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Old 08-02-2006, 08:45   #16
Dharkwolf
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I think that Nebulosa is referring to the recent case of aflatoxin contaminated pet food in the US.

This concerned the pet food maker “diamond” which was medium to low quality food – at least that’s what I surmise from the press. However this took place in the US (not the EU) and is unlikely to have affected CSV in any way.

Having said that – no one has said that dry food does not have problems. I would not consider aflatoxin outbreaks to be the biggest problem with dry food either – for the individuals affected it is certainly tragic, but there are other issues at stake.

Unfortunately the state of knowledge in canine nutrition is remarkably lacking. The only papers which I have seen dealing with this issue actually recommend feeding food commercialised as cat food to canines as it is apparently better adapted to their needs (!). However this report is rather old (1980’s) and things have changed significantly since then.

It has always been very frustrating for me trying to find information on this subject – there seems to be too many conflicting issues for someone to figure out what is good and what is bad for your pets. Of all our animals, the only one I know is getting exactly the diet it should is our elaphe guttata who gets exactly the same thing as she would in the wild.

Both feeding raw meat and feeding dry food seem to have significant drawbacks, it is really essential that you keep a close eye on your wolfdogs to make sure that their diet is correct – diarrhoea or vomiting are obvious signs that there is some kind of problem with the food, but there are also more subtle signs to watch for, changes in behaviour, activity, fur quality etc all can be affected to the diet.

End of the line – yes there are problems with dry food and sometimes those problems can be exceptional and tragic – such as in the case of aflatoxin poisoning. However, I stand by me previous statement that raw pig meat is simply not worth the risk – if you want to feed raw go for it (I know I do), but don’t use pig meat!
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