I was raised in a fairly radical household. My mother took me on demonstrations (Vietnam, CND and Greenham Common – which dates me!), signed me up to campaigning charities (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Compassion in World Farming) and taught me to be sceptical of what I read in the papers. Crucially, I was raised to question the motives of vested interests such as government and big business.
When it came to health my mother believed that ‘food should be thy medicine’ as well as a combination of conventional and complementary healthcare. She died long before I started making raw dog food for friends and neighbours using ingredients from my own organic smallholding, but I like to think she would have approved. Because feeding dogs and cats a species-appropriate diet was as revolutionary when my vet introduced me to it over 20 years ago as, for example, the idea that over-vaccination could be causing the unnecessary deaths of untold numbers of dogs. To switch your dog to raw food as recently as 2000 was to be an outsider. Perhaps more to the point, raw feeding was as much of a movement as women’s rights or the environment.
It is a surprisingly longstanding movement, too. Thanks to Ian Billingshurst’s ground-breaking book many of us are inclined to think that the connection between health and diet in dogs began in the early 1990s. In fact, as long ago as the 1930s a veterinary student, Juliette de Bairacli Levy, questioned the conventional approach to veterinary medicine and decided to explore traditional remedies and, in particular, herbalism. An intrepid explorer, she travelled extensively throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, living for long periods with gypsies and peasant farmers and learning about the natural remedies they used to cure man and beast. The result was a series of ground-breaking books on animal care and livestock management. One of de Bairacli Levy’s earliest conclusions was that dogs were healthier if they ate a natural diet of raw food and fasted regularly. Her books were highly influential and helped to stem the growth of manufactured pet food. But not for long.
Ultra processed, manufactured dog food is indescribably profitable. It is generally estimated that the ingredients used to make kibble account for 10% or less of the retail cost. In plain English, the ingredients in a £20 bag of kibble probably cost under £2.00 – proving how cheap food waste and artificial supplements are to buy in bulk. More to the point, with such massive margins available it is easy to see why manufacturers put so much money and effort into persuading dog lovers to buy their products. Also why they have gone out of their way to discredit those promoting raw feeding from de Bairacli Levy onwards.
I am quite convinced that Lord Lucan is dead, the Americans landed on the moon and that reptilians do not control the world’s governments (although it might be better if they did). But just because I am not a conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean that conspiracies don’t exist. I firmly believe that the big pet food manufacturers are actively plotting to prevent the growth of raw feeding. They are doing so by a combination of methods from sponsoring veterinary education to twisting the results of scientific studies and from lobbying government to pressuring the media.
Yet the thing about a movement is that once it starts, assuming that it has right on its side, it can be very difficult to stop. I turned my hobby of making raw dog food for my own dogs (I was fostering at the time and had up to a dozen dogs living with me) to a business of sorts in 2008. You could still count the other raw dog food producers on one hand when we took a stand at Crufts in 2010. I would say fewer 1% of dog lovers had even heard about raw feeding, let alone tried it. Moreover, those vets who had heard about it were, for the most part, deeply sceptical. When I published my first book on the subject (Honey’s Natural Feeding Handbook for Dogs) in 2012, it was one of only half a dozen consumer guides to the subject in the world.
How different it is now. By my count there are over a hundred raw dog food producers of some size in the UK today. There are dozens of excellent books on the subject and my own book is in its third edition with over 100,000 copies in circulation. I don’t believe there is a veterinary practice in the country that doesn’t look after a substantial number of raw fed dogs. The Raw Feeding Veterinary Society (made up of vets and other veterinary professionals) is thriving. It is believed that as many as one-in-six British dogs have tried raw feeding and that raw food may account for as much as 10% of the market. The greatness of a nation and its moral progress,’ as Gandhi pointed out, ‘can be judged by the way its animals are treated.’ Well, we are clearly treating our dogs better than we were before.
So, species-appropriate feeding, once barely practiced, is now in the ascendancy. You might think that this is good news. But I see many dangers ahead. Dangers, that could severely damage a cause in which I fervently believe. Now that the raw food movement has its head stuck well above the parapet we are being shot at by processed food manufacturers. So far, this has taken the form of what I might call small arms fire, but in the years ahead I expect them to wheel out their big guns and the fact is we should be afraid.
Our biggest weakness, as a movement, is that we depend on two core arguments to support species appropriate feeding. Our first argument is based on the fact that all dogs, even Cosmo our family Bichon Frise, are basically wolves in dogs’ clothing. We know what wolves eat in the wild, we know that they have the identical digestive system to dogs, ergo dogs should eat the same diet as wolves. Our second argument is based on empirical evidence. There are now hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of raw fed dogs in the wealthier nations and observation and experience clearly shows that they are happier and healthier. These arguments certainly have raw fed dogs convinced. And a rapidly expanding number of dog lovers. But we haven’t yet convinced either processed dog food manufacturers or the vast majority of veterinary professionals that we are right and they are wrong. To do so, we need to present them with irrefutable evidence – evidence they respect – that a biologically appropriate diet provides a dog with as good, if not better nutrition, than a processed food diet. It is on the way – as Conor Brady’s book Feeding Dogs proves – but how I wish it was coming faster.
Another major danger to the raw food movement is that a surprisingly high percentage of raw fed dogs may not actually receiving the nutrition they require. Raw feeding is easy but it needs to be done properly. Variety is key. It is also important that the ingredients are in and of themselves nutritious. Recently, I analysed a range of raw foods sold online and through retail outlets and in my opinion nine out of ten were inadequate. Why? Because they contained factory farmed ingredients and/or artificial supplements and/or the formula either had too little or too much of certain ingredients. Many homemade raw diets are similarly lacking.
It is definitely not my style to be critical of other raw dog food producers. On the other hand, I am genuinely concerned about much of the commercially available raw dog food and I am not alone. A growing number of vets agree. Indeed, the founder of the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society, has said:
‘The ideal raw food diet is varied, uses high quality ingredients and is properly formulated to make sure it includes all the necessary nutrition. One concern is intensively farmed meat, which may contain higher levels of antibiotics and other harmful chemicals. Another worry is formulations that contain too much or too little of certain ingredients e.g. rice or bone. A surprisingly high percentage of raw food diets (as differentiated from raw food meals, most of which are not ‘balanced and complete’ on their own) may not be nutritionally adequate. Variety, again, is key to providing all required nutrients appropriately.’
So much for the state of the raw food movement. What can we expect next? It is interesting that to date none of the big manufacturers have launched a raw food option but I suspect that in the next two or three years they will. Either buying one of the bigger companies (Bella & Duke, for example, or Nature’s Menu) or starting their own. At the same time, if the US is anything to go on, existing raw food producers can expect a tougher regulatory landscape. This has already happened in America, where the FDA has made life extremely difficult for a number of producers. I hope I am wrong but I wouldn’t be surprised if Defra, which governs the UK pet food industry, isn’t put under pressure to toughen its already tough stance on raw food companies. Against this, I am willing to bet that by 2030 a third of all British dogs will be at least partly raw fed.
Jonathan Self is the author of The Natural Feeding Handbook
