Research Update: Raw Diet Risks
There have been a number of recent high profile cases of pets or people becoming severely ill or even dying from bacteria or viruses that they caught from raw pet foods. A number of scientific studies have also been published in the last few years, all of which further elaborate the health risks that raw pet foods can pose due to contamination with bacteria, viruses, or parasites. In this post, we summarize a new study from Cornell that tested commercial raw cat foods and traditional canned or dry cat foods for bacteria and parasites and also quantified bacterial genes associated with antibiotic resistance. The study found that bacteria could be grown from only raw foods, including frozen and freeze-dried products and found many bacterial genes associated with antibiotic resistance in the raw foods, which means that using these diets not only comes with the risk of bacterial infections, but also the risk of infections that are resistant to typically used antibiotics.
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