RawPetMedics Tuesday Live DogRisk Review 2023

Welcome to Helsinki. The conference has just finished. We're very happy and it went incredibly well.

Yeah, you were very good, Nick, I have to say. Bless you for speaking. Very, very impressive. Karen, my Karen did a great job. Oh, unbelievable.

She was incredible. You were good yesterday.

Yeah, it was a great talk. It was engaging. Yeah, it's nice, nice having a dummy. You can't help but, uh, a little bit of nerves, I suppose. Yeah. For some reason in Helsinki, that's the second time I've done a talk there, and I feel a little bit of nerves in Helsinki. I'm kind of, most of the time I enjoy it, but this time I felt a bit of pressure. I don't know why, I don't know what it is. The university thing?

Did you feel under pressure from the vets?

The vet bit, yeah, the vet bit maybe. I don't know what it is, but I felt a little bit so. Then the elevation. Of, uh, you finished your buzzing and it's like, well, of course it's going to go okay, you know.

I felt a massive—

not even pressure, but the desire to contribute in a really, really fantastic way, which I just wanted, because they, they are our friends, and I just wanted to really, really deliver the very, very best.

Yeah, you want to give the good. Somebody said that, you know, you're nervous to good for you. It means you care about the audience you are presenting to, you know. It's not trying to like— it's nothing more than that. It's just I want to do a good job and present a topic that is fresh, you know, and not something that you can just Google and get the answer to too easily, you know. So it's a bit of pressure when dog risks are putting out really good information.

Yeah.

And isn't it great, the stuff that we're talking about and thinking about, other guys in also doing and bringing to these conferences. And then you're sort of like either getting a new way in, a new idea, a new view of that same theory, or indeed a confirmation of the theory that we're doing. You know, like Karen's talk—

Karen's talk where— Excuse me.

That's right.

I'm here. Yeah, okay. Yeah, Ellie was ringing. Oh, that's Ellie ringing. Okay.

I'll catch up.

Okay, grand.

Sorry, baby.

That's it.

He doesn't normally ignore you.

She'll know that you've done that, won't she? There's too many cameras.

There's no way of ending all this at the same time. But yeah, anyway, it was here. A good few people here. A good few friends. People came from Portugal. There was somebody from Estonia, Spain, Australia, Bulgaria. Nora from Bulgaria comes. Sweden. Good few people this week. A lot more vets, a lot more vets than normal sitting there talking to 2 or 3 vets that I haven't kind of seen. They travel, you know.

People online, there was a great number of people online. I think there was 30 or 40, something like that yesterday.

They weren't as interested today because there was somebody else on doing his TED Talk and also the camera. We could talk about that a long time.

So, Brendan, what was your absolute highlight, apart from my talk?

What was your highlight? Well, yeah, I have to say that I think I like Susan Winters. Yeah, because it just happens that I'm going to be talking about inflammation.

Okay.

In a couple of months' time at the London Vet Show to vets. So it just sort of like, as I was saying earlier, it just is one of those things when you've sort of compiled a load of stuff to talk about and then somebody comes in with confirmation or a little bit of a different view. Yeah, and it's sort of like, and it's, it's like really interesting because I always view that that level of inflammatory change is is that core to disease development, you know. And that's— I'm just seeing that. And I know you've said that for the gut and, you know, food and that side of things, but it's just a little bit more than that, isn't it? And even Anna's talk right at the beginning, you know, talking about that atopic march, you know, the—

yeah, the diseases, the 5 syndromes that run together.

Yeah. And she was kind of saying that starts in the gut. So she could, by timing it of like what age these kick in. Yeah, it will happen at this certain age. It's more like you start with the gut and it moves out. For me, it looked like it was moving out to the skin. Yeah, and ears. And so you can see at a certain age, so it was like a march of this condition. It's left to fester, which the lesson will be: get it while it's young. As soon as that little gut condition, that little furnace pops its head, you know, you should be controlling it then.

What was great about that is the sort of resonance with homeopathy and miasmatic disease and development. And actually, some of the— you know, because if you look at embryonic development and the tissues that are affected by certain conditions, and that's where we sometimes go with miasmatic treatments, is that, you know, the connection between things like epilepsy and, you know, the things, you know, all that comes in and periodontal disease.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the throwaway comment, she says, um, you know, there was a grouping of diseases, you know, so she was grouping the diseases as you're saying, and then she goes, because to dogs, cancer and hypothyroidism smell the same. It's just a throwaway comment, and we've gone to the next thing, and I'm writing down hypothyroidism smells the same as cancer. Ah, because she does so much work with the sniff. Yeah, yes.

Medical, the medical detection dogs.

Just clarify, just for to the audience just exactly what she said?

Oh, listen, because otherwise it's another throwaway line. Well, from what I understand, and I didn't ask her, I should have asked her the question because I was nearly like, what? Uh, this is the lady— don't forget, Anna is the lady whose dogs were smelling COVID before it was kind of cool. So she had dogs detecting people with COVID which would have been a wonderfully effective way of seeing actually how many people were walking around with COVID Uh, probably weren't detecting too many, but they, um, but they at at the, at this mention of cancer and hypothyroidism and 3 or 4 other diseases that come together in a cluster. Yeah. Um, in these certain dogs is that she said, and to, because to dogs, you know, these diseases are all very, very similar, and to dogs, cancer and hypothyroidism smell the same. I'm sure she means from, uh, sniff tests or whatever, but like, how are those diseases nearly identical? So is it that there's a similar kicking, a similar process that leads up? I mean, we know they're completely different things.

Well, that sort of came into the metabolomics stuff that Robin was talking about when he was talking about the sort of chronic inflammation and cancer. And it's, I guess it depends on how that inflammation is taken up, how the immune system is reacting to it.

So inflammatory markers, that's not—

Yeah. Because we've got to think, you know, for hypothyroidism in dogs, that's an autoimmune reaction, an inflammatory reaction that's developed against the globulins that are holding on to the thyroid hormone. So ultimately, is it that there is something similar in that immune system reaction that actually then predisposes exposes you to cancer.

Some cancers, yeah.

And it's not all cancers, was it?

No, probably some, you know. Yeah, pretty staggering stuff. Your talk was very good, Nick, as well. I liked it. It was a new type of talk, this talk. Like, even in your title, it was kind of strange things I've been— not strange things, the most interesting things I've been thinking about this year or something like that. A trip through the mind of Nick, and it was. It was well structured and paced and threw out some gems. Bless you. Timing and that kind of stuff was very, very interesting. Some stuff I hadn't really thought about before. And also talking about, you know, we view things as far too scientific and it's just way more like you are what you're meat eats, you know. You are what your food ate.

Yes, with your vegetables.

Yeah, that's soaking up all that dirt. Yeah, and it's either good dirt or bad dirt. And it's just— so that got me thinking, and it kind of changed your perspective, changed my perspective. We get a very— we want the nitty-gritties and the percentages, but you lose, uh, face— you lose, um, you lose the picture there, you know. I've got your head in the muck, you lose the bigger— so I thought that was one of pace studies or talks, so I did like that.

Bless you.

And it was a change, a change of talk, so I just thought, hmm, that's very, very good. I was entertained, I like changes.

It was a walk, wasn't it? It was a walk. We talked a little bit about the serotonin diet, which you've been asking, you know, we've been sort of leading up to.

Which is still in the balance, by the way. Is it a thing, is it not?

I'm not sure. But yeah, it's worth—

why isn't it being investigated?

That serotonin diet? Yeah, yeah.

I think it's great, we need to do more of it. If it's rubbish, it's a fallacy, we need to dump it.

The good test about the study that you shared about the serotonin diet was more valuable because they were looking at— yeah, was it urinary cortisol? Were they measuring cortisol in the blood? When they said they were looking at tryptophan, they were looking at stress response. Are they not in that study? Or am I confused?

That was something else.

Yeah, yeah.

And but there, any kind of blood values of that is more believable than some of the studies I shared in my behavior talk, which is, um, the pound did the talk and then there was like a behavioral analysis of the animals before and after. For me, that is desperately weak. Yeah, because once you you know a treatment has been applied, it completely skews what you think is going on. But when you're measuring bloods, you can't kid them. So that's interesting. And if by feeding carbs, it changes the level of tryptophan anywhere, that is an interesting result.

But then it's back to, you know, what's developing that serotonin? Is this gut bacteria, is that carb level actually almost acting as a prebiotic in the situation, and that's then a release of, you know, the serotonins from the gut, and that's feeding into the vagus, and that's calming the dog, okay, you know, from the stimulation. Because Conor's always argued, you know, what level are these amino acids getting across the blood-brain barrier to actually create more serotonin in the brain. And that's, you know, something else, because then how do they monitor that level of tryptophan? Is it just in the bloodstream? Is it into the brain? Do they use carbon-13 to actually monitor where that tryptophan ends up? That's what I'd like to see.

Okay, I'm lost on that bit. What's the carbon-13 bit?

So that's a way of you can monitor where specific— so you could mark the amino acid with a carbon-13. So it's a different carbon to the normal one. What's the tag? 13. Carbon is 12.

Oh, okay.

So you just add an extra proton into the—

It's an isotope.

Okay. So you can track it.

So you can track it.

Yeah.

So then understanding, is the tryptophan in the food, the protein food. Okay, so you'd obviously have to supplement into that protein food, and then 2 hours later you add the carbohydrate in, and then you've got to work out how can you track it. Now, it could be that you can track that through imaging, I guess, if it's an athlete. Um, depends on what sort of isotope it is. Um, versus would you have to take CSF fluid, which is obviously then a bit more experimental, and that's a Yeah, something I'm not comfortable with.

And is it coming up from the biota? Because so many species produce both serotonin and tryptophan. So the species that I shared in that study, one or two of them produce tryptophan. Yeah, but more likely to be producing serotonin. So how could you block those?

But if you drew blood, you could find out whether it's the bacteria stimulating things within the gut or whether it was actually getting into the blood bloodstream as serotonin.

How could you tease apart where that stuff came from?

Because the carbon-13 would be passed on in the conversion into the serotonin.

So you know what percentage was coming from the diet.

So you look at how that— but that's, yeah, that's lovely. I would get into a bit of molecular science.

No, but it's interesting. Like when they did these initial tryptophan studies, they were doing them first of all with low protein diets, which is a big problem. So you're restricting the amount of this critical amino acid. They were using protein meals, which I was explaining is bone meal and tryptophan isn't in bone meal. So when they're growing chickens and fish on chicken bone meal, fish bone meal, they have to add tryptophan because there's none in that. So if your pet food contains chicken bone meal, I don't know why I did that, but it means it's got no tryptophan. So yes, adding tryptophan to that dog will help. So the studies, that was the first problem. And the second problem was they didn't know that the gut was producing all this. So producing lots of different things. Telling the brain to produce serotonin. So I mean, you know, what role do the carbohydrates play in stimulating the gut biota that they go up and just tell the brain what to do?

Amazing.

Right, well anyway.

Well, we've got to talk about yours. I have to say, great joke. I love the fact that Nick had sloped out. And what did you do?

For a snooze.

Stuck up his picture and misquoted him. No, Nick was right there.

Nick was there. I watched his face.

I was not seeing where Nick was, and I thought he'd go, "Jake, shut up." Nick looked like he was watching a very slow car crash.

Ellie was laughing though, on the plus side. I bet. Tell us the— So now it was a true story, which in my defense, but last RPM, last Tuesday's RPM, Nick had made a comment about that all nutritional studies are shit. And that was a—

Quoting pages.

That's quoting, yeah, the most referenced scientist on the planet. But I didn't let people know that bit too much. So I was saying that I heard this great quote, the nutritional and behavior, the effect of nutrition on behavior, the studies suffer woefully. All studies do. And I said it was summed up very well by this guy who's master of his craft and who's done a lot of thinking about this. And I put up a cropped out picture of Thompson's head mid-talk. And I just wrote, all nutritional studies are shit. Oh, that got a great laugh. Good laugh.

If you're editing this, please put the slide in.

Yeah, stick the image in. It's funny. And then I said, yeah, I said, but I said it to help him out. Of all nutritional studies, the behavioral ones are shittest, you know. But the setup, the setup, yeah, the setup was good.

It was comedic timing.

Yeah, it was great. And I put it at the start so people would like me more at the detriment of Nick's character. Take from his confidence and add it to my own, I think, is critical. Before us talk. So that was a good start. I like that. Yeah.

So, what was your highlight, would you say?

Yeah, no, as I was saying earlier, those two beginning ones, I think from you guys. Yeah, we talk a lot, don't we, to each other. So we sort of knew some of your formative thoughts. And, you know, I absolutely agree with all of the regen stuff and the, you know, the greater holobiome what's going on with our food. It was great then moving on to today, let's say, so the second day of the conference. I think, gotta say, Kaz, you did an excellent job. Oh, yeah, just, just, you know, I know that she was slightly panicked.

Yeah, first time, first talk ever, and it's in a university in front of, you know, all Europeans. Yeah, yeah, that's a big deal. It's not a small— it's not like the local Babington Hall where like we all started. It's just, it's easy and people don't know anything, no offense to, you know, but like you're speaking to the public normally, but now you're speaking to the university and they're sitting there listening and it's more, it's another level. And she started there.

So what were you thinking, Conor? You just thought you'd give her the task?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, the story is brilliant. So the story of like the fact that, you know, Newton It's a wonderful story. It's a wonderful story about veterinary. Nick, I could see your emotion at the end of it, and so was I, and I could barely even talk about it. I didn't think I was going to be until— because it was a big deal for that, you know, that dog was, was everything. Karen was like, every minute of the day you had to be there for a dog with laryngeal paralysis. It's a big deal. And then all the other downstream things that happen, it requires amazing veterinary. The dog lived till 16, which is unheard of for a Labrador in good health. So testament to the right way of doing things. Karen did it with real food and got into ZooPharmacose and taught me all about that. But it was the fact that, and you just alluded to it at the start, that Karen kind of brought the story along. So we go past that, we get taught about laryngeal paralysis and, you know, managing the dog in the condition that it is. And then she gets into where this condition may have come from. And so I thought, okay, this is interesting. And the vagus nerve, which I know little about, you know. And then she starts talking about acrylamides, which 3 speakers have been talking about. Acrylamides, it's a Maillard reaction, it's the bonding of protein to sugar, and it's a problem. Okay, these acrylamides are a problem, and they're ages, ages, ages will be the term used for it. Yeah, and so highly inflammatory, but they accumulate in tissue, and the lads were explaining, and cruciate injuries and all sorts of stuff accumulating in the brain. It was mentioned in my behavior talk. And then Karen just says, so it's her hypothesis based on some of the stuff from megaesophagus where we found, it was Mars Dermal Care, it's up on YouTube, you can see it. They found that megaesophagus had a link to dry food, it was no longer just a genetic thing, it was caused by this dry food. And what was the exact issue? And then she goes down this acrylamide hole. So that was the premise of the talk. And then you're talking to people like Dr. Susan Wynn, Dr. Matthew Moore, people at the top of their game.

Big brains.

And both of those, particularly Susan Wynne who had mentioned, Susan Wynne was kind of saying, I commend you for coming to that conclusion because I have the study that you were looking for. It was mentioned in the line of some study from some time that acrylamides cause laryngeal paralysis. And Karen is a formidable researcher and I never found it for megaesophagus. But Susan, that's the glory of being in these things. You get like a nugget of gold. It's like, you have what? And Susan was like, even Matthew Morris says, I can't believe you came to that conclusion yourself. But like, if you're living that disease, nobody knows more about the disease than the client. You've got to give them—

and it's—

they have—

people are saying, oh no, it's the vets that are coming up with this, or it's the scientists that are coming out with this. But it's the value of this melting pot. Yeah. And it's been great to see the RFVS and Dog Risk and a number of organizations opening their doors and allowing, you know, owners and, you know, people with interest, nutritionists, and coming together so that we all can share experience.

Yeah.

And, you know, and look at the science and come up with theories and, you know, and it's just great to see.

Yeah.

You know, that's what this should be about.

Everybody left their ego at the door.

Yeah.

And everybody was embracing of everybody else. We had raw food manufacturers. We had probably, you know, non-raw food, fresh food manufacturers. We had owners and vets and groomers and trainers and behaviorists.

A girl came from Turkey. She's just getting into it and she's a dog owner. She's passionate about it. She just came, she wanted to hear us speaking. And I was like, that's amazing. Good. From all over the world.

Yeah, literally all four corners, the States, everywhere. So, um, next year, guys, in the second weekend in September— yeah, first weekend, second weekend— just block it out for now. Yeah, because if you can come along, that'd be—

Helsinki is gorgeous.

Helsinki is so lovely. I'm going to go back to Karen for a second to say how eloquent she was, how heartfelt she was, the fact she didn't cry during the whole presentation. Yeah, I'm surprised.

I did, I did.

Yeah. And, um, how scientifically rigorous she was.

Yeah.

With her, with her presentation.

So, Karen, yeah, hats off.

Unbelievable presentation. Yeah, very, very good indeed.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a great presentation.

So what else can we— oh, there's some Great research stuff. I think some of the stuff on minerals that Sarah gave on the first day, uh, for mineral absorption, the micronutrients.

Oh, I've got a— so I've got a good one for you. I've got a good— okay, so as this— as Sarah was talking and she revealed the difference in lead content between dry and raw-fed dogs, and, uh, dry-fed dogs had way more, way more lead, the dry-fed dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she said overall, the dry-fed dogs eating fish meal had more lead.

That's right.

Or mercury. Am I thinking mercury? The lead was the raw. Okay, so we're talking mercury. So I posted that. I thought that's really interesting because the difference was so dramatic. If you're eating fish meal, you're in trouble for mercury. Where's the fish coming from? The bigger the predating species, the more it gathers this nasties in the food chain. Okay. And raw was her recommendation to avoid this. She found through analysis was feeding, you know, non large predating fish, but she also recommended salmon, and salmon is a large predating fish. So I took up the two pictures, I posted them up online, and, uh, it's just another post that I'm gonna have to address now because people were coming up underneath it and saying like, you know, farm salmon is deadly for dogs. Deadly. Yeah. And I'm thinking, okay, yeah, because there's a heavy metal issue, but I would say in isolation.

Yeah, that's the downside, because there was isolation of mercury.

Yeah.

Not necessarily looking at all of the other factors around what they're dosed with in farmed situations. There's all sorts of things.

What is the problem, guys? What is— how bad do you think the problem is with mercury in farmed salmon at the moment? Because I haven't— I've only had a very cursory look. Didn't look good 20 years ago. Doesn't look so alarming at the moment because they're having to get on top of what—

Yeah, but my take on that is it's not the mercury. It's the molluscicides. Yeah, because these farmed salmon, they don't swim very fast. They get mollusks on their skin.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

It's the— it's the— it's the— it's the colorant. Yeah. If you look at wild salmon in the supermarket, it's red.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you look at the farm stuff, it's pink. It's orange.

Yeah.

Okay, so there's a big difference between these two. How do they make that happen? They need to use pesticides.

They need to use— There is organic salmon farming, but you all know yourself, there's ways to get around that. A million ways from Sunday. But here's the question. How could it be? I mean, the feedback which has to be addressed, I'm going to have to say, okay, yeah, listen, I am not one for saying to feed feed large predating fish. I'm always being sardine and sprat. Smaller than that. Yeah, absolutely, because they eat the plankton. They're the fellas you want. You don't want the guys eating the fish. Okay, but my question is, safe for humans and babies and in the supermarket and deadly for dogs?

No. Well, yeah, well, look, the thing is, it's, it's a toxin that builds, isn't it? So let's get through this. Mercury first. Okay, so with mercury, so the main predating species she talked about was tuna, freshwater pike, which many people don't think about being eaten.

Have you ever seen one of them? Who? Have you seen those?

Who eats freshwater pike?

That is one aggressive looking fish. Have you ever seen his face? Oh, imagine catching one.

So it was tuna, freshwater pike, and swordfish, wasn't it?

Swordfish, yeah, yeah.

3 ones that they particularly isolated as high concentrated because it accumulates.

Yeah.

Now it also accumulates in dogs. Now we talk about—

tuna was mentioned as well—

we talk about mercury dosing in vaccines, you know, because of the thiomersal.

Yeah.

And this is, you know, yeah, to a chihuahua, that those nanograms aren't necessarily in one instance necessarily that bad, but it accumulates. It bioaccumulates, so it does never get rid of that unless you do a total detox. Now, it's also neurotoxic. And what's going to be the biggest area that that mercury settles in is the fats. And the fats are in those cells that insulate the nerves. So even worse, it's going to be effectively packing around those nerves. Now, there was a little bit of a conversation about detox. And that again, we were talking about, and I raised about intermittent fasting. This is one of the interesting bits, that if you're going to do a detox and you think about intermittent fasting, you might feel a little bit sick as your fats release these toxins. It's at that point it is essential to then have some chelating agent, so something that you're putting in to take those and allow the body to promote either— well, for humans, that is either through sweating, either or through the kidneys or through the liver into the feces and, you know, effectively taking out that way.

Yeah.

For dogs and cats, that's really urine and feces because they obviously only sweat through the pores. There's not a lot of else that can do. So it's about how you chelate that. Yeah. But coming back to the mercury stuff and that fats, yeah, it's the fact that it bioaccumulates. So if you've got species which are particularly problematic, yeah, then that you're feeding to your dogs, yeah, then you've got to think about where they're coming from.

So, but she found that salmon is the safer option. This is the results of her day. So it's not, it's not like she's putting her hands up. Where's salmon from though? There we go. Oh no, wild salmon is a big problem with mercury. So farm salmon is not as bad as wild salmon because farm salmon, it's controlled what you feed it. So you'll feed it, let's say sprat or, you know, it's 4 kilos of meal to grow 1 kilo of salmon. So it's a terrible amount of fish. What a waste. So what I'm thinking is that first of all, her data is what spoke. It's not like she's saying, you know, and none of us are saying go feed salmon for the rest of your life. But she said dogs feeding salmon were lower in mercury. The dogs fed fish meal. So they were her recommendations. This wasn't her coming up with nutritional tips.

So that was the first.

So I'm thinking, how much mercury is there in farmed salmon? Maybe because of all the abuse that they deserve, that they bloody deserve, because the industry was filthy. We've got plenty of it in Ireland. Is it that they've picked up their game and they've gotten rid of the mercury issue? Not so much the mice and pesticide issue, and you know I'm just saying that salmon may not be a deadly thing to feed a dog because this is stuff that's allowed on the shelf of the supermarket. And when you're feeding pet food, you are feeding salmon heads. So when you start talking about fat, I'm thinking, well, you know, always— yeah, not always, but fillet— what, you fillet a salmon and feed the fillets to humans? Okay, so you're not going to feed whole salmon, you know, that's the frames. You're gonna have frames, but they're artists, they're getting the meat off the frame, a little bit of meat in the tail, but generally your feet— and look, I'm not slagging off heads. Heads are great, unbelievably nutritious. So, but the brain is full of fat.

Oh yeah, we talked about that because there was this conversation about fish oils versus brain material. So brilliant source of DHA, EPA. You know, it's just unfortunate that because of the TSEs, the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, we're throwing away so much brain material. Yeah, yeah, because which would be a— yeah, if we could just PCR to take out prion-infected stuff or to take out the viral-infected stuff so that we've got then another resource of a brain.

New Zealand is— New Zealand are selling brain. New Zealand sells all the brain, all the dried brain supplements which you can buy online, but struggle to import, all come from New Zealand.

But they are testing it before they do that. Okay, to eliminate— because I love that, you know, when they sort of like say, we're TSE-free, but by the way, we test it just to make sure. Yeah, it's like, that says to me, yeah, so you don't declare where actually there's a risk. Yeah, because if you were truly TSE-free, you wouldn't test it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so that was—

yeah, but maybe the testing is, is kind of a false flag. They're saying we test just to reinforce the cleanliness of the product. Okay, possibly that's a policy.

Folk like things to be tested because there is issues with heavy metals and there is that kind of stuff. But yeah, I'm, I'm wondering, I think a lot of food chains are cleaned up. I think the EU are very serious on all that kind of stuff. So I would have thought that compared to—

I've looked at some of the data on that though, because I'm worried that actually the EU have set minimum levels, but those minimum levels are relatively high in some of these things.

They were just going to— yeah, they were, because, because, you know, we're talking about parts per billion, yeah, you know, toxicity, yeah, and, you know, they're looking at parts per million, yeah, okay, nice, a minimum, and a nice short-term study, yeah, lovely little short-term study, yeah. Yeah, these guys after a month were fine. Yeah, how were they after 2 years? Yeah, did they reproduce?

So yeah, but I did a quick search while she was talking about that for the UK and the fisheries and what they were looking at as risk in fish and relative heavy metal contaminants. And actually lead is still classed as the highest one.

Okay.

And that's actually the North Cornish mackerel they find. Now that's interesting because that's all around there.

Why in mercury?

No, in lead.

Oh, lead.

How? What do they do?

But they've got lead mines.

They're mining. Tin mines.

Tin and lead is associated, isn't it?

Yes, yes.

Wow, that's interesting.

Isn't that good?

Wow.

So anyway, that's—

yeah, that's cool. That's a lot. Another one, because we could talk all day about these things.

Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, it is great. The other one was Steve Brown was on and Dr. Susan, what's her name? Reiker, right? Reiker. And so Steve Brown, for people that don't know, is an American— is he a vet? Is Steve a vet? I'm not sure he's a vet, but he's one of the kind of raw dog father type guys from the '90s. 1997, he says. Yeah, and he's into animal diet formula. That would have been his baby at the start, and he started this idea of spreadsheets and whatnot. And the guy does a lot of thinking about, you know, diet formulation and whatnot. He's a spreadsheet geek, and he's very passionate, clearly very passionate in his delivery. But his point was really good. So what he was saying was that, you know, we, when we look at the ancestral dog diet, and we all agree the dog's diet is probably quite lean, you know, you got these animals that are running around. If you're fat, you're a cheeseburger type thing. And so he says there would have been a few animals coming into autumn and hibernation, and maybe— but he says, other than that, quite lean animals. That's the ancestral diet for a dog. A lot of protein, bit of fat. Okay. And he says the problem with farmed animals is, particularly because he's in America and you've got CAFO beef, which is reared on grain, which is very fatty, which is a protective thing for the animal to But, so his point is that if you're making your dog food DIY on American corn-fed chicken and CAFO beef, fed grain, that can be a really high-fat diet. And he was putting out figures in supermarket beef with really high fat content.

In the United States.

In the US. Although our stuff can be quite fatty because I think the fattiest stuff you're allowed to feed is 20%. 20-25% BL. So 20-25% fat, but don't forget 65-70% of that is water. So it's 2 parts fat to 1 part protein, the stuff you buy in our Tesco's here, you know what I mean? So that's already 4:1 on an energy ratio. His point is that the farm stuff we're buying in the US, it could be worse, but we can have it bad here. It's quite fatty, and the more fat that's in the diet, driving the calories up, okay, because you're supposed feed the dog by calories, not by weight. And we need to get better about that. And it's a discussion for another day because it's needlessly not something that you want to start freaking people out about. So it's a hard sell, but we'll think about that. Or we can talk about it. But anyway, the point he was making was that all the minerals that we talked about, all the calcium and zinc and cool stuff, that's all in the meat and bone. Okay, or meat in this case. So as the fat goes up, you get less meat, so you have less pool of nutrients. So the nutrient content goes down. So he goes, that's a big problem. So when you're randomly advising people feed fatty beef and fatty chicken, because it's cheaper, the fattier the meat seems to be the cheaper, it's the way it is, then your nutrient content goes down. And he showed very simple formulations. If you use lean beef and chicken with the fat pulled off the outside of it, and fatty stuff, the dog on that diet will be nutrient deficient. He's not getting the nutrient nutrients he needs from that protein on top of the fact that the bird is poorly fed and not exactly nutrient stuffed. So I thought that was a really important point that we don't think about.

But this is predicated on the idea that that's all they're going to eat.

Yeah.

But if you—

yeah, yeah, that's true.

The essential ingredient that doesn't go in the bowl is variety. If you're feeding a variety of food, you feed chicken, then venison, then rabbit. Yeah.

Pork. Yeah.

Ben Lamb.

Yeah, exactly.

I think all of these problems evaporate. That's a very good point. Steve Brown, he's, he's, he's—

I think this is great. We've just been delivered a couple more pints for you guys because you've obviously got—

Thank you. Cheers. I won't say, I won't say no.

So, um, the other elements that we've got to think about in all of that is that the, um Barbara Royal came in and did a talk as well on talking to vets, talking to vets, how we get across our point. That's going to be really pertinent to me when I'm at London Vet Show because I've got a couple of talks there this year, so that's great. Yeah, we've got— I've got Nottingham University invited us to speak as well, so that's going to be to their students, so we're going to be doing that. So a lot of, you know, stuff to get across. So I found that, you know, again resonant with a lot of things you think about, you know, you know, batting it back because they're always challenging us on safety of raw.

Yeah.

You know, is it really going to be that? I mean, the studies are out there. We've had this conversation before about, you know, how many studies are out there now of dry versus raw, and they're all on the raw side of this.

Yeah, it's great.

There's no nothing out there that's proving that dry is better and safer.

For any health condition, I've got a £1,000 reward on my website. It's my Facebook cover. I didn't tell you about this. I should have told you this. I've got loads of mileage out of it. Go to my Facebook page, Dogs First Ireland. And my Facebook cover is a £1,000 reward. It says wanted, uh, study showing a complete dry food outcompeting the complete raw dog food for any health condition whatsoever from any time in the last 100 years. It doesn't matter.

So this is not a dry food against another dry food. This has got to be a dry food against raw.

A well-made raw. So it's not dry food about— or Mars going, we fed them chicken breasts and after 3 months they had nutrient deficiencies. It's like, who feeds them chicken breast?

It's going to be a bloody complete—

boom.

Not even a dry because kiwi, uh, zeeweed pea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fab. Okay, yeah, absolutely.

So therefore it's got to be a kibble, surely?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We were having this conversation because Susan Wynne talked about if it's a kibble, it's got to have a level of carbohydrate to make the kibble.

Make it stick. What's your thoughts on that? No meat meal will do it too. So, so we've got— so Origin, for example, although it contains a bit of meat and fruit, it's very common. The term is 80/20. So an 80/20 is the highest meat dry food. It's 80% meat, 20% bit of veg, bit of fruit. There is carbohydrates in that, but not a whole lot. It's not like 60% potato or rice. So you combine food with meat meal. So when Origin or the likes, you know, I shouldn't be saying Origin because I don't even know what's in Argyll anymore because Mars own it. And I don't personally—

it's changed because the guy was talking to us about it last night.

He was passionate. Hey, listen, we can slag off Mars a bit. This guy has been selling Argyll for years and he was a bit upset that now it's owned by Mars, you know. That's just a fact. This is, this is, this from— don't just say who it was because he sells an awful lot of the food, but he felt like, oh, my baby, I've just been promoting this for 20 years and now, you know, and who knows. Yeah, well, then maybe they say they I haven't a clue, we don't know, but anyway, so you can bind the kibble together with that. Susan was saying that the bigger problem with that is the fact once you've got carbs and protein together in any kibble, it has to be ultra-processed with heat and pressure. And that's where acrylamides come from. So you can't dodge it anyway. Feed more meat, you're just feeding more ultra-processed protein and whatnot. You know, so yeah, my God. I don't know, there was just so much.

How are we doing for time?

I think we're doing quite well.

I can't read that.

We've got another few minutes.

Do you want to have a look? Okay.

How many minutes have we got?

Oh, good grief, I don't know. It's going to be—

Can you not read it on the screen?

I can't. It looks like a 30.

Oh, that part.

Yeah, that's 38 minutes.

38 minutes.

Yeah. Okay.

Gents, for the last 7 minutes, I'm going to say, what were the most humorous elements of the thing? Or the bits you liked the most for any reason, either scientific inquiry or just great slides.

Thank you.

I worked hard on my slides.

OK, OK. I'll give you a compliment. There was an extra slide.

There was.

I'll give you a compliment about your slides. I was sitting beside Ellie for your talk and your first slide came up, very cool black kind of engine gunmetal black pattern with white writing over it, just a dampened down white. And it was kind of like, have you seen American Psycho where they're arguing about their business cards and the type of white that's on the business card? It is a brilliant scene. We'll watch it on the phone when we're finished. It's just so cool. And there's all these ridiculous yuppie dopes from the '90s are looking at each other's business cards and talking about the type of white and letters on the cards, like that's important. Anyway, I turned to Ellie and I said, you've been helping him with his slides. And she goes, I didn't, that's just him. And I was a little bit jealous, and I was just thinking, oh no, because in my head I'm thinking I could never have black slides now because it'll look like I'm copying you. I just thought, that looked really good.

Is it not always the way though? Because It's always— you're sat in a conference and somebody's talking about something you're due to maybe talk about in the future.

Yeah.

And you think, yeah, will it now look like, yeah, I'm just copying exactly what they've said?

Yeah.

Even though, you know, if you've got conference 2 weeks down or even a month down, yeah, you've pretty much laid down what you're going to be talking about already.

Yeah.

And then you sort of like, oh yeah, I Oh, you can see something. Unlike Nick, of course, which I know was reading it yesterday.

Yeah, literally. We all do that though. But we all do that. It's like it's never enough. It's never enough.

Yeah, you know, I wanted it to be good. Okay, so I was going to say, there is psychological research which says that if you have a dark background, it adds to the gravity of that presentation. If it's on a white background, I have to tell Anna, because bless her, she does all her stuff on a white background. So A, it has more gravitas if it's on a dark background, number 1. And number 2, if you're projecting in a light room, a dark background with light Yeah, yeah. Letters, yeah, it's more punchy than a light background with darker letters.

Yeah, very strange. I was thinking exactly about this when I was trying to work out for the Lemon Vet Show because it's in a light room. You're in the main— for the Food for Thought stream, you're in a light room, and I was trying to work out, could I remember whether it would be better which way around?

You know, black would suck you in, like, you know, in a bright room there's a big black abstracting, they're going to look at us. You know what I mean?

So that's why we work together so well, because you consider the most abstract things, nerdy, trivial things.

I think one of my best takeaways from when Susan Wynn was talking— Susan is a bit of a nerd for nutrition. And so when She's talking, she's just delivering like boom, boom, boom, boom. There's a study and another study and this study. And one of the just throwaway comments was like, and in this study, there was a, I think she goes, there's 52 studies in this of various phytonutrients that are beneficial to dogs. And so this guy had accumulated 52 studies out there showing blueberries and green. You remember the Scottish Terrier study and the colorful veg and green, dark greens reduce bladder cancer to 70-90%. And so I just thought, I probably know about 10 or 20 of them, and my tail is wagging about getting my hands on that study. So that's what I take away from these. I write down things, I write down blog post ideas, and I go, look into that, research that, let's have a look at that, you know, put that together, take that idea and have a look at that. So I just come away brimming with ideas.

That's great, getting the references off the slides so you can actually look into the reference and actually read that and gain your own thing.

Yeah, yeah, because I'm looking at it with a different— I'm coming at it from a different— I'm looking to pull something else from it that she might have been doing, and then off I go that way.

And then that leads into AI, you know, we were looking at—

wasn't he impressive?

Yeah, yeah, a little bit worrying. Somebody—

okay, what was his company?

It was Code Anyway.

Okay.

So Code Anyway has taken— they did Profile 2 books. So they took Feeding Dogs by Habib and Becker, and they took— oh no, Feeding Dogs. Feeding Dogs. Bloody hell, The Forever Dog by the lads, and Feeding Dogs by me. I only have one. I'm sure it wasn't by Arnold Schwarz because I saw a picture that was written, a book written by Arnold Schwarz.

That look very much like yours.

He took my cover book image! He took my cover book image, have you seen that? He's got the same image on his book as I have.

That was so funny. Susan Gwynne put out a slide.

A lady—

no, listen, I never say to a lady she's not allowed to sell the picture to anybody else. Well, your man should know, you know. Well, I've done a massive— I've done a—

you think he's selling your book?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm surprised he's still around.

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know this guy. I don't know him. I don't know who he is.

No, not Schwarzenegger.

He's still around. He did a great little documentary actually. It's very interesting.

He can take my picture.

So this guy had taken the two books when it was available for Kindle. I only had it available for Kindle for about a month or two. So this is interesting. And then he takes the Kindle books and he puts the Kindle books up because he bought them, he owns them in a way. But I always own the content. So anytime the content is taken, it has to be in inverted commas and have to be mentioned. Otherwise, there's programs online— I feel like I'm defending myself here, but this is how authors control their stuff. There's a thing called Copyscape, and you can see who's quoting your stuff. And I don't mind people quoting my stuff. That's why you write the book. I want them to do it. Yeah, but I don't want people passing it off as their own information. So little bits here and there, it's gonna happen. You know, we all do it. We Take a line from a study.

Can it interpret, this has been quoted and they said they read—

Oh yeah, it'll tell you if Dr. Conor Brady is mentioned, your name, it'll give you percentages of how much, what paragraph. Like it's another one about a famous author's name, but anyway, look, it's cool.

It's gonna be a great way of downloading your library into a system which will allow you to then recall where things were. You know, we read so much, and, you know, to be able to go back into stuff that you own. So look, there is a limitation on public library, 5 questions. Okay, if it's your own library that you've purchased and you, yeah, you want the person that's purchased your book to be able to— oh, I do, yeah, go back through it, I do work out where they've learned that. Yeah, okay, so, so where it's your own library, and that's what he was demonstrating It was he'd bought your book, and if it was his library, he would be able to quiz his book.

I thought you could quiz his library.

No, no, no, no, it's only—

I thought— oh my God, I completely got that wrong.

Yeah, because you walked in and I missed it.

Yeah, no, 5 minutes, everyone turns around, Connor's late. Talking to someone outside. That happens. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't having a snooze. No snooze this time.

So if you download your library, especially your Audible library, or your— hey, look, even our podcasts will be on there.

Yes.

Okay, so if you've downloaded our podcast, you can upload the MP3 into your library, and then you can interrogate it through his program to say where we talked about fatty acids, bring up anything about kidneys, and it will give what we have talked to people about fatty acids or vitamin E. So, okay, so look, um, and now you're thinking differently, aren't you?

No, no, no, it hasn't really changed it that much. So let's say I'm a ne'er-do-well, okay? And at the moment— what do you mean let's say? But, uh, they don't need to know anything. Yeah, they know this polished gentleman. Yeah, so I think the problem is— so I don't know how much everyone knows about AI, and people get a bit freaked out by new tools. This is a new thing and it's a big thing. It's going to be a big thing, and it is a big thing. I'm doing a bit of looking into it. Is it a lot of advantages and disadvantages to people? But let's say from an author's point of view, you get a book out and and then my content is out there. So let's say a ne'er-do-well gets my book and uploads it. Okay. You could just scan the pages and upload it today. It's not hard to do. So then they've bought the book and they own my content. They put it up online and then AI very easily will just pull that book apart and says, rewrite that in 10 different languages in 10 different ways. Write that in the style of William Shakespeare. The guy that was showing me today said, give me a summary of feeding dogs in an Irish ditty. And I was like, what? And it just put into an Irish limerick. And in the year of 2020 was the— and I was like, how? In the year of 20? Even that's how we would say it. You wouldn't say the 2020, we'd say in the year 20, you'd say 18. We don't say 1918. And I was like, bloody hell, that is good. It's not a bad little limerick. So the point is people can take that content. And what he said, he alluded to himself as that they will then churn out that book and stick their own name on it. Now nobody will buy it because they don't have any kind of sway or presence. But if you had a little bit, if you're up and coming and you wanted to get a book out, you just take my book and just replicate it and make sure that Copyscape can't copy it. And AI knows what to do. So out comes their book similar to mine with an edge and a change and a tweak and, you know, some corrections. Yeah. Yeah. Spelling mistakes. Made better. Let's face it. Yeah, but like, they could come out.

Not thinking of this, but maybe.

Yeah. But of my own.

You write this book.

Yeah.

But better.

Yeah, but better. Done. You know, in a heartbeat. While you make a sandwich. Yeah.

Print.

Like, so, but that's the way it's going. And like, artists have a big problem because they're taking their art and they're saying that, so AI creates original pictures. But what AI is doing, it's taken a million pint glasses and it creates a new pint glass of beer. But someone has done these pictures and taken these pictures of skyscrapers and whatnot. So when it gives you— it's interpreted all these pictures, it's taken all these paintings. I would kind of say to the artist, before I thought about my own work being affected, now I'm rethinking what I said, but I'd say, well, all art is built on other people's art. It doesn't come out of nowhere. Picasso was influenced by what's-his-name and what's-her-name, so he took those in and then he bends it a bit and he goes, that's cool. And next thing you know, you've got realism or surreal, whatever he calls himself. So everybody's built standing on the shoulders of giants, let's face it. And not everybody admits to where they got this or that. You know, Bob Dylan steals from all over the place, but he's a master and it sounds amazing when he puts it together. So it's like, um, but then when it happened to me, I felt dirty. I was like, that was just— no, you can't do it. So anyway, the AI thing, it's good. That's just moving along.

And we were talking about this last night on the way back to the hotel, that whole thing of set an idea going. Once you've given an idea, you know, if somebody else runs with it, yeah, are we happy? That, you know what, deep down you feel great because that's exactly what it is. If the idea was great and a success, that you could think, do you know what, I talked to that person about that. And it's great that they've achieved what they've achieved.

I was trying to convince you of that yesterday about some project that Bren's been working on. And we don't need to get into the details, but I was trying to convince Bren of it going, but isn't it great, Bren, that the project you've been working so hard on is now being used for the greater good? And now here it is happening to me and I'm like, not taking my own advice.

Not taking it.

Not taking it. That's interesting.

But in the old days, you wouldn't know that somebody was running with your idea. But nowadays, you can scan the internet, which is how many trillion bytes of data, and you know about it. So it's like the news.

Yeah?

There's a war in Afghanistan. In the old days, that would take 3 months to get to you.

Now there's a newspaper article that you're not reading.

It's in your inbox every minute of the day.

So there you go.

What's your favorite bit, Nick, within here?

Well, I think what we should do and say, right, for now, cheers. I hope you've enjoyed, and you know, it's been great. If you want to know a little bit more, continue to watch over on Patreon, and we're going to give you the lowdown, the scandal that happened in dirt, the dirt, the dirt, the dirt. And that's going to be entertaining.

Yeah. Okay, right, let's get into the seedy side. We'll make it up, the seedy side. Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. Join us over on Patreon.

Patreon.com/rawpetmedics if you want to join us on that. If you're listening to us on podcast, continue to listen. It's most grateful that you're liking and following what we do, and maybe you're already uploading it.

And on YouTube.

Yeah, the next platform.

Yes, indeed.

Okay, yeah, great. Cheers, guys.

But not the AI, not the AI. I'll be uploading it to AI. Yeah. Okay.