The recent pet food scare has led many people to start cooking for their pets. Not surprisingly, pet food companies and veterinarians are warning of the dangers of trying to feed your own pet – the former for fear of profit loss and the latter for liability reasons. However, just as we humans used to be capable of procuring our own food, so too were our dogs and cats.
Granted, there are dangers to avoid when making pet food, but they require either large amounts of a particular item or complete lapse of common sense. For instance, while trying to turn your dog into a vegetarian is possible (with very careful nutritional balance), a meat-free diet causes cats to go blind and eventually die due to taurine deficiency. There are also many foods that pets shouldn’t eat in large quantities. For dogs, these include chocolate, onions, garlic, and macadamia nuts. With the exception of the nuts, the quantities required to do harm are fairly significant: 0.5 lb. chocolate, 1 lb. onions, or 1 lb. garlic for a 20-lb. dog.
Also keep in mind that while garlic is on the list as a danger, it is an old-time remedy for flea and tick prevention. As a case in point, the time when our 50-lb. dog chomped several cloves of garlic out of our garden coincided with us lapsing on his flea treatments for a few months. He had no fleas or ticks during that period and our yard is usually full of the suckers -- and he suffered no ill effects. It’s just an anecdote, but evidence that we don’t need to walk on eggshells around our pets’ food (speaking of eggshells, our darn dog tries to eat those too!).
Aside from the foods listed above, the rest is common sense: don’t feed your dog things that would make you sick, like moldy food, rhubarb or tomato leaves, alcohol, green potatoes, and so forth.
Other than those items, a dog or cat can almost everything you can, and then some. Good grief, half the reason carnivores were kept on a farm in the past was for critter control!
Feeding our pets from scratch may seem risky as it’s something most of us aren’t familiar with. In reality, however, it’s far more dangerous for our pets to eat commercial pet food than the food from our own backyards. As this article illustrates in graphic detail, this current scare isn’t the only reason we should avoid commercial pet food.
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This is why I buy the really, really, really expensive cat kibbles. I've thought about making my own pet food, but it seems like a lot of work and I prefer to avoid handling meat. I did read that raw meat was best for pets, but anything you buy in the store isn't exactly "fresh" enough to be served raw, in my opinion.
Some meals are free :)
I wouldn't be upset if the dog caught a critter in the yard, but I wouldn't trust feeding him anything from the store raw. And especially nothing irradiated, as you've laid out on your site!