Good nutrition is important for pet health. For most pets and owners, the best, safest and most convenient diets are comprised of balanced veterinary or prescription foods. While raw diets have vocal proponents, most veterinarians consider these diets unsafe due to the potential for bacterial pathogens, so they are not recommended. Before you choose a food for your dog or cat, work with your veterinarian to select a diet you are comfortable feeding to your pet.
Commercial Diets
Commercial diets are usually the most common choice, but might not always be the best for your dog or cat. When selecting one of these diets for your pet, you should consult with your veterinarian.
A high-quality food will have minimal fillers. Many commercial foods contain fillers and ingredients that will actually harm your pet’s health.
Veterinary Diets
Veterinary-DietsMajor pet food companies offer a number of diets for pets suffering from various health problems, such as diabetes, kidney disease, obesity, food allergies, heart disease, urinary problems, liver disease and other medical issues. These diets are carefully formulated to meet specific nutritional requirements for pets with these conditions. For example, diets for pets with kidney disease usually have lower protein and phosphorous content than typical diets, and diets formulated for obese pets are lower in calories per serving than normal commercial diets.
There are also many veterinary brands that help prevent your cat or dog from developing common issues that many pets are prone to.
Most veterinary diets cost more than the average commercial pet food. The reason for the cost is that veterinary diets undergo stringent quality control to ensure that they meet the specialized nutritional requirements of pets with specific health concerns. This is not necessarily true of most regular commercial diets.
If cost is the main concern when selecting a food type, pet owners should consider the avoidance of any large veterinary costs relating to issues that are caused by poor diet.
If your veterinarian recommends a prescription diet for your pet and you have reservations about using this diet due to cost, your pet’s taste preferences or concerns about quality, you need to bring these concerns to your veterinarian’s attention rather than ignoring the recommendation entirely. Ignoring your veterinarian’s nutritional recommendation could put your pet’s health in jeopardy. If you have some objection to the recommended food, your veterinarian can work with you to find an alternate diet that works better for you and still satisfies your pet’s special nutritional requirements.
Raw Diets
In recent years, raw diets have become very popular. In fact, proponents of raw feeding claim these diets have miraculous properties. Such claims, however, are not supported by good scientific evidence. In reality, the processing commercially available meat undergoes makes it much more likely than fresh, wild-caught game to be contaminated with dangerous bacteria, and scientific studies have not shown any advantage to feeding pets raw meat.
Most major medical and scientific organizations, including the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Public Health Agency of Canada, advise against feeding raw diets to pets because of risks to human and pet health.
These risks include the following:
- Human illness from bacteria shed in the feces of animals fed raw diets.
- Human illness, especially in small children and immuno-compromised people, from contact with raw meat.
- Increased chance of developing antibiotic-resistant infections.
- Health problems in pets due to eating a potentially unbalanced diet.
If you are considering a raw diet for your pet, consult your veterinarian for alternatives. There are better and safer options available.
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