Why I'm not talking about home feeding

Just stop.

Stop using the pet food recall as an opportunity to promote your personal philosophy of feeding, or worse, your products - your pure organic "unprocessed" processed pet foods, your supplements, your miraculous herbal liver kidney detox formula.

And oh yeah - you may as well stop asking me when I'm going to use my fifteen minutes of fame media attention to tell people they should be feeding a homemade diet, since that's how I've been feeding my dogs and cats for more than 21 years. Because guess what? I'm not going to. And this is why:

Every time I see a post saying that pet foods are all full of "poison" anyway, by which they mean rendered meats and low-quality industrial ingredients, and the antibiotic, pesticide, and hormone residues we find in the human food supply, too, I cringe.

That's because those people with something to hide in this whole mess would benefit from seeing us get off track on a discussion of the advisability of feeding processed foods to our pets. It's a side issue, it's a distraction, it's not the point.

We all have the right to decide for ourselves how we're doing to eat, how we're going to feed our pets, and how we're going to feed our families. No matter what choice we make, we have the right to walk into the store and buy food that is clearly and accurately labeled and oh yeah, that DOESN'T CONTAIN ACTUAL POISON.

As a journalist, I want to see people have the facts they need to make their decisions. What those decisions are is none of my business.

There are other reasons - such as the fact that nearly all the recipes for home feeding I've seen on the web in response to this crisis are totally unbalanced nutritionally - why I'm not using this as an opportunity to spread the word and sing hallelujah for the home/raw feeding movement, nor help anyone, even good companies with good products, promote themselves, not even in the interest of the "public good."

Because those products and ideas will still be there when this is over, and as is ever the reality, they are and will always be for the people who want them, not the people who (in our  subjective view) need them. I accepted that a long time ago.

Right now, the more we focus on getting the facts about what happened into the light of day, addressing problems  of corporate accountability, ethics, and transparency, tackling the legal and regulatory issues, and taking a good, hard look at the genuine human and animal suffering caused by the contamination of the pet food supply, as well as the threat to the human food supply, the better.

It's fine to think that we could all eat, and feed our pets, better. I suspect that just about everyone who lives on microwaved burritos and diet soda is  aware there are better ways to eat, but what they do with that awareness is up to them.

But if there's actual poison in their food? Literal, non-metaphorical poison? That may have found its way there due to corporate greed or government negligence?

That's something else entirely, and a much bigger issue than whether or not a salad is better for you than a run through the drive-thru, or whether a nice bowl of grass-fed meat is better for your dog or cat than another  scoop from the kibble sack.

So I'm one home/raw feeder who won't be getting dragged off track here.  Stop asking me to.

Comments

[Gina]

Thank, Christie. Great post, as usual.

[Therese]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

[Shawn]

Great comments, and I promise to stay on track with the current crisis but...I would like someone (maybe you?) to point me in the direction of how to balance a cat diet. I am not doing raw or exclusively homemade but I think at least for now I want to supplement. But I can find nothing that tells me how to balance. My biggest concern is how much taurine to add to my homemade chicken and vegetable stew. I can't find that anywhere.

[Cathy]

Shawn: Go buy Richard Pitcairn's book Natural Health of Cats and Dogs. It's on sale now at Amazon. You can feed his recipes raw or cooked. He tells you everything you need to know. Hope you're adding calcium. You could also probably find that info at Holisticat on the web.

[Nikki]

Christie asks, "But if there's actual poison in their food? Literal, non-metaphorical poison? That may have found its way there due to corporate greed or government negligence?"

Well, yes, yes and yes ... according to Ann N. Martin, author of "Food Pets Die For." Ms. Martin who has spent years of tireless working investigating the pet food industry and butting heads with the FDA states in her book that pentobarbital, the euthanasia drug, in tests conducted by the FDA, was found in over HALF the dry dog foods tested. Yet, to this day, the FDA has done nothing to change the (lack of) regulations which allow pet food manufacturers to use the products of rendering -- the carcasses of euthanized dogs, cats, horses and cattle. Ann N. Martin stated, in a personal correspondence, "Money talks, there is no doubt about that and the pet food industry is a multi-billion dollar industry which government has taken a hands off approach."

[Alasandra]

Thank you so much for this post. When Whiskers died I felt guilty enough for feeding him poisoned food without having people tell me I should be home feeding anyway.

I have been trying to do the home feeding route with my surviving cat, but he doesn't care for it. He turned down plain yogurt and shrimp for dried cat food, go figure. He won't even touch the cat food recipes on the web. He ate the yogurt and shrimp yesterday (he was probably starving) but turned down scrambled eggs. So I am doing the best I can to make sure the dried cat food I give him doesn't have wheat gluten. But at this point (he doesn't weigh much) I feel it is more important to make sure he at least EATS.

[Witchdoc]

I, too, am having a hard time even spreading the word about the recalls and responding to questions that I am asked because I am considered the "go to" pet person in my neighborhood . I find that I can't be that person now.
I have lost two of my pets, the surviving pets may yet go down and my state of mind since I found out that not only had I poisoned my pets but had been force feeding them poison on Vet orders, my state of mind is ...not good. My blood pressure , which was great 6 weeks ago, is becoming a problem.
So I keep my mouth shut, tell people to ask their vet and I just bought a freezer for the pet food I cook.
Sad, bad and likely to get worse is how I see the situation.

[Mary]

I want to apologize as I was one of the folks who spoke about cooking for our pets on petconnection. I guess I was feeling that it's all tied in together. I felt it could be useful as a partial solution to help us decide on what to feed our pets during this time of crisis and until we learn more about what is poisoning our cherished, four legged friends. I also feel that actions speak louder than words. By many of us not caving in and buying their pet food, at least until they give us the answers we need and deserve, it would speak volumes. I guess I was looking at it from another perspective and trying to be helpful just the same. Again, I do apologize if anyone felt it was inappropriate to take up space on this subject. I was only trying to get answers from others more knowledgeable and to possibly help others during this time of tremendous worry and pain.

[Mary]

P.S. Just to clarify, I was never one who voiced what others should do. I was reaching out for answers on home cooked diets. Still, I don't want to take up space if folks feel it's unneeded info.

[alicia]

If you're looking for homemade diets, go to Balanceit.com. They have recipes that are created by board certified veterinary nutritionists. You can get a free recipe by entering the promom code "homemade" at the checkout.

[Liz]

Hi Christie,

I appreciate your reserve on this topic. I was wondering if I could ask for a bit of advice from you on the subject of feeding. My partner and I feed our dogs a homemade/raw diet. At the clinic we go to, I've had one vet mention that I should keep an eye on my dog's bms because of the possibilities of parasites in a raw diet, but was otherwise pleasant about it. We saw another vet this morning, though, and she expressed concern about how balanced the diet is (which I've been doing research on and am trying to work on), and went on to strongly recommend commercial food (without mentioning the recall at all), stating that if we're really committed to this raw thing we could just supplement the commercial food with raw ingredients. Of course, she went on to examine the dog and proclaim him the picture of health--great coat, great eyes, great teeth, etc.

So, long story short my questions: have you ever encountered resistance from your vet(s) about the raw diet? If so, how did you handle it?

(Incidentally, I know how super-busy you are, so no worries if you don't get to this for a while, if at all. Thanks either way!)

[Amanda]

Your post is a breath of fresh air. Thank you! I wish there were more sane people like you on the planet. It would make my job easier. :-)

[John]

I believe cooking for your pets and the recall have tons in common. I think your posting totally sucks and couldn't disagree with you more. Many vets are starting to take this side also.

[Shawna Casey]

5th paragraph "we have the right to walk into the store and buy food that is clearly and accurately labeled"....from what I can tell the labels are so hard and confusing (meat by-products, bone meal) that it takes a scientist to read between the lines. As far as you telling everyone that you have the right to walk into the store and buy this garbage, in the same note, I we also have freedom of speech and you have no right to tell me to stop just because you "THINK" my opion is off topic when I "THINK" it is not!

[Christie]

LOL, you don't have freedom of speech on MY BLOG.

However, I'm not deleting this, just saying - the First Amendment says CONGRESS shall not be allowed to restrict your freedom of speech, not that Christie can't say what is and isn't published on her websites.

The fact is, you are completely confounding two entirely separate issues. You are doing it here in this comment to which I am responding. I agree about pet food labeling. That was my point. The answer is not "home feed," the answer is: Fix the labeling laws.

I'm tired of having food contamination issues being turned into an end user problem. We pay the price, we suffer the consequences, but the PROBLEM is in the regulation and the institutions and the corporations, not in my kitchen, and by making this argument we LET THEM OFF THE HOOK.

Home feed. Go for it. It's what I do and have done for over 21 years. But that doesn't mean industry and government get to poison the food and use misleading labeling loopholes.

It's like saying, "I work hard and have a nice house and a big screen TV, so poor people should sleep in the streets and starve." It's completely ignoring the institutionalized "big picture" of what creates poverty, or misleading labels, or poisoned food, or whatever ill you're discussing.

There is certainly individual responsibility and I do believe we all should do what we can do to overcome obstacles in our way. But part of what we can do is CALL BULLSHIT on the people who are putting many of those obstacles there in the first place.

[Jerry]

More disheartening news. The recall expands and it appears that the FDA is protecting the names of the companies involved. I would highly recommend everyone register with itchmo to keep updated with this stuff; it appears that it is only going to get worse. If you go to Pet Connection http://www.petconnection.com/blog/
you will see that ConAgra Foods is now involved in the congressional committee discussions (dare we say our own food has been contaminated?).