I haven’t written about raw diets lately (beyond risks from H5N1 influenza, particularly in cats), but that doesn’t mean the risks from these diets have gone away, and they are still really popular in some areas, and some messages are worth repeating.
Potential problems with raw diets for dogs and cats include infections (e.g. Salmonella
I suspect that people in every decade since the 1940s have said “we really shouldn’t have to talk about why raw milk is bad anymore, should we?” …but apparently we do still have to talk about it, and with certain high-profile characters in the US pushing raw milk, the topic isn’t going away anytime soon.
We all know that backyard chickens are becoming increasingly popular – despite some of their associated infectious disease hazards, which we’ve discussed many times before. The latest “pandemic pastime” takes the trend to a whole new level, with scores of people fostering chicks or ducklings as a family activity, aka something
COVID-19 derailed our plans for some backyard chicken work (e.g. research and education) this spring, but the emergence of COVID-19 doesn’t mean all other infectious disease issues have disappeared. Some problems will be reduced by the precautions put in place to control COVID-19, but other problems may actually get worse. Backyard chickens continue to be
A couple of recent outbreak reports are interesting, though unsurprising, and they help raise awareness about some important issues. Here’s the first one.
The CDC recently released an update on the ongoing investigation into antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter infections from puppies. Contact with puppies (and kittens) has been shown to be a risk factor for people
A recent study looked at human illness associated with raw pet food and has led to headlines such as “It is safe to feed raw pet foods.”
Did the study say that? No, it did not.
If you asked 100 people if they had a foodborne disease in the past year, I assume
A recently published University of Guelph study evaluating pet poultry flocks found (unsurprisingly) high rates of shedding of certain concerning bacteria (Brochu et al, J Vet Diagn Invest 2019).
This week’s edition of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report has a summary of the 2016-2018 campylobacterosis outbreak linked to pet store puppies. Nothing is particularly surprising, but that doesn’t mean it’s not disappointing (or depressing).
Click here for the complete article. Here’s a (relatively) brief summary:
As if another reason was needed, a recent study from Australia (Martinez-Anton et al. 2018 J Vet Internal Med) found a strong association between dogs that consume raw chicken meat and a serious neurological condition known as acute polyradiculoneuritis (APN). APN is comparable to Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in humans. The main objective of
I was talking to someone today about their new puppy, their puppy’s diarrhea and (take a guess) the fact that they developed diarrhea shortly thereafter. Odds are pretty good that puppy and owner both have campylobacteriosis. While this infection isn’t related to the ongoing US multistate Campylobacter outbreak linked to puppies from Petland stores,
