there's a famous withdrawal because of excess vitamin D that went on a few years back. You know, these are the things that, you know, we've got to watch out for because they will impact the health of our pets. So yeah, just just be aware. So have a look at some of those references that we're posting in. Thanks to Nick for sharing some of those as well.

And if you want more references, the place to go is DogRisk. If you look up DogRisk, DogRisk is the group at Helsinki University who we've met and we've worked with on RPM, and they are the leading, the world-leading researchers on looking at raw food, and they're doing also comparisons between raw food and kibble food. Yeah, they will take— they do a lot of work with Staffies, and what they've done is they've taken Staffies, they fed them a kibble diet and taken bloods and seeing what the metabolic pathways were, the metabolic elements within the blood, and compared that with those same dogs when they take them onto a raw food diet. And things like, for example, homocysteine, which is associated with many disease processes drops when those dogs go on to a raw food diet. So the, the, one of the lines in the, in the paper just that we're looking at says there is no evidence. I'm sorry, guys, please do your homework. There is really quite a lot of evidence. There are not hundreds of thousands of papers because we've only just got going with this stuff, but there are substantial papers. So please saying there's no evidence.

Yeah, that statement is factually incorrect. Here's a statement from the, let's say, fourth paragraph. It says that there are no proven benefits to feeding raw meat to your dog over good quality commercial pet food. That is absolutely incorrect. As Nick just alluded to, I think, uh, I can't pronounce her name, Ayatollah 2018, where they started looking at the gene expression in— is it— was it Staffies? And they found that those dogs had more atopic dermatitis when they've been when they started off on dry food and that kind of thing. And there was something about pups as well, they found. And that was after a big survey they did in 2014-15 where like 80-90% of people that jumped to raw for health, health, skin benefits saw a benefit. And so they wanted to explore that and find out what it was. And now we're finding the solution. To say the studies don't exist is an absolute lie. Those studies do exist. And there's a multitude of smaller works where we put in fish oil, the dogs do better. We put in some leafy greens and dark orange things, they have less cancer. We put in some blueberries and they're their output is better. When they're sled dogs, we put in this and they do better, we put in this and they do better. So there's a bevy of studies of anecdotal evidence, but what they do is they say, was, where is your evidence? Raw has no science. So what they have done is they have leapt to this alien ridiculous product on dogma alone, because there is no science supporting ultra-processed cereal-based pet food for meat-eating dogs. There's not a study that says this is a good idea over a natural diet. But they leap to this position and then they say you've now got to prove it via the best of science and to prove what we're doing is wrong. And it's like, no, sorry, you're the one with the product. It's up to you to prove it's safe and nutritious for pets. It's not for us. You're the one supporting the product. We're over here doing the same thing we've been doing all the time. But they have switched it. The argument is now you don't have science. We've got all this bullshit science here. Look at it all. Don't read it, but look at it. 'Now you produce all these studies and then we'll talk.' You will never produce enough studies for people that write articles like this because they are entrenched and they will not listen. They are— they just can't be wrong at this stage. So I don't really believe a good enough study will ever come out that they'll go, 'Oh, oh, okay, that's interesting,' because they never needed that to get to where they are today, and they don't want to face that. It's called cognitive dissonance. And so saying there's no signs is the proof that they are completely blindfolded because they haven't read the studies that have come out in the last 2 or 3 years. So it's incorrect to say they're factually incorrect.

Guys, I don't know of any papers where that, that the billion-dollar big food industry have demonstrated that kibble is superior to raw. Do you know of any?

No. There is not. There's a, there's a study of dogs fed ground-up rabbits. Remember that study? It was cats, I think, ground-up rabbits. And they tried to say, well, this was complete raw, and they fed the same bloody rabbit for about 9 months, which is not the best beastie to feed to a cat because rabbit and lamb happen to be the two meats that have the least amount of taurine in them. But that aside, you wouldn't just feed one prey animal for 9 months. That's their example of a raw diet. It's not a well-made raw diet. It wasn't a complete raw off the shelf. An 80/10/10 mix of any caliber would do the job. They don't do those studies. So there isn't, Nick, in answer— I know this for a fact— there's not a single study that shows cereal-based pet food benefited a dog over a normal-fed dog when they compared two groups. That head-to-head only exists in the opposite direction, where the homocysteine study, the gene expression in staphylococcus and a few other little interesting things, gut biota stuff is coming out now. Digestibility.

And those two references I did put up along the bottom of the screen earlier, they're in the comments if you want to go and have a look those homocysteine and the metabolomics, you know, studies, they are in there in the comments, so do go have a look at that.

We would challenge anybody watching this, if you disagree with us, please put us right. Please tell us some studies where it has been demonstrated that kibble is superior to fresh or raw food, please.

Yeah, they go on to say, and I'm sorry, I'm just reading this piece here, guys, I'm sorry, I don't mean to hog it, They say like there are major flaws in the logics and beliefs of the raw feeding movement which put it firmly in the pseudoscientific camp. Ironic words there. Firstly, when it comes to being more natural, in inverted commas, we need to understand that dogs are not merely tamed wolves. That's the second time they've mentioned that and we're only on the fifth tiny little paragraph and their title underneath that is Dogs Are Not Tamed Wolves. It's like, oh please, this is just awful. It really is. This is a pure car crash. Secondly, much of the movement is based on conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories! They love saying that though. Conspiracy that vets and dog food manufacturers are deliberately making your pets sick so they can make more money treating diseases. Again, nobody at the top honestly believes that. Nobody believes that the vets at the coalface are doing this on purpose to make pets sick. We believe that the industry above them may bloody well know that these studies exist, such as don't be feeding carbohydrates to people with chronic pancreatitis, cancer, and all that kind of stuff. They know those studies exist. They're not percolating down to vets. Nobody believes it's the vets at the coalface doing that. They put that in there to inject a bit of emotion so people can round on each other and have this polar shitty world that we live in and pointing at each other across the gulf. Nobody believes vets are out there making pets sick on purpose. Unfortunately, their bad information on nutrition might inadvertently do that. We don't think they're doing that on purpose. We know vets care for pets. That's just bullshit they put in there to twist the knife and make people more angry than they need to be.

Yeah, can I just keep my tinfoil hat out of the way just for a moment?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, please do keep it on. I think we just might as well wear them from now on.

That's right, Emperor's New Clothes, it's there already.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's just, it's, it's, yeah, I like that. Um, but like, you know, he goes into dogs are not tame wolves, then I'm just going to skip all that because it's just, they talk about the genetics thing. Yes, we know that dogs that live beside farmers for the last 5,000 or 6,000 years have taken tiny genetic steps we've already gone through that study there, we can go through it again. Some breeds have, some breeds haven't. Huskies haven't, and Akitas, because they grew up beside wandering tribes, they're not people that reared crops, so they didn't extrapolate out the gene, nor did dingoes and whatnot. So, but some dogs did, and it's kind of interesting. It's just not a reason to— they've taken a tiny step, but it's just not this huge step that makes them want to eat this stuff. But it's interesting that when Mars pet food did the study and said, right, here, dogs, eat ad-lib from protein, fat, and carbs. Take what you want, as much of as what you want, and let's see what happens. And initially, the dogs pigged out on fat because it's such a high-value item, it's really good energy. So when there's chances to eat fat in the wild, get eaten it because, you know, energy is hard to find. But then they found after a while, they tapered off the fat and they included more protein. Do you know how much carbohydrates these cereal-fed dogs included in their diet willingly? 7%. So these are already cereal-fed dogs. You think that they'd be geared up to eat cereal, but when given the chance, 7%. So Mars— the dogs were telling Mars Pet Food, we only like 7% carbs in our diet. Did that change their remedies overnight or their recipes overnight? No, it didn't. And then Mark Roberts did the study again using more real foods, and they included more protein and fat and slightly less carbs again. So he went—

his dogs went down to 4%.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, yeah, right down to 4%.

Yeah, and he used cereal, kibble-fed dogs in this study. Had he used kind of raw-fed dogs, maybe you'd see dogs not eating a whole lot of carbs at all, just a tiny medicinal amount. 4% carbs willingly when they're given the chance to eat the food, that tells you all you need to know.

That's not even 4% in the bowl, that's 4% by energy. So yeah, as part of the bowl, that would be more like 1% of the entire bowl. As because of the, the energy density of carbohydrates. So there's not a lot of— so it's mainly fat, mainly protein. Surprise, surprise, prey animals are mainly fat and protein.

That's exactly it.

There is some carbohydrate there. So yeah, yeah, absolutely right.

Why would they ignore that study? Why wouldn't— like, that's the thing about science. Like, when you, when you're, when you're doing a doctorate, you have— you've got a question and you have to look at it from every single way around, every single angle that could could possibly be, all the hypotheses that exist and what they base their things on, and does it apply to your study population? So you have to look at what everybody says and try and apply it. But what this is, is it's selective use of science to back up a point to prove I'm right and shunning the fact that trials of food trials of dogs show they don't eat carbohydrates. Diet studies of truly feral dogs show that they follow a completely carnivorous way of life. They shun all that science. Because it doesn't fit with the narrative they're coming up with. Whereas we, I feel, try to take in a more kind of holistic look at it. I'll happily feed a bit of carbs to my dog now and then, I don't give a damn. It's just, there's nothing so far backing it up like, you know, this 60% carbohydrate. It's the selective use of science, it's rotten. It's a rotten use of the tool. What's next, Nick? What's left off the page for you next?

Risks is the next thing. So they talk about risks, but actually nobody ever has quantified the risk of raw dog food. Yeah, they've tried, but nobody's actually quantified the risk. However, they say that the tired old adage of raw meat can be contaminated with parasites, protozoa, bacteria, including E. coli and salmonella. And we know that there is a certain bacterial load in meat, and I think it's a very, very good thing, actually. And we know, we know that dogs can cope with that because we see millions of dogs in the UK being fed on these, these raw food diets, and they do, they have as many or less problems with gastroenteritis and what have you than the kibble-fed dog. It does go on to say there's a really interesting study that they looked at cleaning, and this has been shared a few times recently. What they did is they they took some meat and it wasn't dirty enough, so they inoculated it with salmonella. Yes, they actually inoculated it with salmonella in order to get it dirty enough to make the plates dirty enough so that they could do the study. They then tried washing up the bowls, and then they tried sticking it in the dishwasher, and they just couldn't get rid of the salmonella, is essentially what it is. If that is the case, that would mean that All meat, whether it's from the supermarket, from the butcher, or whatever, whenever it touches a surface in the kitchen, you're never gonna get that clean. That's the implication there. And therefore, the only answer to that problem would be for us all to go vegan tomorrow, and that's not going to happen. Okay, I wouldn't—

oh no, no, you can't even say that, because what's the biggest cause of E. coli in humans?

Yes, vegetables.

Yeah, you know, Unwashed salad, unwashed veg.

Come on, guys, I think we should just go breatharianism. That's it, we just stop eating altogether.

All right, I can't believe they did that. I can't believe they did. I can't believe they made the meat dirtier to get the study over the line. And it's terribly ironic.

I've put the reference on there for you guys, you'll have seen it spring up. Um, look, we're being honest, the two references that they've used in their article, I'm more than happy to post for you guys to look at, to see the accuracy of, you know, that's what science is about. Be rounded, have a look at all of that. But yeah, how cool, that made me chuckle.

I can't believe they're the two studies they've used so far. There, that's what you link to. I mean, there's so much evidence for dry food, that's your— they're your big guns. If I was writing a piece like this for any, I would have my big guns ready to go. It's like, there, knock it out of the park. You know, each paragraph, here's a couple of studies, but you just cannot— like, they don't have to use good quality science, they just have to pretend. Whereas we, when we're making a point, like the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society's positional statement on raw feeding— check it out, everybody, check out the—

that's in one of the posts.

It was written by you guys. It was just so— it's written like somewhere between a scientific paper and just a very well well-structured piece. So that contains a whole lot of science for people to read. Compare that raw feeding statement to a statement made by the other side. It's terribly ironic, in their two paragraphs on risk, they ignore the two colossal studies that came out, one from Helsinki University, one by Nikki Desacrantis recently in New Jersey. And it showed Nikki Desacrantis 5,500 responses, give or take, Helsinki 16,000 2,500 responses, huge surveys, and the overall response was incredibly safe. These are people that have been raw feeding for years, so it ends up being lots of dogs over many years, millions of meals, and it's incredibly, incredibly safe. But they don't mention that in their piece because they're not trying to do you a service. They're trying to make a point. They should have been fair and said, in fairness, the results of these two mega surveys, which have never been done on dry food, by the way, only on raw food— we do it, they don't— And they could have put that in, to be fair, but they haven't got the guts or the moral standing. So that bothers me that they leave that out. Again, selective use of science by these, um, little people.

Naughty, naughty, naughty. So yeah, basically every single paragraph in this unfortunate article is very suspicious. Very suspicious indeed.

Yeah.

Okay, uh, let's have a look.

There's another one. Here's another one, Nick, in the same— in the risks category on the third paragraph. And here's an uncom— here's a dangerous line, guys. Additionally, raw feeding has been linked to nutritional imbalances, gastrointestinal issues, and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Full stop. There's no links to any of that. He manages to— this person manages to link other ridiculous points, but when it says raw feeding has been linked to nutritional imbalances, link it. Show us the study. Show us the evidence you're talking about. Show me how you gathered that. Show me what the of that? What's the prevalence of nutritional imbalances when people are raw feeding? Gastrointestinal issues from raw and dry doesn't— is that the insinuation? So the key points in this article are not linked out. They just make these statements and then they're off to go on to something else. It just hangs there like a bad smell and it's enough for people because it's written in a scientific manner. But you have to link out those key points. If you're going to say something causes something, you have to link those words and let me track the study and go, 'Wow, in a survey of 1,000 raw feeders, 150 of them had nutritional issues diagnosed by a vet.' Well, that's interesting, but they don't have that information because it doesn't exist. So I hate when they say things like that and don't link those key bits, you know, that's very telling.

But, and also with new— you can get nutritional imbalances, you can get gastrointestinal issues, and you can get antimicrobial resistant bacteria in kibble and tins.

Of course, yeah.

You know, it's, it's, it's, it's very— it's— I despair, guys. I absolutely despair. It says, concerningly, in one study looking into raw frozen samples, they found that they all carried bacteria that were resistant to many antibiotics. Well, that's because the meat production system in the UK and in the States needs to clean up their act. Okay, we are just using what we got. We, we do our best to get the cleanest, best free-range meat to give to our dogs, but we do our best. But the thing is, again, we're not seeing casualties.

So now we've Raw Safe. Raw Safe has just taken that and said these guys now have to blow zero with random audits. Could you imagine a dry food company doing that? They would never sign up to something like this. But our industry, thanks to Brendan and the team and co., uh, the you know, come up with this. It's like, well, we will grab the bull by the horns. We went through that last week, and it's like, what a— what an advancement for the industry to say, like, we are going to produce such clean product, which is not easy to do when your bloody ingredient chain has issues. You have to process that without doing any chemicals and stuff. So it is so hard to produce this product. Hats off again to those raw producers that step forward and do that. That is— that is—

yeah, absolutely. And I just had a debrief with one of the inspectors and he said hands down he's seen, you know, that the ones that he's looked at, the best level of manufacturing he's seen in a food manufacturer's situation. It is, he is relieved because he was a little bit scared about what he might see because he's seen some human food producers which have been worse, you know, have had problems. And so you know, going in, he said it was a breath of fresh air seeing just how enthusiastic they were for getting a great product from start to end, you know, and doing all of the due diligence on where those ingredients are going from and to and how they're packaged, etc. So, you know, I'm waiting, you know, we've got people starting to go out there, we've, we've, we're now rolling that out to more and yeah, So they get an initial one, which is going to be organized so that people know what to do and how to create it. But then there's another random one just thrown in so that nobody's doing all of the stuff and sweeping all of the stuff under the carpets. And then, you know, thinking that's it. No, they get a random visit as well. You know, so they're getting 2 visits in the year. Each year they're getting then the ability to, for us, to advance this and create new standards going forwards. But yeah, something that we're looking to roll out not just across the country, but effectively being able to roll out even further.

So we would invite kibble companies to do the same, to have the same random inspection.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that would be a really, really healthy thing to do. So if you're a company and you want to join food at that level, at that standard that RawSafe is overseeing, then just let us know and we'll put you in touch.

Those extruding companies, the top ones anyway, I can't say I've been inside a whole lot of them, I've been inside one huge one, are really clean, guys. They look like a hospital. It's a completely self-contained system and it's like something out of bloody Superman from the 1980s. Like this machine, it's like, holy shit, everything's totally self-contained and then stewed in a ninja its life. And so, in its defense, that system, this ultra-processing system that they have, can be very impressive. I'm sure there's bad examples as well. It can be very impressive. Their problem is that their product sits in a little warm bag and then gets shipped around in containers and sits in a hot, sweaty pet shop and then is opened and left open for 2 or 3 weeks while storage mites and fats start to decay. Now let's sample your product when the pets and the humans are handling because at the end of the day, when humans get salmonella from pet food, 132 from 2006 to 2016, and in that time raw food caused zero, but 132 cases, half of them were toddlers under 2 years of age. So dry pet food's problem is not so much the processing of the product because it's insanely just hospitals situations for a lot. Their problem is that this gank product that goes out the door that they don't test when it goes out the door, as Hill's approved. 22 million cans went out excess in vitamin D without a single check. 22 million cans from one company alone, and that's the best they've got. So this product sits in the cupboard open, and that's their problem. We don't do that with raw dog food. Hell no. We've got it 2 or 3 days in the fridge, and then we're getting it into the dog or it's going in the bin, you know. So we handle our products and food very, very carefully. Who does that with kibble? Nobody. So that's their problem. But they don't talk about shelf life. They don't talk about longevity, quality of fats after being open for a week, and certainly don't talk about microbial contamination, storage mites, aflatoxin, vomitoxin, all these toxins.

Yeah, the aflatoxins, I've been looking at that over the last week. So did you know 20 parts per billion is supposed to be the limit for aflatoxins within foods and coffee beans and all of those things? Taken in by humans and in pet food. So if you guys ever open that bag of food and, you know, yeah, these penicillin-based fungi grow on, you know, carbs like nobody's business. I mean, just imagine if you left a slice of bread in the bottom of that food bin, how quickly would that become moldy? Okay, so you just think about if opened biscuity food, and none of these guys will have eaten biscuity food in probably quite some time, but if they're, you know, if you want to put your neighbors off feeding kibble to their dog, just get them to check what happens to a piece of bread in the bottom of their food bin that they empty their bag of food into, you know, when they get back down to the bottom, and if it's turned blue and slightly mouldy, maybe they need to rethink the level of aflatoxins that are going to be within their dog's food.

Do you remember the story about the Mars factory? That's Mars, where they put in phosphine gas alarms in the factory. And the person was saying, why do you have alarms for a gas that is highly poisonous? They used to use that in the concentration camps. It's a highly noxious gas because it kills aflatoxin. And one guy's job with a cloth mask on his face was spraying the moldy grain coming in with phosphine gas to kill the— so it's like, talk about using the worst possible chemical kills the moulds, doesn't get rid of the toxins, and probably the dogs. And so they had phosphine gas alarms in the factory, so when the phosphine gas got too high in the factory, the people were known. But like, you want that— that is a terrifying kind of anecdote, guys. One more thing, I just want to say another one more thing. We've got an Irish vet and his name is Pete the Vet, okay? And he's very, very vocal, very anti-raw. He's got his own dry food company, go figure. And so he is very, very anti-fresh food but check out this title of his latest piece in The Guardian. He writes pieces for The Telegraph and The Guardian, and The Guardian only puts out anti-raw pieces, never put out a pro-fresh-food piece for pets ever. And I suspect it's because they are now clickbait, they need eyes and they know these articles get clicked. Here's the title of the piece written by Pete the Vet: Yes, your dog can go vegan, but cats are natural born killers. And I thought straight away, yes, your dog could go vegan, I thought, wow, Peter Vett is happy to support feeding meat-eaters vegan pet food above the promotion of fresh food for meat-eaters. So, oh, vegan, yeah, you can go vegan, based on absolutely nothing. When you read the piece, there's 3 or 4 key horrible lines in it. For dogs, it's relative— this is how it begins— for dogs, it's relatively straightforward compared with their complex feline cousins. That's it, full stop. In other words, cats are complex dogs are not. They're very, very simple. You can feed dogs anything, but cats, you've got to be careful. And it's like, it's such a ridiculous statement. The Guardian, you don't have to link out to studies, so we don't get any studies at this piece. But Pete wouldn't be able to use any studies because there is no studies to support dogs being fed vegan. I think the latest one they tried to push was a survey of people feeding vegan pet food. Do you think your dog likes it? Yeah, you see, dogs love it. And that's the— they don't have like a long study, a longevity study, or a thousand dogs fed appropriately or inappropriately vegan food and stuff. Other kind of statements: cats are different, their anatomy, their teeth, and their digestive tracts and metabolism have evolved to obtain nutrition from small prey such as rodents and birds. That's like, well, heads up, so is the dog. Why aren't we talking about the digestive system of the dog? There you could say the anatomy, you could say this, think about dogs, their anatomy, i.e., their teeth and digestive tracts and metabolism evolved to obtain nutrition from small prey such as rodents and birds. That's equally true for dogs, but he says it like it's only true for cats. Anyway, the last little point is my most annoying. It's also worth considering that cats are natural hunters and carnivores. If they are not getting meat at home, they might well go out and get it themselves anyway. I said, well, Pete, isn't that the difference? Cats are allowed off the lead to go and pursue their feeding lifestyle as they wish. If we let dogs off the lead and give them access to prey. We bloody know what they eat. They decimate marine iguanas, they decimate resident kind of bird populations in New Zealand. There was like, you know, a German Shepherd eating like 1,000 flightless birds in one night. We know that they top up their carnivorous— their meat protein reserves. Kiwis, you know, I thought the kiwis, that was it. But so we know dogs will absolutely do this. We've seen people's lambs, they're not being like, who's attacking the lambs, Pete? You know, it's bloody dogs. Given the chance, they will do it if the prey animal is available to them because that's what they do. But we don't let dogs off the lead to do that. So Pete's point is like, well, cats will go out and top up their food. So will dogs, Pete, because they eat meat. That's why, like, all the studies suggest that. So this nonsense Pete has written I don't want to share it on my social media because I promised I will not share another piece written by The Guardian because they are anti-fresh food for pets, they're anti-health for pets, and I'm not going to share their clickbait crap anymore. So I appreciate you guys sending that in to me and annoying me for the last few days.

So, okay guys, and because Conor is not going to mention his book, which is absolutely stuffed with references to support the argument that kibble is less healthy than raw and fresh food, I'm going to do that for him. It's by him, Dr. Conor Brady, and it's called Feeding Dogs. And it's— I hate to say it, it's very good. He can write, he can write. Oh, there it is! Yes.

Oh, look at that.

Please, would the—

I'll take the tenner later.

Would the authors of the piece that we've that we put on the Skeptic website. Could they have a read of that and then come back to us? We would love to talk to you.

Yeah, yeah.

Any other thoughts, boys?

How do we like—

look, the one thing about them engaging with raw feeders, um, did you read the— did you ever get to the end of the article, or did you just blow up in a rage?

We got to the bottom, we got to the bottom.

Yeah, because there was that engaging raw feeders little bit at the bottom which It just made me smile. It's very patronizing, isn't it? It's just sort of like, well, just talk along to them and pretend that you're interested, but then tell them to feed a kibble feed. Yeah, just like—

yeah, or vets taking information from us, you know. It's like, is that the advice they're giving vets at the coalface? It's like, just nod politely, have your awake glasses on behind it. You can be fast asleep, but the eyes are open on the glasses, and nod politely until the raw feeder goes away. Or they're not picking up what you're putting down. It must be so stressful for vets. You know, they don't have any sensible guidance. They're being sold a pulp. Their information is incorrect. And then you get a nonsense article like this that if they read anything, they probably read that because they want to confirm their bias. You're not going to do anything that challenges your bias. They've been working 12, 14 hours a day. They're stressed out of their brains. They don't have time to read all the evidence. So let's read something that you assume the person is doing you a favor and has read the evidence for you. So you naturally read stuff that confirms your biases. We love a bit of confirmation bias, you know. So what do vets do, you know, because if they're not being given any advice on how to handle us, you know, it's sad. I don't see it getting any better. It's so negative. It's just so negative from there.

It's something that I've come across in many areas, from neutering through to use of parasiticides through to, you know, feeding. Where we seem to have that sort of cognitive dissonance that you talked about. You know, they really want to be evidence-based medicine. You know, the proponents of this article say they are, you know, evidence-based medicine through and through to the core. You know, one of them is even a trustee of the RCVS Knowledge, you know, there. And yet when they come across information which conflicts with their belief, it's out the window. Yeah, it's almost like evidence goes out the window. And yeah, there's quite a lot of the profession that are still stuck in that because it just is, it jars. If you've been taught it from university and you've taught it to people for years and you've spoken to clients about it for years, and then something pops up to say, uh-uh, that's wrong, you've got it, you know, you've got to think again, it It does give that clash, and you know, it's going to take years for us to get that level of cognitive dissonance out of the profession.

Yeah, it's a great shame.

It's a great shame.

Cognitive dissonance, guys. Then there's a book that Conor just recommended to me. It's called Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed. Matthew, I say Syed, but he says Syed. S-Y-E-D. Black Box Thinking, and it's a really deep dive, and I could talk to you about it because I've just finished it. Thank you, Conor, great book. That's very, very interesting, and it's basically a very, very simple example is in court, in some court cases, they, in the old days, they didn't have DNA analysis, yeah, when there was a rape or a murder or something like that, and so a a guy would be convicted of murder, and if then 10 years later the DNA evidence exonerated that guy from doing that murder, it would be quite common for the prosecuting lawyers to go, 'No, no, no, I know he's guilty, he must be guilty,' even though DNA evidence absolutely says he didn't do it. That is a really simple example of cognitive dissonance. Basically, you can't let go even though science says the opposite of what you think.

Yeah.

And that's, I think, what's happening with this, with this article. They're not looking at the science, are they?

Yeah, they just thought they can't seem to face it. But then you compare that to a vet like Becker, who— did you ever see her video where she did a about-turn on neutering and she kind of said, well, shit, I'm after promoting neutering and I have neutered many, many dogs. And she goes, and now she puts together this cool 30 minutes and she's crying in it and she's kind of saying, I can't believe the amount of dogs I've harmed by putting out this wrong information. And all I saw was, hats off to you, to be able to do that and then put it out on video to no great benefit to yourself, purely to let people know and go, hands up, I've made a mistake. It's like, that's a scientist, that's someone that says, oh shit, that wasn't working out. You know, no company ever puts its hand up and says, actually, you know, the VOCs in our toilet duct duck. Don't— I didn't mean to say toilet duck, some duck-shaped— oh geez. Anyway, you know, you know, if you've got enough money to deal with Procter Gamble, I'm not afraid. These things come out and we under— we know—

apologize now.

Yeah, I definitely do apologize. Um, so like, it's, it's, it's— look, it's, it's just very hard. It's very hard to turn around and say— and that's what's great being in my position, because I don't give a damn. I'll happily feed a bit of I'm not saying don't feed carbs. I'm not saying don't feed this or that. It's great because it means you can just bend with the wind. It's like a new study comes out. I had to be swung over to fermented food by you two repeatedly before I thought, actually, there's something to this. And now it makes sense to me. And it's great. Okay, well, fermented food, it is a little bit here and there. So isn't it great to be like that? And like, if something comes out about coconut oil or the fish oil industry, we can just say, okay, yeah, that wasn't a good idea or whatever. And you can bend with it because you're not cemented into one idea and everything I do and say has to promote this product made by a candy company. I mean, it's so ridiculous to have so little flexibility, and that's not what science is. Science is a tool, and what they're doing is they're talking about academia, and they say produce more academic journals, produce more articles to prove we're wrong. And it's like, lads, you just go off and do your own thing, and they will keep talking and slowly talk a little bit less as as time goes on. And so I think we did a pretty good job tonight of keeping it fairly level-headed, guys.

And so I would, I would say, uh, there was a great man, I think it was Lincoln, said, a man who can't change his mind can't change anything.

Ah, good. Yeah, I like that.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. I think, yeah, let's, let's finish on that. So, uh, is it the third— it's the third week, it's the third Tuesday next week, so we Q&A back to Q&A next week.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it will be. Yeah, that's—

yeah, I have a vast amount of stuff ready to go.

So brilliant.

Okey-dokey, guys, that sounds good. I enjoyed that.

Brilliant, great stuff.

Anybody who wants to— who likes what they've heard tonight and they want to support us, please go to our Patreon page. It's down the bottom. Okay, um, Patreon www.rawpetmedics.com. Just follow that link that's on the bottom scrolling across any moment now. Just as Conor says every week, you know, for the price of a cup of coffee, you know, you can support us. You know, you can go down to minimal levels, there's no need to be huge amounts, and we love to see your comments on there. Lots of information, some of the references from tonight There's lots of other stuff that we're sticking on there, and there will be the back catalogues as well, because people are starting to get a bit stressed that they're not easy to find on Facebook, and we're going to be having to re-put them somewhere easy to see. And thanks to Pete, you know, for all of your sound advice on getting people to hear us. I hope for those of you listening to the podcasts on Spotify, or Apple. You know, it's great that you're supporting us there and look forward to speaking to you next week.

Yep, absolutely. Cheers, guys.

Thank you very much.

Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.