Why our dogs should NOT be eating pork or fish

(See full article here where we are all advised to ‘Feed and eat more plants’)

I can only speak from experience with dogs being fed diets high in pork meat for example – whether as bacon, ham or the most popular – as a sausage. Owners who choose to feed their dogs a high protein and raw food meat-based diet, would never stop to consider the possible risks of cancer when choosing these diets for their dogs.

Processed pork is classed as Grade 1 carcinogen in humans so when you consider how much more vulnerable our dogs are going to be if fed quantities of processed meats (or high levels of raw excretory organs with the accumulated toxins found in the kidneys and liver of pigs), the risks are even greater.

A very sad reminder comes to my mind of a lovely owner who contacted me 2 years ago wanting to transition her Greyhound Polly to a plant-based diet for her health. I remember the photo so well. It was of the happiest Polly on her back on her sofa loving life, and her owner told me how she was struggling to get her to eat plant-based as it was “All about the bacon fat” at home.

I kept in contact with her as she emailed me the devastating news that Polly’s health had declined. She was only 6 years old and she had been diagnosed with kidney cancer that has already spread. Polly died shortly after and I have always remembered that sentence about the bacon fat which left me wondering how different things may have been had she been fed on plant-based from the start?

So the higher up the predatory train we eat, the higher the risk to us

And you know it’s a funny thing. Isn’t it?

Because a lot of religions don’t eat pork for example

A part of that is actually a sort of safety valve because ‘pork eats meat’

So pigs eat meat so therefore they are higher risk in terms of

Damage to your body from eating them because there’s going be greater risks of bioaccumulation

And obviously now there’s not many people who follow those strict kind of religious rules

But those religious rules were probably put in place for a reasonably good reason in the past

Funnily enough you know that there were dangers there were particular types of parasites that exist in the meat

Because pork is a grade one carcinogen Isn’t it? Yes

If you look it up. And meat actually is a Grade two carcinogen until it’s cooked

And then it becomes a grade one carcinogen as well

But Annie just going back to your bioaccumulation question

I’ll just quickly pick up on as well what Claire said

Is ALL meat-based dog foods will have some form of what’s called

‘Digest’ to make it palatable because it’s basically a very dry biscuit

It’s completely unpalatable and a lot of the digest that’s sprayed on

Comes from chicken entrails but it also comes from fish

And fish carries a huge amount because when you consider fish biodegrade as soon as they reach the the air

But also the liver and kidneys of fish carry huge amounts of mercury

We’ve got these heavy metals the Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead that concentrate in high, very high proportions in the liver and kidneys of fish and then you’ve got this fish meal that’s actually fed to chickens

So it then goes into the chicken’s liver. All these heavy metals

We’ve got this fish that’s used as I say on a digest on pet foods

So even if it’s a meat-based or a raw, we’ve got these fish that are fed to salmon

So salmon that you think is going to be a really healthy source

This too will have this bioaccumulation of the toxins of the small fish are eating

So this is something that’s kept very quiet and obviously the pet food mainstream

Because this is our real disaster this bioaccumulation of these toxins

But nobody’s going to do research on that because there’s no money in that

There’s only money in selling these products

So Yeah. I think it’s such an important point there Arielle with the fish because certainly

You know there’s a lot of work looking at the problems that are taking place in our large sea mammals

Our dolphins, our whales and they’re seeing a lot of problems with acute bioaccumulation of toxins

Particularly things that are preventing them from then reproducing

So many dolphins can’t reproduce anymore because of the toxins that they’ve ingested through their fish

Yeah. And getting Alzheimer’s as well which relates to the human Alzheimer’s

So yes absolutely. If we can just cut all of that out and feed ourselves and our dogs

The pure source I mean obviously, there’s still going to be bacteria

You have to wash your cucumber they’re still going to be

There’s the potential of arsenic in rice for example. So always rinse rice

But compared to that bioaccumulation concern it’s minimal on a plant-based diet for us and our dogs

Yeah. Because at least you’re only eating if you are getting anything from a plant-based toxin

You’re just getting the basic amount. You’re not getting that accumulation you know, from species to species

And you’re right I think the whole feeding salmon

People think that salmon is more environmentally friendly than having chicken for example but the amount of fish that have to be harvested from our oceans to make food for the salmon is horrific

Absolutely horrific! Yeah. And they will be taking in the fish that has all the toxins in it

And then they are kept in these very cramped conditions anyway like feedlot animals

So everything is so much more cramped

It was something I learned when I was meeting a friend of yours Mike Davies actually Arielle at the London Vet Show

And I was talking to him about why cats get chronic renal failure

So there’s always been things through my career where I’ve thought “Why aren’t we looking at the reason?”

You know we spend a lot of time working on diets and management for cats with chronic renal failure

Which is a really common problem in cats where their kidneys just stop working as they get older

And I said to Mike “Why do cats get chronic kidney failure?” Why do they get it and dogs don’t really get it anything like as much?

And he said well they did a study and they found huge levels of Arsenic in cats with chronic kidney disease

And this Arsenic is coming from a diet from fish! Which fish is not a normal food for a cat

They are land mammals. They would never normally eat fish

Yes. If you’ve ever seen a swimming cat they’re pretty few and far between!

Absolutely

And so much the same for our dogs. They shouldn’t be eating fish AT ALL either

They are also land mammals who would never naturally go and jump in a lake and catch their fish

So there’s so much to be said for these companies that talk about species appropriate diets.