Looks like another big "science" association is at it again: the American Veterinary Medical Association (behaving much like the folks at the AMA, FDA, USDA, AAFCO, etc.) wants to vote to condemn raw pet foods.
And why not? As soon as people see how much healthier their pets become by not buying the carb-laden garbage their member vets recommend, or worse yet the carb-laden and chemically preserved (with known carcinogens!) prescription diets (that have no better ingredients, don't treat disease with any drug or medication, and cost four times as much), well then that's just not cool!
If you can't compete with quality products, just get the government or a quasi-government organization to put out propaganda to scare people into buying your stuff...or just ban it altogether.
(Here's the link to their "explanation" of the move.)
Note that there's nothing about the health and vitality of the pet, or the nutritional quality of the product. This comes as no surprise; much like their membership, they don't know anything about that: which is why they recommend products like Science Diet--well, that and the financial incentives.
The only thing they can point to are the potential risks of infection. In case you haven't noticed, many heavily cooked / processed / heat-treated dry pet foods carry incredible risks of infection and toxicity as well. In fact, very few raw pet foods on the market today go without some form of cold process or pressure treatment to eliminate pathogens.
It's amazing that the AVMA has the nerve to cry about "public health" risks when their members actively promote foods with known carcinogens.
They also reference the "scientific literature". Well, it's all right there in the scientific literature that excessive sugar and carbohydrate consumption causes excessive insulin production: leading to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer, chronic inflammation (hello arthritis?), depression, ADHD (perhaps even autism as sugar behaves like a narcotic to the brain), heart disease.
And that's just what it does to HUMANS; imagine what it does to dogs and cats who should eat even less of this junk than we should? In fact, you don't have to imagine, because the rates of many of these chronic illnesses are even higher in pets than they are in humans: and that's saying something, because the rates are pretty darn high for us.
Bottom line: don't get your health advice (or any other advice for that matter) from giant bureaucracies and trade organizations.
We certainly don't. One of our store dogs, Hush, just ate some Instinct Venison Medallions (pictured) this morning. In fact, we're going to be expanding our lineup of frozen and freeze dried / dehydrated raw pet foods in the coming months. Stay tuned.