Pork bones and dogs

[Dancing David]

I gave me dog a pork bone, thinking he could chew it, oops he made it disappear.

In the past he has found chicken bones outside and snarfed them.

There is a story that you should not give a dog a bone as it will harm them.

What is the truth?
Thanks.

[Zep]

Did he, perhaps, bury it while you weren't looking?

[Bjorn]

I never gave my dog bones from fish, chicken or sheep, because I had 'heard' that they break into sharp splinters that can seriously harm the stomack.

My dog is long gone, maybe it's about time to check that anecdote? :)

[aerocontrols]

I heard that it's only cooked bones that give dogs difficulty.

I hear a lot of things, though...

[Brian]

Originally posted by Dancing David
I gave me dog a pork bone, thinking he could chew it, oops he made it disappear.

In the past he has found chicken bones outside and snarfed them.

There is a story that you should not give a dog a bone as it will harm them.

What is the truth?
Thanks.

Hopefully a Vet will chime in. What I'm pretty sure of is that your dog should absolutely not be swallowing bones. It could get stuck somewhere in his plumbing. Give him big honkin leg bones to chew on, too big to swallow. Hell, you could get shank bones at the supermarket for pocket change amd they'd have a little meat on them too.

[chance]

Brian Give him big honkin leg bones to chew on, too big to swallow Don’t you believe it, a dog (a real dog not some fluffy lap breed) will gnaw the bone, looking for week spots, they will persist, applying huge pressure, moving the bone around trying somewhere else. Then you might hear a loud crack as the bone splits. Depending on the dog, they may continue this action till the whole bone is eaten.

[Brian]

Originally posted by chance
Brian Don’t you believe it, a dog (a real dog not some fluffy lap breed) will gnaw the bone, looking for week spots, they will persist, applying huge pressure, moving the bone around trying somewhere else. Then you might hear a loud crack as the bone splits. Depending on the dog, they may continue this action till the whole bone is eaten.
Oh. Can you tell I don't own a dog?:) I thought they just chewed them.

[Zep]

They are actually instinctively going for the marrow inside the bone. And they should be taught how to use straws so they can suck it out. :D

[exarch]

Maybe just give them a shoe instead :D

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Ooh, look...it's a vet.

Bones sometimes cause problems:

Sharp and irregular ones can get seriously stuck with bad consequences


Bones fully eaten and masticated into little bits can be very constipating. They can get accumulated in the colon as an almost brick-like cylindrical mass with an excitingly abrasive exterior.

Cooked bones shatter, but I don't know if there is any real basis for the supposed difference between cooked and raw bones in this regard.

Then again, our New Age lunatic fringes bring us the raw food movement for dogs and cats. It's not an inherently bad principle: feed a near-natural diet, like zoo-keepers try to. The main problem is that it gets all tangled with anti-industrial polemic from our woo friends. My pets have all lived well into their teens on the products of the commercial pet food industry. I don't want to be doling out raw chicken wings by the pound to my pets, thanks very much. However, you don't need to mush up all that yucky raw flesh yourself, some kind people have industrialised the process;

http://www.barfworld.com/html/barf_diet/barfdiet.shtml

so you can have convenience and a smug sense of self-satisfied superiority as well.

[zakur]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
Then again, our New Age lunatic fringes bring us the raw food movement for dogs and cats. It's not an inherently bad principle: feed a near-natural diet, like zoo-keepers try to. The main problem is that it gets all tangled with anti-industrial polemic from our woo friends. My pets have all lived well into their teens on the products of the commercial pet food industry. I don't want to be doling out raw chicken wings by the pound to my pets, thanks very much. However, you don't need to mush up all that yucky raw flesh yourself, some kind people have industrialised the process;

http://www.barfworld.com/html/barf_diet/barfdiet.shtml

so you can have convenience and a smug sense of self-satisfied superiority as well. There are BARF zealots/evangelists on a few of the dog lists to which I subscribe. Their BARFed dogs don't get any health problems whatsoever, thier ***** doesn't stink, and they don't get fleas or ticks. :rolleyes:

And they're all antivax, too. Idiots.

I was once at an agility trial and the subject of BARFing came up. Some sanctimonious b!itch told me that BARF is the only way to go for performance dogs and that anyone who feeds kibble just must not care about their dog(s). I can't tell you the satisfaction I felt when my kibble-fed Aussie beat her BARF-fed BC by a good 5 seconds in Elite Jumpers. :D

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
... feed a near-natural diet, like zoo-keepers try to....

I offered to pay the local zoo for the infrastructure needed to feed their penguins live-released squid and krill into the pond from a separated breeding tank. The keepers were all for it, but reckoned the public would object. Kiljoys.

[Rolfe]

I read this thread this morning but didn't have time to reply. Now I don't really have to, what Badly Shaved Monkey (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43506) said (above).

I've had arguments about this on vet lists so I know there are several different opinions, but even in my relatively short time in general practice I spent too long scooping out the concreted remains of chewed-up cooked bones from dogs' large intestines to be in favour of any sort of cooked bone feeding.

Uncooked bones don't really seem to me to cause that concretion, but they should be regarded as "foreign bodies", liable to do damage in direct proportion to the inherent danger of the shape that has been swallowed - sharp splinters are not good. And I remember seeing a pathology slide of a PM of a dog whose intestine had basically necrotised around a chop bone (half a vertebra). That might have been cooked, actually, but it still acted as a lethal foreign body.

The great big beef knuckle bones, raw (so not really chewable), don't seem to cause too much trouble. Though sometimes I wonder about the hygiene aspects. Though no more than for rawhide chews I suppose.

The whole home-cooked/raw feeding for pets stuff is just crazy dogma (pun not really intended but never mind). Yes you can spend ages figuring out the correct balance of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and so on for your dog, and making sure that you provide these by your choice of fresh food to purchase. And then you can go out every day and buy the stuff, because we can't have these evil preservatives or anything like that can we? And then if you've any sense at all you'll cook it thoroughly to ensure that the Campylobacter and Salmonella you undoubtedly didn't realise you'd paid for are suitably defanged. Or if you've no sense at all you'll feed it raw and act all surprised when the inevitable happens.

On the other hand, you can just take advantage of the ready-made product the pet food companies spent millions figuring out how to formulate, and realise that if there was anything not right in there somebody would have sued the asses off them by now.

I've heard individual owners lauding the home-made option - anyone who isn't educated enough, hasn't time enough to do it all by hand obviously doesn't care for their pet and feeds "crap in a bag". They themselves have all heard of a dog which died of kidney disease or developed diabetes, and of course it was obvious that it was the processed food that caused that. And all dogs and cats fed their way all live healthy lives into their mid twenties. According to them.

Protestations that there was no evidence at all that commercially-fed pets had poorer health than home-made fed pets, and that indeed the latter were at risk from the absence of the extra skill and effort required to do it succesfully developed into assertions that the poster would do anything she could to save her pet from getting kidney disease or cancer (a chorus of vets pointing out that everything has to die of something was ignored), then that it was all about building up the immune system by feeding raw food rather than tearing it down by feeding a commercial diet and vaccinating.

Yes, the rest of the fight was all about the anti-vax point of view held by the same poster.

A dozen vets rolled up to say that not only had they themselves had many long-lived and healthy pets fed nothing but commercial food all their lives, and fully vaccinated, but they knew of hundreds of clients' animals in the same category, was when the claim was made of all the raw-food advocates' pets lived to their mid-twenties, and I'm afraid most of us just stopped believing her by then.

Then there was the link posted to a BARF diet BB where the posters were collectively mourning a Yorkie who had died during his third emergency surgery for a bone foreign body, at the age of only about four. "Well," said one advocate to the grieving owner, "at least you have the consolation of knowing that he ate the best possible diet for the short time he was alive."

Yup, you touched a live subject here.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Our dogs have always preferred eating whatever the humans want. I don't think it matters what form any 'dog food' would take, it isn't going to match the distinct social advantage and pleasure of eating 'owner nosh'.

Out of interest, Rolfey, have you noticed any relationship between the degree of 'pedigree' and the ability to cope with more diverse and dodgy food?

[Rolfe]

Better ask BSM, he's in general practice. There are so many other variables linked to the blue-ness of the blood of the pooch, that I'm not sure I have a sensible answer.

Rolfe.

[Bearguin]

Thanks BSM and Rolfe.

Hmmm something to think about. My dogs (small Terriers, or terrors as I call them) have a couple big bones that they chew on, but have never come close to breaking. They also get rib bones occasionaly, when we feel like spoinling them.

No chicken or fish bones, but am I doing a bad thing with the rib bones? I'm talking pretty small spare rib bones here.

And I have no intention of feeding my mongrels anything but store bought food. We've found stuff they like that seems to agree with them and this raw food thing just sounds silly to me.

[Goshawk]

Wow, a thread on "what dogs eat", more or less, with two actual veterinarians in it! Just what I've been waiting for... :D

HIJACK!! :D :D :D

Serious Q: Do dogs get tired of the same old food every day? I want a serious Vet answer, not a PETA animal activist answer. We have a 9-year-old beagle mix who has been getting the same canned food every day of her life since she was about 7 months old, when we got her. It's the Alpo Prime Chunks Beef, since I determined by much label-reading that that's the canned brand that has the most actual animal protein in it, as opposed to stuff like wheat middlings. She gets fed once a day, in the late afternoon/suppertime hour.

And lately she's just been off her feed, dunno why. She's not overweight, she's not "ailing" visibly, she just turns up her nose at her food. Instead of running over to the bowl and wolfing it down, she hesitantly goes over, looks at it, takes a taste, and wanders off. She'll usually finish it off within a couple of hours, but sometimes not. I tried taking it away, "Okay, if you don't eat this, nothing until tomorrow", because that's what the dog books say to do, because dogs are supposed to "wolf it down", like, "Whatever they don't eat in 5 minutes, take away". But it didn't work, she still picks at it.

Is it possible that it's just her metabolism slowing down with old age? We tried splitting it up into two smaller meals a day, but it didn't make a difference, she still just picked at it.

She will eat those Alpo Variety Snaps as long as you'll let her (we use them as an occasional bribe to get her back into the house at bedtime), so it's not that she's not hungry as such, she just doesn't seem hungry for her canned food anymore. She seems to like crunchy things on top of the food, but not the actual food itself--we discovered while we were on vacation and left my teenage son to look after her, that she'll wolf it down if he puts a drizzle of ketchup, or French dressing, or some Corn Chex or rice crackers, or something in it. So I wondered, do dogs just get tired of the same-old-same-old?


[/hijack]

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Bearguin
Thanks BSM and Rolfe.

Hmmm something to think about. My dogs (small Terriers, or terrors as I call them) have a couple big bones that they chew on, but have never come close to breaking. They also get rib bones occasionaly, when we feel like spoinling them.

No chicken or fish bones, but am I doing a bad thing with the rib bones? I'm talking pretty small spare rib bones here.

And I have no intention of feeding my mongrels anything but store bought food. We've found stuff they like that seems to agree with them and this raw food thing just sounds silly to me.

We kept Jack Russells (pre-pedigree, all farm ratters originally). They happily gnawed on bones and never had a problem.

No chicken or fish either though. I learned recently chocolate (http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoa.htm) is not a good idea. Never knew that at the time!

We learned of one pup (sadly, the only albino we ever bred) who died as a result of eating chicken bones fed to him accidently by a neighbour. We were told (by the vet) that the dog was inherently quite weak and in his opinion a dog would normally have pulled through what happened. Sadly, I don't recall exactly what had gone on.

Cool avatar, by the way.

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Goshawk
Serious Q: Do dogs get tired of the same old food every day? I want a serious Vet answer, not a PETA animal activist answer. We have a 9-year-old beagle mix who has been getting the same canned food every day of her life since she was about 7 months oldWhat's your favorite food?

Now, do you think you might have gotten a little tired of it after having it for 3,102 consecutive meals?

We buy our cats' food in 10-15 pound sacks of the dry stuff. We always have at least three bags around. We have three two-quart sized plastic jugs with more-or-less airtight tops that easily come off. We feed the cats twice a day from the jugs and they never get the same thing twice in a row. And as finickey as cats are supposed to be, they never turn their noses up unless they're sick.

[Bearguin]

And on the topic of Chocolate. Can a dog become accustomed to it?

Growiing up, I never had dogs but my grandfather did. These dogs were given chocolate almost daily and never seemed ill from it (fat maybe, but they never had a great diet anyway).

Can a dog become used to it?

I have no intention of trying this on my dogs. My last dog got into chocolate a couple of times and would always throw up a day later. We are careful not to let that happen anymore.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Bearguin
No chicken or fish bones, but am I doing a bad thing with the rib bones? I'm talking pretty small spare rib bones here.I'm not nuts on any form of bone that dogs can swallow. But having said that, an awful lot of them seem to get away with an awful lot.

Like chocolate. I think it takes quite a lot of chocolate to poison a dog, the occasional square doesn't seem to hurt. Like onions and garlic. Theoretically they cause brassica poisoning (haemolytic anaemia). In practice you'd have to be a health-food nut to feed a dog that much.

Rolfe.

[aerocontrols]

Is the problem here with raw bone eating that domestic canines live too long? That being wild would cut their lives in half and the bone in the intestine problem would not normally occur?

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Goshawk
Serious Q: Do dogs get tired of the same old food every day?Dogs much less so than cats I think. It's not sensible to be anthropomorphic and use what you might or might not like as a benchmark, dogs aren't little people.

Given the signs you're reporting, I'd want to examine her mouth to see if she had bad tartar or gingivitis or anything which might be causing her pain when she ate. I've seen animals do this (including the sainted Rolfe) when they really wanted to eat the stuff but found that it hurt. Instead of tucking in happily, they nibble gingerly. Does she have bad breath? Do you know how to examine her mouth? Maybe worth letting a vet have a look? (When Rolfe did this, he was instantly returned to his face-stuffing self by a general anaesthetic and a damn good dental session.)

On the other hand, cats do go on menu strike, and I wouldn't necessarily rule out the possibility of a dog doing it. So if your vet can't find any physical reason for her not eating, try something else. (In my experience you always need to try something more expensive. Don't ask me how they know, they just do.)

Now my turn to hijack. The story of Rolfe's great menu-strikes.

When I adopted Rolfe I had this silly idea that as I'd saved him from certain death he should be grateful and eat what he was given. Especially two years later when I left the parental home (with Rolfe in a cardboard box) to take up my first permanent job as a university lecturer, Hertfordshire house prices and a pittance of a salary. I really couldn't afford more than the cheap stuff.

It was called Katkins, it had everything in it necessary to keep a cat in good health, and it was only about 16p a tin at the time. He was fine about this. For about a year.

Then one weekend I went to stay with a friend, and took Rolfe with me (now in a wicker basket, on the rear carrier of my bicycle, on the train, as another thing I couldn't afford was a car). The house was full of people, and we were all sleeping on the floor. I dished out some Katkins into his bowl and left it for him in the kitchen. The weekend was spent enjoyably, discussing science fiction books and incidentally a lot of Garfield cartoon collections, and petting Rolfe who was quite at home thank you very much. Every time I looked at his dish, it was full. I just assumed some passing benefactor had filled it up from the tin in the fridge nearby. It was only on Sunday evening when we were all packing up to leave that I realised the tin was untouched and he hadn't eaten a bite. Nothing since Friday lunch-time.

I wondered if he was ailing. I looked at his mouth. But no, no problems there. And unlike the bad-mouth episodes, he wasn't even going near his dish at all. Well, cobblers' children and all that, since he seemed well otherwise I just threw away the old tin in case it had just gone off, and opened a new one of the same. Still no dice.

Then about four days later I went to the butcher's on the way home from work (because they closed at 5.30), came home and left a small packet of corned beef on a chair, then left again to go to the supermarket. When I got back from there, Rolfe had managed to open the plastic pack of corned beef and scoffed the lot.

OK, not a sore mouth or bad teeth, not lack of appetite, just a menu strike. (Now, was the fact that he'd spent a fair proportion of that weekend lying on a pile of Garfield books pure coincidence?)

We eventually settled for something called Choosy, which was a bit dearer than Katkins, but not astronomical. This held for about four years.

Then I started taking him to cat shows (I had a car by then), he started winning stuff, and as most of the shows were sponsored by Pedigree Pet Foods, we kept coming home with free tins of Whiskas. This went down extremely well. But when we ran out of the free Whiskas, it was back to Choosy.

Till he stopped eating that.

No, I said, no way. You think I'm made of money? Choosy it is. We had another three days of stalemate. Then one day I came home from work and he practically beckoned me into the kitchen with a paw. His dish with the Choosy was still untouched. In the middle of the floor, the right way up, was an empty tin of Whiskas, carefully retrieved from the (still upright and in place) kitchen waste bin, and set in plain sight almost with a big arrow pointing at it saying "buy me that you moron".

Guess what. He got the Whiskas.

Many people believe that by the time a cat is elderly, you'll be reduced to offering best fillet steak on a silver platter. I wouldn't care to contradict them.

(Then when I adopted Caramel, six years after Rolfe died, I said, lucky kitten, I've got more money now, you can have Whiskas from the start. No dice. Won't touch the bloody stuff. You can't win.)

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by aerocontrols
Is the problem here with raw bone eating that domestic canines live too long? That being wild would cut their lives in half and the bone in the intestine problem would not normally occur? No, I don't think so. In the wild I don't think they swallow much bone as such, and none of it will be cooked. I imagine occasional deaths of wild canids from eating chicken bones are just part of the grand scheme of things. As I said, an awful lot of them get away with an awful lot.

Rolfe.

[exarch]

Originally posted by aerocontrols
Is the problem here with raw bone eating that domestic canines live too long? That being wild would cut their lives in half and the bone in the intestine problem would not normally occur?I don't think you can really speak of "in the wild" with dogs any more. At least no more than you can speak of "in the wild" about humans.
We evolved together, and as such, dogs have lost many "wild" abilities just as much as we have.

So the question becomes, what have people been feeding dogs over the past 2000 years? And is it perhaps just more apparent with dogs that survival of the fittest (or more accurately, elimination of the weakest) has made some breeds of dogs very susceptible to problems of all kinds? More apparent than with humans anyway, because of the much shorter time between generations.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Dogs much less so than cats I think. It's not sensible to be anthropomorphic and use what you might or might not like as a benchmark, dogs aren't little people.


We fed ours with a dry mixture feed ... that is between them begging at the fridge, and getting plate scrapings.

We noticed they have particular favourites in the mixture, so a routine emerged;

Bowl is refilled with mix, dogs immediately appear and fight over large brown 'meaty chunks'.

Next day they eat the small black pellets that, apparently, contain iron. And spend the next 24 hours running around like maniacs, even the 12 year old ones.

Then they eat the ordinary brown stuff.

Finally we get to stale mate with a bowl of yellow and green pellets, that apparently contain all the vitamins and minerals they'd get if they ever eat vegetables.

We usually have 2 days or so of incredible attempts to communicate that they'd like the bowl refilled (owners fetched, bowl pointed out with nose, ears pricked etc)), until at least one repents and eats some of the healthy stuff.

It's still all second place to having human food though, that's something I've noticed cats couldn't care less about us ... I think dogs aspire to be humans, I think cats think we aspire to be them.

Sorry for derailing!

[Bearguin]

Okay. What I think is a funny story.

Our first dog had been trined to beg (for anything) but the former owners. She would sit on her bum with her back striaght up and her paws extended. In fact, this is what first made us decide to take her home from the SPCA (it looked so cute).

She begged everytime we sat down at the table.

I tried to outsmart her. I'd grab her dogfood, put it by my plate and, when she begged, I'd give it to her.

She'd drop it on the floor and go right back to begging.

I miss that dog.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Pedigree dogs and pedigree bowels.

Some breeds have poor bowel function (think German Shepherd Dogs). Some will be genuine dietary allergy, which probably has a genetic component, but some is dietary 'intolerance', a much more vague concept.

I also have the casual opinion that little tough terrier dogs have little tough GI tracts.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Rolfe

On the subject of raw feeding, the woos are very blase about the Salmonella risk, but is that risk as high now as it ever was (70% of chicken carcases contaminated?).

Also, what's the deal with Salmonella in eggs? Has the situation changed since Edwina Curry? There are vaccines now, aren't there?

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Rolfe
The weekend was spent enjoyably, discussing science fiction books and incidentally a lot of Garfield cartoon collections, (...snip...)

(Now, was the fact that he'd spent a fair proportion of that weekend lying on a pile of Garfield books pure coincidence?)
(...snip again...)

<-- Begin Rant Mode -->

Garfield? Garfield??? Of all the stupid, humorless, lame, stale, over-the-hill, pathetic excuse for a comic... oh damn Garfield. Garfield stopped being funny, oh about a hundred seventy eleven years ago (right after Peanuts) and yet it seems every #$%^ paper in the whole #$%^ country carries #$%^ Garfield.
<-- End Rant Mode -->

Please tell me your papers carry "Get Fuzzy" (http://www.dilbert.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20040718.html) over there. Reform, and read no more "Garfield", or you'll spend eternity in hell trying to persuade II that A = A.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
On the subject of raw feeding, the woos are very blase about the Salmonella risk, but is that risk as high now as it ever was (70% of chicken carcases contaminated?).

Also, what's the deal with Salmonella in eggs? Has the situation changed since Edwina Curry? There are vaccines now, aren't there? Never mind the Salmonella, 80% of supermarket chicken is superficially contaminated with Campylobacter. Salmonella seems to be a relatively sporadic one, the best way to get that if I recall correctly is to feed "green tripe" (forgive me while I vomit....)

Of all canine faecal samples we look at, about 15% have Campylobacter and 2% Salmonella. Some more have a protozoal pathogen or something relatively unusual, and 80% have no identifiable pathogen but suspicions of having consumed a bacterial (Clostridial?) toxin. In contrast healthy dogs, when we get a look at a sample, have a fairly constant and predictable population of apparently "normal" flora (including Clostridium perfringens, ironically).

There's a school of thought that says Campylobacter isn't a pathogen in the dog or cat. Nobody in general practice that I know of agrees with this. Though the severity of illness does vary quite a lot. Same with Salmonella. Just eating it doesn't necessarily mean the animal will get the infection, but they often do.

Basically, never let cooked meat come in contact with raw meat, and learn to cook!

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Badly Shaved Monkey
Rolfe

On the subject of raw feeding, the woos are very blase about the Salmonella risk, but is that risk as high now as it ever was (70% of chicken carcases contaminated?).

Also, what's the deal with Salmonella in eggs? Has the situation changed since Edwina Curry? There are vaccines now, aren't there?

Aren't these both primarily factory farming phenomona?

Which begs the question ... do the woos buy free range chickens for their woofers?


Edwina Curry is still around in spite of having admitted 'boning' the prime minister. Seems odd no-one ever followed up properly on the dodgy egg scandal.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by BPSCG
<-- Begin Rant Mode -->

Garfield? Garfield??? Of all the stupid, humorless, lame, stale, over-the-hill, pathetic excuse for a comic... oh damn Garfield. Garfield stopped being funny, oh about a hundred seventy eleven years ago (right after Peanuts) .....It was 1983, gimme a break! And we were having a silly, relaxing weekend. And yes, there were Dilbert books around too, (and Calvin and Hobbes got a lot of attention on another occasion), but I hadn't seen Garfield at all before that weekend and I was dominated by his clone at the time so I was kind of amused.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I think there was some truth in the eggs story at the time, but it was blown up out of proportion. And Edwina's actions did do something to improve the situation. But basically, don't eat raw eggs!

It isn't all about "factory farming". A lot of it is about people not knowing how to handle food to cope with the contaminations which have always been a significant risk. However, the high Campylobacter contamination rate in chicken is mainly a result of the procedures in the poultry slaughterhouses where contamination is spread from carcass to carcass.

E. coli O157 is a new organism which seemed to appear out of nowhere in the 1970s. It's certainly changed the way people have to approach farm hygiene!

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Rolfe
I think there was some truth in the eggs story at the time, but it was blown up out of proportion. And Edwina's actions did do something to improve the situation. But basically, don't eat raw eggs!

It isn't all about "factory farming". A lot of it is about people not knowing how to handle food to cope with the contaminations which have always been a significant risk. However, the high Campylobacter contamination rate in chicken is mainly a result of the procedures in the poultry slaughterhouses where contamination is spread from carcass to carcass.

E. coli O157 is a new organism which seemed to appear out of nowhere in the 1970s. It's certainly changed the way people have to approach farm hygiene!

Rolfe.

I'm maybe a bit biased because I was surrounded by intensive poultry units as I grew up .. and they were, if you'll excuse the awful pun, foul places.

Are you saying the salmonella rate was always that and is everywhere , whatever the rate in the british chicken flock?

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
I'm maybe a bit biased because I was surrounded by intensive poultry units as I grew up .. and they were, if you'll excuse the awful pun, foul places.

Are you saying the salmonella rate was always that and is everywhere , whatever the rate in the british chicken flock? Hmmm, Stalag Hen. My commiserations. There is stuff going on that would be better stopped from going on. But then when you do that (like with pregnant sow stalls) it costs more to produce the product, and suppliers simply resource from abroad where the ban doesn't exist, and the shoppers (who maybe even signed the petitions to ban the things) then shun the more expensive product and buy the cheaper one, because they're conditioned to believe that the most important thing in a supermarket is a low price. And the newly humane producers go out of business.

I'm not sure of my facts about the Salmonella situation - there was a lot of misinformation at the time, and it has gone awfully quiet for the past few years. I'll ask around.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Yes, I understand your sentiment and the point you make. Trouble is, I grew up amongst farmers and the British ones are just a mercenary bunch. I don't believe them when they try this 'it's much worse abroad' tactic as it just strikes me as flag waving to save their unsustainable industry.

I've never known one who didn't think ethics was a solely a place just north of London.

Animal welfare and food quality are separate things and should also be entirely separate from issues of nationalism. Having seen the reality, I just don't believe the nonsense about enforcement here, so I've no reason to disbelieve the propaganda about what happens elsewhere. In fact I saw cattle farms in Eastern europe (some years back) run to adhere to 'EEC' standards for import ... they were far superior to anything here as the inspection regimes, well, existed.

[Rolfe]

Some of it's true, some of it isn't. I've seen dairy farming systems in Germany that were far better than current standards here. Some farmers do really try to maintain good welfare standards, some really do care about their animals - some don't. The vets who've made a point of looking into this say there are sadists and incompetents in any walk of life, but the majority are reasonably decent sorts.

There are certain farming practices which have been banned in this country and like it or not the farmers have to comply. But then in other countries (Denmark for one, I think, about the sow stalls) there is no such ban. Does the housewife think twice when she sees that Danish bacon is cheaper than Norfolk?

But then when a British vet asked the German farmer whether his nice dairy system wasn't less efficient than slatted housing and silage feeding, he said, well, it's about having a nice life, us and the cattle, not all about profits. The British vet looked seriously sceptical, I could just about read his mind ("that idealism wouldn't fly where I come from").

It's not about nationalism, but it's a fact of life that if you're going to ban a very cost-effective farming system on welfare grounds, you either have to ban it over your entire supply area, or also prohibit imports from countries that don't comply with your own welfare standards. Otherwise the home producer will be so disadvantaged that he goes out of business. Right now the problem is that an individual EU member can enact any welfare laws they like, but they can't prohibit imports from other EU countries - or at least less and less so.

(I don't know how the German dairy system turns a profit, but I'd like to.)

Rolfe.

[phildonnia]

Since the danger comes from splintered bones, you should not give a dog any bone that he can crush. Beef femurs are probably safe for most breeds, and in fact, are sold at pet stores for this purpose.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Rolfe
It's not about nationalism, but it's a fact of life that if you're going to ban a very cost-effective farming system on welfare grounds, you either have to ban it over your entire supply area, or also prohibit imports from countries that don't comply with your own welfare standards. Otherwise the home producer will be so disadvantaged that he goes out of business. Right now the problem is that an individual EU member can enact any welfare laws they like, but they can't prohibit imports from other EU countries - or at least less and less so.

(I don't know how the German dairy system turns a profit, but I'd like to.)

Rolfe.

Well yes and no. I think the key is labelling, education and consumer choice. I believe properly reared animals taste better. And it gets incredibly difficult because in terms of consumer choice subjective views count, where normally they are bunk.

I've seen some telly-chefs attempting blind tasting trials to proove the hypothesis I just put, and in general (though far from scientifically perfect) they are reasonably conducted and concur.

Rick Stien is a particular fan of this ...

I don't think you could or should ban imports on such criteria, merely allow people to be aware of the difference and make their choice. If farming here is going to approach some vague semblence of being competitive it has to be more informative about quality and compete on that basis, we don't stand a chance against others on bulk low-price commodities.

[Rolfe]

Don't start me on labelling or we'll be on to the question of labelling of all food sold to the ordinary consumer that has been slaughtered without pre-stunning.

And then this thread will be moved either to Religion or Flame Wars.

Rolfe.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Zep
Did he, perhaps, bury it while you weren't looking?

No Mr. Zep, he were in his crate, and I checked, perhaps he put it in a dimensional pocket of some sort, but he did not bury it. Except in his gut.

[Dancing David]

Wow, for an FYI thread this sure got a lot of posts.

Maybe I should ask what the probablity of my dog being born is?

He seems to have survived the experience, he eats Iams most of the time, and he enjoys a little cat food mixed in occasionaly. He also enjoys a fair amount of cat poor, I scoop the litter every day but he gets up earlier than me.

(Victor is an eleven and a half year old terrier mix, very healthy and spry for a dog his age, his only problem is that he thinks that he is human and is upset that he can't drive the car.)

[Suezoled]

I used to buy cow femurs at the grocery and had the butcher cute them so they weren't so long (maybe 10 inches long each). Then I boiled the bone, cooled them, and let the terriers eat them marrow out of them. Long after the marrow was gone, the bone was still there, it could be washed off easily, and peanut butter was easy put in the bone to make them interesting all over again.

One of my mom's dogs, Duffy, a czesky terrier (terror?) managed to rip off a piece of "indestructible toy" from the makers of the Kong toy. The vet had to remove that; he was about a year old. At another point, his sharp little teeth managed to rip another toy to bits, and so he got another trip to the vet (I told the vet next time just put a zipper on Duffy's belly for easy-access). Now mom's just very careful about the toys she buys. (actually, she complained to the company who made the first toy, and they paid for all of Duffy's vet bills that time.)

...Then there was that time the other dog, Ambra (also a terror) managed to find the bones left over from a turkey dinner (we thought the child-safety gate was wedged; apparently, it was not) and was chowing down when she was found. A couple hours later, she was whining, throwing up, and being generally miserable. She met the vet and her emergency procedure.

Foreign bodies. Messy things sometimes.

oh, and mom bought those two Czeskies (Cheskies?) after much research, deciding, comparison of other dogs, she finally bought them from good breeders. She got them because they were reported to be "generally healthy with few medical issues." Haha!
Although, they're both cute when they're sleeping.

[Benguin]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Don't start me on labelling or we'll be on to the question of labelling of all food sold to the ordinary consumer that has been slaughtered without pre-stunning.

And then this thread will be moved either to Religion or Flame Wars.

Rolfe.

Well yes, I think the 'education' bit was more important.

Choice is nonsense, informed choice is good.

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Rolfe
It was 1983, gimme a break!
That was less than a hundred seventy eleven years ago. Break not given!

I hadn't seen Garfield at all before that weekend and I was dominated by his clone at the timeI think you need to explain that last part :eek:

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Dancing David
Maybe I should ask what the probablity of my dog being born is?Don't start!
He seems to have survived the experience, he eats Iams most of the time, and he enjoys a little cat food mixed in occasionaly. He also enjoys a fair amount of cat poor, I scoop the litter every day but he gets up earlier than me.
(...snip...)

his only problem is that he thinks that he is human and is upset that he can't drive the car.) He eats Iams dog food and cat food and cat poop out of the litter box and he thinks he's human? Just who is his role model?

[Dancing David]

Proving thoughts may not be rational, I assume he pities us for throwing away the cat poop.