May 24, 2011

Are there parasites in raw meat?

Full Question:
Are there parasites in raw meat?
Cindy
Cindy Cindy's Answer:
I would say the meat purchased as “fit for human consumption’ should be safe from parasites. I would not feed my dogs anything that wasn’t fit for human consumption anyway!

Some raw feeders won’t feed pork because of the possibility of trichinosis, but if the meat is inspected I don’t worry about it.

I don’t know if I would feed a wild pig to my dogs or certain wild game like bear or beaver. We do feed wild venison without issue.

It’s said if you freeze meat at zero degrees for 3 weeks it will kill parasites but I don’t have personal experience with that, so take that into consideration when selecting meat for your dogs.

Note from one of our customers:

I only have one comment, I would not feed my dog bear meat. The reason is Trichonella. This is quite common in bear meat, especially raw bear meat. There are quite a few cases of trichinosis in people each year in the USA, and they are almost always from bear meat. I wouldn't trust freezing to take care of this parasite. It is a nasty and painful infection. I had been feeding my dog deer meat, but the advent of the wasting disease has made me leery of using it for myself or my dog. We will get any deer I shoot this year checked before I or my dog eat it. I switched my dog (Labrador Retriever) to Raw Food after buying the books and videos, and reading the articles on the Leerburg site. As always a good source of sound advice.

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Expert Dog Trainer Cindy Rhodes
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