# PMR vs BARF (article attached)



## CavePaws (Jan 25, 2011)

Meat Secrets

Does anyone know what factory farm raised animals are truly deficient in and why it would be of benefit for me to feed my dogs herbs? I think we've beaten the moral aspect of factory farmed meat to a pulp already; but, is PMR really not as nutritious as BARF (a diet inclusive of herbs, fruit, and veggies) if the animals I am feeding are mostly factory farmed?

My want to start raising sheep, chickens, and a few pigs is growing by the hour. :|


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## SpooOwner (Oct 1, 2010)

Omega 3, but herbs won't fix that.


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

just out of curiousity.....when i am driving cross country and i see the continous fence line because the cows and steers are branded so the only boundary they need is to keep them off the highway.....what are they eating and who gets to eat them?

or is it only pigs and chickens who don't get to move around....

course, the pig and sheep and chicken farms in georgia must not count because their pigs, chickens and lambs were always getting out and and coming over our house to play....

...if we feel the big farms are producing sub par animals....take supplements.....because the organic stuff is way out of my pocketbook....and i'm not entirely convinced the benefits are worth the price....

with dog food, they can get away with almost anything....but with human food, there's only so much they can get around the fda...who is inadequate, but they do try.



so i don't get it...i realise the world has turned to genetically modified grains....and we suffer from that.....

if we don't feel as if we are getting enough from what we eat, take supplements...but make sure they are what they say they are....

but to feed a dog veggies and fruit when their stomachs aren't made to digest such things....i don't understand that....


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## CavePaws (Jan 25, 2011)

Re, I do not understand it either. Not a bit, after reading about Bloat more I'm even more convinced than ever that dogs should not be eating what they were not designed to eat. In no way, shape, or form am I saying kibble is superior. I think ALL kibbles are sub-par foods for our animal friends; honestly when clients ask me what kind of kibble to feed, I start out with the "I first recommend looking into a Prey Model type Raw diet" I go on to tell them the benefits, and then have to convince them not to buy a certain sub-par kibble promoted in our class and give them better options for their specific price range. I really can't get too excited about even very great kibbles being fed. I'm very happy that the word is spreading, but at the same time, PMR, BARF, and then home cooked are the way to go if you do your research and truly care about what your dog is consuming. I just wish I could convince people it's not that hard to prepare something like a PMR diet. A lot of my clients have single dogs, seriously it is so easy to feed one dog...It takes me like a minute tops to give my dogs a frozen meal...which I do often.


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## eternalstudent (Jul 22, 2010)

I have to agree with Re on this one. The animals I eat are not top end spec organic free range quite simply because I am not prepared to pay the premium to get it. I also know that a lot of it is not what it says on the tin and that, free range is not all it is cracked up to be.

I would love to get past the added hormones and antibiotics but we can not. My defence to this is the same as for humans. Yes they dose with growth factors but the feed companies mostly use synthetic versions of naturally occurring ones. This means the meat is not tainted as such, and it is still broken down to natural products. The same is true with antibiotics. They restrict the amount that gets into the food chain so the antibiotic levels of the meat we eat is below significant levels. If my pup does eat them she will break them down far faster (in most cases) than I could.

The significant thing bits that are lacking in battery farmed food are the good muscle fibres. This means that battery farmed chicken has lower levels of L-carnitine, and creatine. Overall the animals still have all the rest.

No matter what people come out with I can not see the argument for adding 40% vegetable pulp to the diet, it baffles me completely. 

Herbs: well that I can understand having watched my pup go for some herbed chicken (all they had in the shop) and she loved it, the smell was great. And if I wanted to make her eat a mushed up pile of veg I think it would require a bit of persuasion .


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

i just thought of this. 

the fda has no control over supplements, so aren't we caught between a rock and a hard place?

there are things i can effect and there are things i cannot.

so i will continue to go to the supermarket and buy meat that i know is not top notch but won't kill me, i hope.....and i'll feed it to my dogs because the alternative is mc donalds and kibble....

i'll take my chances with the grocery store....


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

What a stupid article. Everything stated in it is true, but so what? It applies equally to humans and dogs. Is the author implying that kibble is a better choice than factory farmed meat? Hmm...so the kibble manufacturers like to brag about the meat content in their kibble. Few, if any, actually even use "human grade" meat (it is primarily by-product meat that is then processed to death), but somehow the meat in kibble is better than the meat at the supermarket? Or is the author implying that we should all run out and buy organic grass fed beef and pastured chickens? I can barely afford to feed that kind of meat to my family, let alone my dogs (we eat some organic grass fed beef and bison and pastured chickens but about 80% of our meat is from the supermarket). Even the worst supermarket meat is superior to any kibble.

I don't understand the point of the article. Anyone who knows anything about nutrition already knows this about factory farmed meat but what is the point? If there is a dog food company on the planet that exclusively uses organic grass fed beef, lamb, pork, wild fish, and pastured poultry, I'd be surprised. Even if there is, who could afford it but a select few? How is this article helpful? It offers no solutions and only bashes raw/PMR which is the presently the best canine diet available, barring one made up entirely of organic meat and game meat.

I'll bet the author wrote this then went home and ate hamburger meat from Kroeger or a chicken from Tyson.


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## CavePaws (Jan 25, 2011)

JayJayisme said:


> Is the author implying that kibble is a better choice than factory farmed meat? Hmm...so the kibble manufacturers like to brag about the meat content in their kibble. Few, if any, actually even use "human grade" meat (it is primarily by-product meat that is then processed to death), but somehow the meat in kibble is better than the meat at the supermarket? Or is the author implying that we should all run out and buy organic grass fed beef and pastured chickens? I can barely afford to feed that kind of meat to my family, let alone my dogs (we eat some organic grass fed beef and bison and pastured chickens but about 80% of our meat is from the supermarket). Even the worst supermarket meat is superior to any kibble.


I personally don't think this is what the author is implying in the least.



> I don't understand the point of the article. Anyone who knows anything about nutrition already knows this about factory farmed meat but what is the point? If there is a dog food company on the planet that exclusively uses organic grass fed beef, lamb, pork, wild fish, and pastured poultry, I'd be surprised. Even if there is, who could afford it but a select few? How is this article helpful? It offers no solutions and only bashes raw/PMR which is the presently the best canine diet available, barring one made up entirely of organic meat and game meat.


Well, now I am really thinking about it, before I knew this but really didn't realize what vitamins the meat is deficient in. If you only have one dog to feed, I'd be feeding only grass fed, free range, organic meats and game meat. I pay for 7 dogs though, it's not affordable and would be more beneficial to my pocketbook to just supplement as needed. My dogs are fine and dandy, much healthier than they were on kibble, and no amount of vegetable matter is worth it in my opinion as it wasn't what dogs were designed to eat.


If I could afford to feed myself grass fed, free range, organic meats this is what I'd be doing. I can't though.


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## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

I applaud those who can feed as natural as it can get, but I'm just not able to either. I'd spend $100 per day at that rate LOL

I would find the need to supplement if my dogs were showing signs of ill health, but honestly, I don't see any signs whatsoever and our dogs eat mostly factory farmed meat. The only free range, natural meat we feed is the lamb that we butchered ourselves. Which we still have plenty of, but I use it sparingly to make it last. I will continue to butcher our own animals when the chance arises because I think its an important skill to have, plus it makes you realize just how displaced you are from the food you eat every day.


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## sozzle (May 18, 2011)

We are lucky here in NZ that our sheep and beef are grass fed anyway. We do have dubious pig farming though and for the family I only buy free range. Chicken frames for my dogs are supermarket ones and even the free range ones are grain fed with any extra bugs they might find added to their diet. I think it is always going to come down to what you can afford and yes I think fresh meat however it is farmed is better than kibble.


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

CavePaws said:


> I personally don't think this is what the author is implying in the least.


Fair enough, but what *is* the author implying then?



CavePaws said:


> Well, now I am really thinking about it, before I knew this but really didn't realize what vitamins the meat is deficient in. If you only have one dog to feed, I'd be feeding only grass fed, free range, organic meats and game meat. I pay for 7 dogs though, it's not affordable and would be more beneficial to my pocketbook to just supplement as needed. My dogs are fine and dandy, much healthier than they were on kibble, and no amount of vegetable matter is worth it in my opinion as it wasn't what dogs were designed to eat.


It's fairly well accepted in the "real" nutrition circles that buck the totally skewed "conventional wisdom" from the agricultural industry, the FDA, and the medical/pharmaceutical industry, that one of the reasons for some of the epidemic levels of disease in humans we see these days is because of factory farmed foods that actually have very little nutrition, or the wrong ratios of nutrients. 

What is happening to humans (statistically speaking) is what has also been happening to dogs (i.e. epidemic levels of certain diseases like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc.). For dogs, you can thank the pet food industry and the crap processed "food" they have infested the market with (as we all know). For humans, the list is much longer but includes many of the same underlying problems such as the proliferation of corn and soy in our diets, fructose and other sugars, especially HFCS, poly unsaturated fat (PUFA) vegetable oils, cheap carbohydrates in general, mostly from grains, and meat and eggs that are also raised on many of these same cheap, low quality feeds. 

In humans, for instance, it is desirable to have as close to a 1:1 ratio of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids in the diet. However the proliferation of substandard foods and farmed meats raised on low quality foods has caused the average American to have a O6 to O3 ratio of 15:1 or 16:1, which leads to all sorts of diseases.

The importance of the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 ess... [Biomed Pharmacother. 2002] - PubMed result

This is why we supplement our dogs diets with fish and salmon oil or fish oil. If they ate game meats in the wild, their O6-O3 ratio wouldn't be an issue. The same is true for humans though. If you eat factory farmed meat, eggs, and eat a lot of vegetable oil, your O6-O3 ratio is probably a disaster. You can correct it just like we do with our dogs, by either eating grass fed or pastured meats and eggs, plus certain kinds of oily fish, and/or taking mega supplements of good quality omega supplements.

But how many of us do? What griped me is that no realistic solution was offered by the author of this article. It only served to bash raw feeders without offering any balance whatsoever by weighing one diet against another. If factory farmed meat is so bad (and I'm not saying it is really good), then at least the good and bad of every typical diet should have been examined because as we all know, even if PMR isn't perfect, it's a far cry from kibble. And for those who can afford it, you can certainly make PMR nearly perfect by using organic grass fed and pasture raised or game meat. No matter what you do to kibble, it's still processed crap. I'll take factory farmed meat over processed crap any day.


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## CavePaws (Jan 25, 2011)

JayJayisme said:


> Fair enough, but what *is* the author implying then?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I really think the author is implying that if you feed PMR based on grain fed animals who don't always see the light of day your dog is not getting all the nutrients they need. That's just my take on it. And I don't agree at all that veggies and fruit should be added to my dogs diet. I do give my dogs fish meals about twice a week and then also give them fish oil supplements every day, so I guess my dogs are in the clear. :] I take the supplements as well, and recently bought emu oil which can be ingested, the emu is free range, pastured, and fed a plant based natural diet. My dogs will have this as a supplement as well.


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## SpooOwner (Oct 1, 2010)

JayJayisme said:


> It's fairly well accepted in the "real" nutrition circles that buck the totally skewed "conventional wisdom" from the agricultural industry, the FDA, and the medical/pharmaceutical industry, that one of the reasons for some of the epidemic levels of disease in humans we see these days is because of factory farmed foods that actually have very little nutrition, or the wrong ratios of nutrients.


Can you point me to more literature? Although I tend to be a little suspect of factory farmed foods, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that conventional fruit+veg actually contain different levels of nutrients than organic fruit+veg. Meat is a different matter.


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## danecolor (Nov 22, 2010)

SpooOwner said:


> Can you point me to more literature? Although I tend to be a little suspect of factory farmed foods, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that conventional fruit+veg actually contain different levels of nutrients than organic fruit+veg. Meat is a different matter.


and I may be speaking out of ignorance, but it seems to me that obesity is a much bigger factor when it comes to diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease.


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## SilverBeat (Jan 16, 2011)

I would think that so long as you have some wild game in their diet [or *something* pasture raised] that that would kind of make up for whatever the animals from CAFOs don't have. 
I'm not sure what battery hens are used for, but egg-laying battery hens are very nutrient-deficient, because they are never allowed to eat their eggs and regain all the nutrients that went into that. They are fed a grain-based meal with a ton of supplements, which as we know are not as easily absorbed by the body. 
I also tend to think that the animals raised in totally dark sheds are nutrient-deprived because they never see sunlight.


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## eternalstudent (Jul 22, 2010)

Unfortunately the battery farm chickens for feed as well as for eggs. The difference is that the battery farming for meat is done in huge ware houses and the chickens are a flock inside on the floor. They are fed but they also walk over each other and most will have some deformity or other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b_m4SyQ3mA

If you can see it is a great program which will make you never want to eat battery farmed anything again. 

Light is not really necessary for nutrients apart from vit D in most animals. Even then you can eat plenty of it and quite happily live in the dark with no side effects. 

Ok it would be great if we could all live on fresh wild game but that is not feasible anymore and if I cant do that then farmed meat it is I don't think it is as bad as people make out health wise. for humans or dogs. My bug bare with it is that it taste horrible!!!!!!! but I can not justify a 7 fold increase in price. Maybe after I win the lotto


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## CavePaws (Jan 25, 2011)

Yes, agreed Spoo! More literature, just what I'd like as well...I tend to agree, Amy. I think if my dogs get some form of wild game, it really does not matter at all; save the moral aspect of it all. The real reason I am very concerned for factory farmed animal are the conditions of their short lived lives. It just isn't right, but it is so freaking sad that this is what has become the norm. I can't possibly afford to feed myself and my dogs all free-range, organic, _pastured _meat.


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

danecolor said:


> and I may be speaking out of ignorance, but it seems to me that obesity is a much bigger factor when it comes to diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease.


you're not....and thank the universe we don't feed our dogs soda and mcdonalds.


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## CavePaws (Jan 25, 2011)

magicre said:


> you're not....and thank the universe we don't feed our dogs soda and mcdonalds.


hey, don't you rag on Mc Ds!! D:


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

CavePaws said:


> I really think the author is implying that if you feed PMR based on grain fed animals who don't always see the light of day your dog is not getting all the nutrients they need. That's just my take on it. And I don't agree at all that veggies and fruit should be added to my dogs diet. I do give my dogs fish meals about twice a week and then also give them fish oil supplements every day, so I guess my dogs are in the clear. :] I take the supplements as well, and recently bought emu oil which can be ingested, the emu is free range, pastured, and fed a plant based natural diet. My dogs will have this as a supplement as well.


Okay, if that's what you got out of it, then I guess the article has some merit, minor though it is. I just think the premise and advice is wrong. For a site called "Dogs Naturally" I would think the author would embrace raw feeding and if there is a problem with it, take on the problem rather than the diet. She should have positioned this as an attack on the factory meat farming industry instead of an attack on raw feeding, as though raw feeders are idiots for "not knowing where their meat comes from". And her advice to supplement with herbs? Where do people get this stuff? Dogs just need a source of omega 3 which most of use provide by feeding fish or fish products. Problem solved. 

I guess this set me off because I expect this kind of sloppy "reporting" from mainstream sources, but not from a site that touts the natural rearing of dogs. What is more natural than a dog eating meat, even if the meat isn't perfect?



SpooOwner said:


> Can you point me to more literature? Although I tend to be a little suspect of factory farmed foods, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that conventional fruit+veg actually contain different levels of nutrients than organic fruit+veg. Meat is a different matter.


Sorry, I was writing this in a hurry and I hadn't organized my thoughts completely. Since we are talking about dogs, i.e. carnivores, my mindset was focused on meat, which is what I was specifically referring to. For me the jury is still out on produce although I do buy some organic fruits and veggies just because I want to avoid all the pesticide and chemical fertilizer residue that many non-organic products have. Especially thin-skinned fruits and veggies. I'm not convinced there is much difference in the nutritional content of regular versus organic produce though.


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## sassymaxmom (Dec 7, 2008)

Maybe factory farmed meat isn't as good as wild or pastured meats but when I compare the USDA nutrition website for meats Max gets against his NRC requirements I see that he is low in omega 3 and vitamin E. I supplement them with a vitamin E capsule and sardines, done.

Much ado about not much.


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