RawPetMedics Tuesday Night Live: Barcelona Low down!

Hola, hola, ¿qué tal, amigos? Bueno, scotch. They're the only words I have. I know. I was just gonna say, I know a song in Spanish. Um, uh, they used to—

they—

okay, no, no, I'm not— I wasn't— I wasn't gonna sing it, but they used to sing it actually on the streets in South America. And, uh, uh, I can't remember. It doesn't matter, forget it. So I'll bring it out at the end if my coffee kicks in. But, um, my least favorite— my least favorite coffee. Sorry, sorry, Insomnia. Anyway, hello, Nick. Do you want to do an intro there? You've always got the dulce tone.

You would never guess where we've just been. We have been working very, very hard, have we not, gentlemen?

Very hard.

Yes, the answer is yes to that. We've just come back from Barcelona where we had a wonderful, wonderful conference on the whole of the Saturday. It was organized by Neas, she's the Senior Vice President. She did a fantastic job and we all got together. It was an online, so it is available, guys, if you go to the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society, rfvs.org. Info. It will be up there within the next week or so, so all the information is there. Um, 5 really action-packed— I mean, I would say that because, because I love the Raw Food Inventory Society, I love raw food, but it was action-packed. Um, I do a talk and Brendan does a talk and, um, Nikki Kammack does a talk and Christian Vergara does a talk and, uh, Amaya Espinoza, I think, if I've got that wrong. She does a great talk as well. And so there's a lot to get into, an awful lot. And that's really what we're going to talk about today. But initially, just guys, just a 30-second impression of Barcelona. Brent, where are you? Oh, just recovered.

So great. Recovered. Yeah, I think we're all a bit more relaxed. After all, in Barcelona, just the energy of being amongst people like minds, enjoying conversation, not just in the conference, but actually around either day, either side, was just great. Being able to entertain ourselves and just keep talking about stuff. It just kept cropping up in conversation, didn't it, about things that we were doing, things that we were reading about, the stuff that's out there. It's just great. And that's something we've missed for so long.

I can honestly say morning, noon, and night, we were discussing with Nikki on the Sunday morning. Okay, we had this, found this little bar next to our hotel, which was actually on a nudist beach. Okay. And even there, It wasn't breakfast, it's kind of midday or so, late, late morning. And we all had a beer or a glass of wine or something like that. Even in that scenario, we were talking about polysaccharides and the impact on the microbiome and the impact on the immune system.

It was fantastic. Spent a lot of time at that bar. You spent a lot of time at that bar, Nick, didn't you?

I can't think why. You did more than everybody else, actually.

I'm going for a quick strip.

Yeah, I've seen photos of that. Just be careful.

I think that was a male nudie beach, in fairness. So yeah, no, listen, I love this. I say this every time I do this, but I just find it very therapeutic because sometimes you do feel like a little bit— well, not a weirdo. Definitely felt like a weirdo a few years ago. There wasn't a whole lot of people as animated about it as you were and as obsessed about it. And now there is lots of people doing it. And so it's just so therapeutic to be amongst everyone. You guys, meeting you guys is always great crack. And then everybody else, you know, it's a good gang of people. And so it's just brilliant from the very offset. It's just quite relaxing and you just talk about dogs for 3 days when you're not talking nonsense. So I thought it was fantastic. Like even outside the conference, which was very enjoyable, you know, even when you're sitting down at the dinner table, you're talking about stuff that you're planning on doing and then stuff you find interesting. Somebody says something and you think, you're trying to write a mental note going, oh my God, I need to know about this. How do I not know about this? So I just love all that. I just come back brimming with ideas and that's why I'm in a car because I was just like, right, I'm going to get that idea going. And I'm now at the top of Derry. I saw the Giant's Causeway this morning actually. My battery ran out of power, so no photographs, I'm afraid. I just had to enjoy it by myself, which was a very strange experience. Yeah, anyway, listen, so I loved it. I loved it and I can't wait to do it again. So more of that.

My strong impression, boys, was that it's a family. We have created a family of raw feeders, people who are really, really, you know, they're either super geeky or they're a little bit geeky, but they're on the geeky spectrum somewhere along the line about raw food. Okay. Because they travel all the way to Barcelona and even if they don't travel to Barcelona, they will be watching the vids which are available online soon and They are obsessed and they're interested and they're alive. And it's a family. It's a family of vets, vet nurses, but also with more and more, it's a family of people like all our Patreon people. Thank you very much, Patreon people. Thank you. Thank you all our podcast people. Wonderful. Couldn't do it without you. Well, it's a family and that's really, really important because communities are dissipating in this modern society that we have. So if we are creating this family together, I think it's absolutely wonderful. And this is, this is, is the future for me. So really, really excited about that.

It is, it is great. It's great. And you, you created it, Nick. At the end of the day, you're the one who started it all. Yeah, I might have started the party with, with some friends.

Um, uh, we might have lit the blue touch paper, but everybody else is providing the gunpowder now. And it's, you know, it's traveling at a hell of a rate, and it's very, very exciting. But it can only get bigger and better and deeper and stronger. So I'm really, really looking forward to that. And that's the next year is about consolidating that and energizing the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society. And what we're going to do is going to be bringing non-vets into the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society because it's kind of— there's just too much energy to share just with vets. So we're going to actually, in some way, we're going to be bringing people along. So please, everybody, um, uh, stay on the edge of your seats because we're going to be bringing you into the fold, which is really exciting.

And I feel, feel free to send in your recommendations as well. If you've got ideas and recommendations of that, we're always welcome to hearing that stuff. I'm sure you guys are. I mean, I'm not involved in the committee of any of that sort of thing as the non-vet of the gang, but yeah, I'm sure ideas are always welcome. There's always just loads of stuff out there. There's always new things to be doing. And yeah, I'm feeling very animated about it as well. I just wanted to grow. I just wanted to I want more of it. I mean, raw dog food is exploding, like it's exploding. Yeah, what was that? I think Nutramint used the figure there of 16 to 19%. I always use the figure 1 in 5 because there's heaps of people buying stuff in supermarkets and, you know, and yet it's like, you know, so we need that from the— we need the kind of more vets and vet nurses and whatnot to realize that. And so yeah, spreading the word and ideas and tips and tricks on that would be good. Yeah, the bigger the gang, the better, for sure. When we do it in Orlando next year. That's what I want from a roller coaster.

Mickey.

I was thinking Greece or something like that, actually.

Oh, Greece. I could force myself. Yeah.

Could you?

Oh, what about, what about sunny, sunny Wexford in Ireland?

Well, I think Ireland could— well, it's the closest place to, to America, so it's, it's about 10 minutes less on a, on a 747, or whatever the equivalent, 777 these days. So they'd be pretty happy with that.

So thank you, thank you, Dr. Conor Brady. But listen, guys, we're on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, and, uh, so thanks very much for anybody that can come on there and give us the price of a cup of tea each month. That is most appreciated. And also, uh, you can check us out wherever you listen to your podcasts. Uh, thanks Pete for organizing all that. You'll find us on Spotify and Acast and all the rest. So Do pop in and if you don't get to watch the whole show, you can hear us there. What are we saying, Brent? We on Amazon?

Amazon too, yeah.

So what were your favorite takeaway points, Brent? What was your favorite? Give us a hot potato there from the seminar.

I tell you what, I'm just going to modify that. I'm going to say, why don't we just do them bit by bit? Because there's an avalanche of information. So how about we go, we do we do Nikki's lecture to start with and we do top points from that and then we'll move on through the various ones because otherwise it's just going to be vomiting information. So, Brent, what's your top takeaway from Nikki Kamek's excellent presentation? This was the first one of the day.

Yeah, so top takeaway, look, even though they're pushing for you know, the big companies to put out there the nutritional content of their food. And there's a whole section on how there's resistance. Even they cannot give them the breakdown of the essential nutrients within their diets. But it's so important that we are pressing our raw food companies to spend those few thousand pounds to actually get their nutritional content so that we can help these guys. Now, for me, there is still— it's getting people to jump through a hoop towards FEDIAF and AFCO, and we've discussed that in the past, and we maybe should do another program just on that, just to talk about, um, those relevant levels. But it's about— she was very much definitely wanting people to jump over that low bar. However, there are some issues with that low bar is sometimes ridiculously high because of the nutrient content within those foods. And so there was a bit of discussion around that. Some of the nutrients, for instance, are really high in Africa and Fediaf, like zinc oxide. I think Conor, you shouted out, was one of those because of the fact that it needs to be in so high because it's so poorly absorbed. And we've got to look at two sides of that. Yes, we want the nutrient content so we can individualize diet plans for our pets that may need more of one thing or less of another. And I totally get that we need to, to get that information out there. However, I'm also super conscious that there are people who are complaining about nutrient content not being to FEDIAF or AFCO guidelines that are going to whip the raw food industry over that when actually there's a lot of work still to be done on how digestible, how absorbable the nutrient content of raw will be. So yeah, oh, just, it just opened a can of worms. But then that's what good lectures are about, isn't it? It's about making us think, making us come to the table with what we need to do to change in light of what's been talked about.

Yeah, totally. Brady, what do you think?

Yeah, um, I, one of my, one of my questions I put to her, I think Nikki, Nikki was talking about, um, you know, the amount of like what pet food companies do and don't do. And I asked why, in light of the fact of this Hill's recall in 2016, 22 million cans of pet food out the door of one factory, not a single one checked for its nutrient content analysis, and all this talk about what they say is in the food. And, you know, a good quarter of our lecture was kind of discussing that it's, it can be, it's most of the time, for the very vast majority of the time, it's done on an Excel spreadsheet based on the ingredients that come into the factory and they work it out and there's a scientific formula based on how long they process it for and what heat and whatever, what they think will be in the product at the end after they've processed it. And I'm like, I'm waiting for more. And she goes, or otherwise sometimes it's done on some other, but it's always mathematics beforehand. And you're waiting for— look, I'm sure they do checks now and again. Hill's proved they didn't for 22 million cans out the door of one single factory, but I'm sure some factories do. So my question was, Nicky, do some factories— and I'm thinking about picking on dry food here, but all pet food companies— do some factories test their product after they make it to verify it? And her answer was, if they do, they don't publish those results, and you're not entitled to those results. And in fact, if you go looking for the results, they don't have to tell you. So as it happens, I was just looking for the omega-3 and 6 content in a Royal Canin product. I can say it because they're emailing me, and it was proprietary information. They wouldn't tell me. And I was like, I need to know how much 3 and 6 is in there because I might need to supplement my dog because studies show these foods are deficient. So my follow-on question was like, okay, Nicky, these pet food companies are not testing their products when it leaves the factory. We don't know what nutrition is in the bag by the time you open it because maybe the pet food company held onto it, the warehouse, the distribution, you know, and then you open it and leave it exposed to the elements. They have no idea, no idea of the nutrient content in those products. And I asked, why don't they do that? Why doesn't one company say, hey guys, we test our products and we verify that the minimum standards have been met? And her answer was quite alarming. She said, because everybody knows the secrets of what's happening. And if you try and put your hand up about that, your competitors will say, you've got a few problems, buddy, and we all know what they are. And then it becomes a slagging off match. And so none of the dry food companies say anything because it's just, it's part of the game. They're all aware, this is probably what's in it by the time you feed it to your dog. And I was just a bit horrified. I thought there was more processes in place, even though I kind of knew from back in the day of looking at this stuff, but she kind of verified that. And so, like, talk about— Brenda says getting pet food up off the floor, my God, you know, that's the floor for me because they have no idea what it is. What about you, Nick? What did you think?

Well, I've got a lot of takeaways. I was really quite blown away. But what she did say was that if you look at the WSAVA guidelines, this is the World Small Animal Veterinary Association guidelines, they say only deal— and this is off the top of my head— only deal, only, only, only use food from a company who has a board-registered vet.

Oh yeah.

She was saying, she was saying half the vets who are registered with these big companies who can afford to employ, you know, a number of vets, half of them, they're in marketing and they're not even in food formulation. And that the guidelines say that there should be— you should know what's in your food. And yet, when— and as you've proved just now, Conor, when you ask them, or when Nikki— Nikki has done quite extensive asking these guys what's in your food, they'll just say, sorry, proprietary information, we can't tell you that. So actually, they're almost universally going against the WHO guidelines. So one has to ask, what, to what end is the WSAVA guidelines?

Yeah.

However, however, what she did say was, and this really struck me because I do it all the time, don't just slag off kibble because it basically, which I do do and I think we should do, but I think as well as the carrot, as well as the stick, we need a carrot. So she said, don't just sit and slag off kibble, try and look for information to say why raw food is good and why real nutrition is good and why it should be something that we're all striving for. And to that end, she said, toppers act as gateways, just as, you know, certain soft drugs will act as gateways to certain hard, horrible, you know, life-threatening drugs. Toppers, yeah, putting a little bit of meat or a little bit of herbs or a little bit of maybe a little bit of slightly cooked material on top of kibble, if people then see an improvement by doing that, then that is a gateway into thinking, well, there might be something within this, this whole raw food thing. And so don't dismiss it. And later in her talk, she said, what nutrition religion are you? Because we do all tend to kind of categorize. It's like you're either a, you know, a you're a Frankenstein, a Franken—

prey model, 80/10/10.

Yeah, exactly. Or you're a BARF, or you're an 80/10/10, or whatever it might be. But actually, we all haven't really got a lot of idea of what we're feeding dogs. The reason that the raw food brigade— and I'm talking as a very broad church— the The reason I think that we score a lot of points is because we are feeding the real deal, what animals have evolved to eat, and we're feeding variety. Where she was saying in the States, 90% of people in the States, and this horrified me, in the States, 90% of people just feed one food for, you know, a whole life stage or even a whole life. You know, it'll be a kibble. That's it. My dog eats the blue bag of kibble and everything's fine.

Horrific.

Absolutely horrific.

So that's definitely, that's definitely a key point there. Not slagging people off. She said, like, if you do that, they're just going to entrench and just, you're not going to bring anybody with you. And that's a classic business thing as well. If you are just slagging off the opposition, you just sound desperately weak. I mean, what, have you not got good things to say about your own product that you can't just talk about your own company and big yourself up? That's definitely the way to bring people along for sure. Yeah, the toppers thing is interesting. I think we are pushing that. I think everyone is like trying to push that idea. Then you get the whole can you mix question that comes after that, which we've dealt with a number of times, and fear that I think is happily stoked that that might be a dangerous thing to do and you might risk making your dry food incomplete and all this kind of nonsense that comes with it. The next talk was a Myler's talk about toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis? Toxoplasmosis?

Toxoplasmosis. The next talk was mine.

Just before you do that, but before you do that, okay, just a big shout out, Nikki Mack, who has been basically flying back just yesterday, is already joining us and making her own comments in just because she's missing us so much. She's got—

look at that.

Is she mad?

Is she mad?

She's only just got off the plane and she's on the computer to watch us again. She's been looking at us all weekend.

That's the jet lag, won't let you sleep. Keep talking nutrition. Yeah, so good talk.

Oh, we love you, Nicky.

Yeah, very good.

Brilliant, Nicky.

But you were next, Nick. Will we do you next?

We'll move over quite quickly, but you did mention, Conor, that you wanted to talk about this respiratory quotient. It was Mark Roberts. Remember when we spoke to Mark about 4 months ago? He was saying about dehydration in athletic dogs can be greater if they're fed kibble. And very simply speaking, it goes a lot deeper than this. but very simply speaking, the idea is that if you're eating kibble, you're eating a lot of carb. If you're eating a lot of carb, you've got— you're breaking down that CHO into carbon dioxide, so you've got a greater carbon dioxide level in your blood, which you have to get rid of if you want to do any significant exercise. Otherwise, you'll get acidotic and all that kind of stuff, and so you have to blow it off. How do dogs get rid of these gases? Answer: they pant. And if you pant, you dehydrate more. And if you, you know, even a 1% degree of dehydration over years and years and years because you're eating carbohydrate, you're going to have it. That's going to have a dehydrating effect and thus you will be more prone to stressing your renal system.

How's that?

Yeah, that's a 45-second summary of a 10-minute conversation we had with Mark Robert. If guys, if you're interested in this stuff, Mark Roberts explains it very, very well about 4 months ago.

Yep.

Yeah.

So yeah, all very, very, very interesting stuff. So that's about it.

Dr. Conor Brady. Yeah, Roberts is going to be doing lots of work this winter because it's just starting to get cold now. So he's back out running his dogs, which rest up for the summer, and it's getting cold again. So he's back out and he's just posted there recently. He says that the first— he's got some goals to hit over the next year or two with this new pack of dogs, new group of dogs he's running, and so they're all raw fed, but he brings an element of science to it and analysis, and so he's just analyzing everything, and that's just fabulous because you're going to get great loads of little ideas and data. So he knows more about carbohydrates and whatnot in dogs than most people. That's what his doctorate was on. So he's going to be tracking all that, so we're going to get lots of great info out of that. So he just posted his first video there, 2 weeks of him booting through the forest on wheels because the snow's not quite there yet, and talking about each dog, and he goes, this dog's a lunatic, this is the old dog, he's the calm one of the pack, and It's just so interesting to see how they work at all, you know, but I loved your talk, Nick. Yeah.

Oh, no, let me not interrupt you saying that. Go ahead.

I loved your talk, Nick. It was delivered with just excellent composure as always, but your nice use of a case study at the end, which everybody said was just fabulously used because you can get lost in the science a little bit sometimes and And nothing is as convincing as seeing a 15-year-old, you know, giant Labrador doing zoomies, you know. So it's just amazing. That dog in anyone else's hands would have been, you know, laryngeal paralysis. This is Karen's dog, by the way, everybody, who we— Karen was on the show a while ago talking about him. This is Newton. And but, you know, when he starts to get mild kidney issues, there is a set protocol. You're saying stage 1, 2, 3, 4. This is what you do when you see any sort of a blip in the bloods, straight onto low protein food and various bits and pieces. And down that ladder you're going to go. Whereas you look at this dog who's still eating raw with enviable phosphorus levels, which we all touched on, and that was very interesting, and he's doing zoomies around the garden. And I couldn't help but think everybody thought the same thing because you structured it very well, which was like, would this dog be doing zoomies at 15 years old if he was on this bump with a mild touch of kidney issues, as everyone's going to have when you're in very advanced years? So it was just lovely to see, and it was a very great way of ending because you're left with a big— you're leaving the talk on a high. And I'm thinking, I'm going to steal that. I'm going to steal that approach and I'm going to make my talks better. So I just thought that was a very, very well-delivered talk, Nick. So well done.

Bless you. Praise indeed.

Even better, the fact that he commented that he worked with us guys. I mean, yes, you know, and he enjoyed it. I mean, where's that come from? Yeah, we normally give him hell.

It was that brown paper bag you gave me in the, in the car park with lots of notes. That did help, boys.

We got dinner.

But no, it's— this is an amazing thing to— guys, guys, what basically what I said, the guys who are watching, not you guys, because you know what I'm going to say. Just saying, this is a wonderful forum. And I suggested to people, even if you just have a WhatsApp group with 2 or 3 of your mates where you just say, I've just found this, you Isn't that amazing to just share ideas and maybe have a laugh? Just saying, I'm having a— we, you know, we've variously had good, good times and bad times, and we've helped each other through. Good times, we take the piss. Bad times, we're there for, for the other guys. But all the time, we're just talking about nerdy stuff on a really regular basis, which really gets us off, which is wonderful. So I, I did praise you, and I would do it again because it's been, it's been a fantastic, what, 2, 2 and a half years that we've been doing this. Yeah. Oh, Brian, look at that.

It is, it's therapeutic on a small scale. It's great, it's great to have that. I'm sure lots of people that are doing their IPEC courses or whatever, you know, you meet these group of like-minded nerds with their similar interests and it is therapeutic. It's great, it's great fun, you need it. What about the next one, Brad? What about toxoplasmosis? What did you, what did you take away from that?

We didn't, we we made some comments about vitamin D, we've got to pick Nick's apart a little bit. Okay, go for it. Because there was a very interesting point that actually good old Nikki pulled in. So this control of phosphorus, which was a really important part to Nick's talk, and we were talking about, you know, the relative absorption of phosphorus from the diet and phosphate binding out and things like that. And something that I've been doing is looking at using vitamin D to try and control those cases in more end-stage kidney disease and sort of realizing there's not always enough in the organ meats that they're getting. Now, Nicki sort of pointed out that from her research or looking into this, that they don't think that in dogs there is as much control of the vitamin D activation in the kidneys as is recommended from the research in the papers. And that's interesting for me because I still see when they're getting into end stage, when the kidneys go, that actually the phosphates climb. Now, if that's not because the kidneys are controlling that activation of vitamin D, there's another mechanism that needs to be found. And, you know, why is it that the active vitamin D— you know, yes, they may need active vitamin D, and that's why they're carnivores. They can't get the plant versions and convert them so well. But then it can't be just down to the amounts they're eating, which controls their phosphate levels and the feedback for their parathyroid. There must be some other mechanism, surely, feedback mechanism. Within the system to control the level of active vitamin D. Have you seen any papers, Bren, in regards to vitamin D?

Yeah, vitamin D activation, phosphorus, end-stage kidney disease, even human, human studies, things like that. And, um, Conor, you're the king of the papers.

No is the answer. No, I'm just staring blankly. Nothing, but I want to find them.

I think it's something that we should do a deep dive on that, and B, we should look at maybe trying to up vitamin D in, you know, stage 3, stage 4, Irish stage 3, stage 4 kidney disease, and to see— because you can't do any harm, and most dogs, most humans are low in vitamin D. So I think it's a really, really useful thing to raise. So thank you, Bren. I appreciate that.

Yeah, we need to just check the type of vitamin D we're using as well. That's really important.

Yeah. Well, if in doubt, go for the animal. I'm thinking liver is one of the best sources of vitamin D. Caroline Shipsey says, where can we see the recordings of the conference? They are to be found on the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society website soon, within a week or so. Rfvs.info.

I'm going to post a slide from Nick's talk where you were talking about a study that eluded me where they were comparing raw and dry-fed dogs. And this is really showing, because I thought it was just in cats that we had the evidence for, but it was the phosphates in dry food that's doing possibly the phosphorus, the high phosphorus readings in pets, the phosphates used in dry food versus natural phosphorus. And you could see dogs fed natural phosphorus were down here on the graph and then up here were the dry-fed dogs getting phosphates, and a huge difference, not even, you know, messing around with the x-axis. But look, it was just really, really interesting. It was so clear, and I was like, how could any vet look at that and see the study saying if you feed dry food with phosphates in it, you get these pretty scary phosphorus readings? And apparently when you feed it naturally via food, you don't. So if you are concerned about phosphorus and you are getting into a point of advanced kidney disease where these things do become a little bit scary, how can phosphates from dry food be a part of this animal's life? It's just, it just doesn't make any sense, you know. So I just struggle when those studies are out there and they're not like on the front of the Vet Times. We've got some, you know, you get a 100-person survey makes the front of the Vet Times, why vegan pet food might help your dog live longer, you know, 100 vegans said it did, and that's the front page and not like, guys, don't feed phosphates to an animal with kidney disease, and they'll go, well, how do we avoid that if we're feeding dry food? You know, you cannot do both. You can't do both.

A couple of things there. Lorian is saying, how do we give vitamin D to dogs? Answered, liver. And if they can't take lamb's liver, take beef— use beef liver. If they can't take beef liver, use pork liver. So that's—

it's also in some mushroom supplements. So if you're doing longevity stuff, eggs are great.

Yes.

And Leslie Dipple says, ask Jason Fung, and I presume she means that he has done some work on vitamin D and renal disease, because I think he's a renal specialist. So, uh, yeah, he is. That's how he got into the obesity thing, because he's got a lot of obese patients who all have renal issues.

So there are also supplements of drops of vitamin D that you can get, a little bit more expensive. Some active forms. But yeah, guys, I know that it was exponential levels of vitamin D in certain dry food that got pulled up and ended up causing renal disease in a few dogs. I say a few dogs, hundreds of dogs. So it's not a case of just tip as much as you like in. I think there is a sort of max level just to be a wee bit cautious about. It's really hard to get to that with normal foods like liver. I think you'd be feeding exponential amounts of liver, which they just wouldn't take. But we've just got to be a wee bit careful if you do supplement.

And perhaps if you're adding in furious amounts of vitamin D, it's kind of like a hole in the bucket scenario. It's like dogs with IBD and they've no B12, we'll give them a B12 injection. You'd say, well, he's got his gut flora shot. And so if you fix the gut flora and you get your B12 back because he's eating plenty of choline, they don't need— so like is it that if you have to feed more than 5% liver and you're getting an egg in there, that's more than enough vitamin D for anybody. And so, like, is it a point where you, you know, I don't know, I don't know where I am with supplementation. I just really don't know.

Oh, he's gone. He's gone.

But he'll come back. He'll come back. Amazing. A really interesting point on that was, I think Nicky Mack might have pointed this out that actually even though we would associate vitamin D in oily fish, some of those formulators that are out there are based on some of the FDA data over in the States and they don't have the levels of vitamin D in some of the products. Things like liver, you know, depends on the time of year they tested it. Some of the data is so outdated, depends on the the oily fish, which oily fish it is as to what the vitamin D levels are. So you've got to be careful again, if you're just going off a formulator, then knowing that's going to be the thing that's actually in the food. Did you run out of battery, Conor?

I am very close to running out of battery, but I'm going to get another 10 minutes out of it when it's charging off. My phone's charging off the car and just not strong enough to keep Bee Live going, but I'm dying to bust on to the next one. Can I please go on to talk to someone else? Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it.

We've got 10 minutes left.

Okay, let's just get trying to see how long I've got on my phone. So Amaya's talk was just brilliant. There's a vet that's just fizzing with, what's the word, you know, it's infectious. You're watching her presenting on something and she's clearly bubbling about and she can't wait to get to, you know, the point and I just find that really infectious. It's like so infectious, hey, toxoplasmosis. So like initially I thought, okay, I'll check this lecture out, here we go. And as soon as she started talking, I was in. So she was talking about toxoplasmosis in cats, giving us the background to that and a few other little nasties. But one of the really takeaway points about this nasty little parasite, well, that so many cats have and can get into humans, so we're a little bit alarmed to it, is that they found recently that cats that have a low presence of this enzyme— don't ask me to repeat the name of it because I desperately tried to learn it before we switched on and obviously I've forgotten it, but it resulted in— just to sound smart— but it resulted in high linoleic acid, like omega-6 levels in the blood, and that this is what the parasite likes. And so what she did with that and the next slide, she said nutritional status affects how well you are going to be hit with your parasites and the gut flora. And there's two things where dry foods score so badly. We know that raw-fed dogs have a more balanced gut flora, species richness, all this kind of stuff. We're not quite sure the health implications of that because it's very hard to get those bits done. You need long studies, but But the nutritional thing was very interesting to me. So linoleic acid is an omega-6. It comes from eating plants. Okay, I always think omega-6 plants, omega-3 animals. That's a very easy way to, to sum it up. But omega-6 is like this linoleic acid. If you're going to feed lots of grains and plant protein, you get very high omega-6. So studies of dry-fed, dry foods and dry-fed dogs show they've got lots of omega-6. Linoleic acid is one of them, and only a little bit of omega-3 because that's the expensive stuff. God help us putting in a bit of fish oil. The dry food. And so that makes cats more tasty to this Toxoplasmosis. That's what it needs to reproduce, to switch on and reproduce. Perhaps it's the omega-6 that spikes inflammation and crashes the immune system and distracts it, who knows. But then I thought, dry food is full of omega-6 linoleic acid, so in a way you could say that puts your cat at risk of being more attractive to the baddies. And if it annihilates your gut flora, the chemicals they use for napalm in the life on this, on this disgusting product, and they put it into the cat and it napalms their gut flora, there's strike two already. So people are always wondering, people, we've all suspected like parasites hit the weak, like the terrain has to be right for these guys to get you, and her talk just in two short slides just hammered that home. I said, oh, nutrition, 'Oh, good, floor, two things that can just set this, set the terrain right.' And then the bug says, 'I'll have him, he's lovely.' So I thought that was very interesting, new way to look at this very common parasite in cats. So I asked her, 'Can you feed your way into this situation? Can you make cats drink lots of linoleic acid and they get this parasite?' The answer is no, because they haven't done those sort of disgusting studies yet. I think those days are probably gone. But anyway, I found that very interesting, fiercely interesting.

And doesn't that also— there was a release by Cat the Vet that we talked about a while back on carbohydrates in cats' diets and how there was a certain nutritionist that was very experienced but saying there was absolutely no downsides to having those high-carb diets. Within the food. And yet actually we've now got a relevant paper that's saying, well, actually it can increase their risk of taking on these protozoal parasites and causing more shedding of those parasites in response to high inflammation within the gut. So actually there's a downside right there without any other things, you know.

So absolutely, I've got a— I've got one of her slides up in front of me just here and it's It says Microbes and Parasites is the title, and it says parasitic infections are closely linked to the microbiome. They found that the presence of a parasitic infection was strongly linked to the composition of the gut microbiome. In some cases, the microbiome could predict the presence of gut parasites with 80% accuracy. And yet some of the big hitters in the conventional pro-kibble camp are saying that it's totally okay to feed kibble.

And it's just, it's just anti-science. Anti-science. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need, we need more, more science is what they'll say. We need more science to prove what you're saying is correct. And it's like, well, it's sure as hell not going to help matters. Are we agreed it's not going to help though? Can we agree on that? You know, oh, we need more.

Yeah, yeah, totally, totally, totally.

So that was a cool one. Wow, what else, what else, guys?

So we've got to go on to mycotoxins or Michael Jackson, whichever you like.

Michael Jackson's the funkiest of nasties. Yeah, that was good. That was Christian's talk on mycotoxins and glyphosate. Terrifying, terrifying talk.

It is absolutely terrifying. Okay, and I've got got the, the most terrifying slide of his up in front of me here. I'm just going to give you a little brief resume of it. He— so Christian has— who was the outgoing president of the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society, he gave this talk and it was just, it was massive, absolutely massive. And he's got this slide and he is saying that the presence of glyphosate, and 8 out of 10 Americans are peeing glyphosate. They've got so much glyphosate in their system, and I would imagine in Europe it's pretty similar. And, and what was it, dogs are 38— they have 38 times the amount of glyphosate.

What, a 41? I'm reading, yeah, 4 to 41.

Dogs have 40 to 80, and then cats are maybe 38%. I don't know, but there's a lot of glyphosate in our animals. And he was linking it to, if you've got glyphosate, then that it makes the mycotoxins, the mold from cereals even more potent, and it reduces your vitamin D, which we were just talking about. It will increase your chance of having renal fibrosis, which is where you— it's like sclerosis of the liver, sclerosis of the kidneys. It reduces your antioxidant defenses. It will increase your chance of peeing at night, nocturia, yeah, because you've lost control of urine at night. It increases toxicity of Paraquat. It increases the toxicity of aflatoxins, ochratoxins, fumonisins, whatever they are. And, and all this— there are really good studies to demonstrate all of this. Just because this one thing, which is the most used, most popular pesticide on the planet, 9 billion tons of this stuff have been produced since 1978. So we're swimming in it and that's what it's doing apart from anything else. And that's us, you know, it's really, really hurting us. But we can choose organic and, you know, do what we can. But for our dogs who are eating kibble and cats who are eating kibble, right there you have it. It's a cofactor in the wrong direction, which I think is unbelievable. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, just— I mean, just the levels of mycotoxins that are in the environment because of this feed. I mean, we talked about the fact that, you know, for all of those poor kibble-fed dogs, you know, actually, where do you think that grain is coming from that's going into those feeds? And that's not just wheat, we're talking about maize, we're talking about all of those, any of those discolored, slightly high humidity stored grains, or even cropped at slightly high humidity can mean that they will be downgraded from normal cooking flours, etc., into animal feed quite readily. And not just grade 2, there's a 1 to 5 grading and we're talking sort of the 4 to 5s going into animal feed and they're just packed with these mycotoxins. You know, that's just, you know, it's just horrendous to think about, you know, where we were at back in the '80s and '90s before I was really advocating raw. And just thinking about how many of those dogs could have had all of those symptoms that we've just talked about. I did ask a question about whether, you know, some of the molds on other foods could give the equivalent levels of mycotoxins, because there are some studies about the cheese, you know, scenario for the blue cheese, which I hate, by the way, but that's, you know, some people love it, you know, whether those mycotoxins were relevant or not. And I think the consensus was no, they're not. Absolutely. And the— but there are— there is still some literature out there that do report them as being relevant and having toxic effects. So that's an interesting thing that needs to be worked through too.

I think— I think you hate blue cheese, Brian, so it's easy for you to keep bringing this up. Stop incriminating blue cheese. There's nothing wrong with us, it's not the same or something. It's not, we googled the last time you said that and we had to google and was like, oh, it's not the same thing. We all learn from Google. That slide, Nick, you were saying was cats, dogs are 4 to 41 times more parts per billion and cats are 6 to 66 times more. Wow. Because they're sniffers and they go around and they they're not only just eating all this stuff but picking it up from all sorts of places. Don't forget in your parks, guys, when you get into your parks and roadways and there's a ring of lack of grass around trees and by your curbsides, that's all done with very high-potent weed killers, perhaps not glyphosate but often glyphosate. Golf courses, did you ever wonder why there's no weeds on a golf course? I went for a jog, there was a golf course closed down beside us there recently, and we were all jogging on the golf course, it's so nice, And there was a guy, it was near the last few days, and the guys were still spraying the courses, and he's got his gas mask on, and he comes up and he goes, don't run over here, I'm just after spraying it. And I was kind of like stopping in my tracks going, that's why they don't have weeds on a golf course. They spray it with weed killers to keep the weeds away, and the weed killer of choice is glyphosate, on the back with toxic signs on it. And your golf ball runs along the grass, you put it in your pocket, you drop your sweets, you pick and bite your nails. Like this stuff, it blows off the course onto the housing estate nearby. Like, it's in, it's in so many crops. They've genetically engineered corn that the corn kernels live, but virtually need this chemical to grow beside it. It grows it quickly, it dries it out. It's such a cool chemical for these farms, but so, so nasty. And it's just like, we are in big, big trouble, and dogs and cats are 4 to 40 times worse than we are. And it's like, it's How is that okay? It's, it's, uh, scary, isn't it? Bloody hell.

And it's a good number of crops that they kill the crop off before, before harvesting it. They literally spray it off to kill it so it all dies and dries at the same time, you know. And that's, you know, if that's not horrendous in its own right. Yeah, just because they don't wash the grain afterwards.

Yeah, like, and, uh, Drivi Patel has just made a wonderful point that it's actually quite a good excuse to keep away from golf courses, which I fully support.

Yeah, no, it's nice. I got a great bit from Susan Thixton there when I was writing the book, and she was saying, did you hear about the phosphine alarms in the factories? And I said, phosphine? The only thing I know phosphine from is World War II, where they were using it to do horrific things to people in the showers. So phosphine, I thought, it can't be the same. And she said, yes, factories, a number of factories in the US were using phosphine alarms. Why is there phosphine inside a food factory? Well, they were using phosphine gas and spraying it over the corn and wheat coming in to get rid of the toxic mold off it before they fed it to dogs. As if that's like releasing— remember that Simpsons where it's like, what do we do with all these things? Oh, release snakes. But then once we poison the snakes around, ah, then we would just release the aggressive gorillas who eat snakes. And it's like what, we would just have lots of gorillas then? And but like, the idea of spraying something with phosphine gas in a place where humans walk around, like, it's just— and so when there's too much phosphine in the air, the alarms go off and everyone goes, out you go, guys. And they said the main reason that the pet foods were having so much mycotoxins on it is because in the US they don't have to cover the trucks, they don't have to hold them in silos, they can just pile the grain up outside. That's going to the pet food company exposed to the elements. So you get this massive amount of mycotoxins that would never be permitted in human food. Or if human corn and wheat goes stale or whatever, send it to the pet food factory, and it's just extremely nasty. And nobody ever talks about that one. Nobody, you know, raw dog food can't have that in it because we don't use those grains. So just another plus for us, you know. What else? There was one more talk.

There was one more talk, but it was Brendan. So I think why don't we, we pick Brendan's We can skip that. Brains, no, no, no, no, no, you're not getting off. You didn't allow me off. So why don't we do that on, on Patreon just now? So that will be the, the bit on the side will be Brendan's, uh, um, talk.

How about that?

It's, it's 1948. Uh, um, yeah, do you need to go? Do you need to go, mate?

No, I'm okay. I'm at 1% power and I think it'll last about another 5 or 10 minutes. So let's just see what happens.

Okay, amazing. We could talk about this stuff all day. It was a day's event, but there was 5 days' worth of information given. So it's just stunning, really wonderful. Got to say thank you very much to everybody and the Patreon and the podcast people. We'll see you next week. Don't even know what we're doing next week. Doesn't matter, we'll think of something. There's a gazillion things going on in our heads right now. So we're going to sign off now. We're going to just nip over to Patreon to pick Brendan's brains, and then we're going to organize next week.

Great, perfect. See you next week.