Pathogen contamination of raw pet diets isn’t surprising. We know it’s a risk. So a new issue with Darwin’s Natural Pet Products isn’t really surprising either, since they’ve had multiple issues in the past, including ignoring an FDA recall request. They’re back in the news again, but this time it’s because of human illness
People can get pretty fired up when I talk about raw diets for pets. I’ll start off with my personal bias: I’d rather not see pets fed raw meat and raw animal-based products (e.g. pig ears and various bits-o-cow you can find in pet stores). There are clear risks to pets and owners from raw
I’ve written a lot about raw pet food in the past. Initially, the concerns were about Salmonella, since raw-fed dogs and cats have high rates of shedding Salmonella, and both pets and owners can get sick from it (owners can be infected directly by the pet or from handling or cross-contamination from the pet
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has announced an outbreak of E. coli O157 infections in people linked to Carnivora brand raw pet food, and Health Canada has issued a recall of a number of Carnivora products due to potential contamination with E. coli O157. Illnesses have been reported in four individuals in
New antimicrobial resistance challenges continue to emerge. In the veterinary field (especially in small animals), we have the advantage of seeing what’s happening in human medicine first, since that’s often an early warning system for what we’re going to encounter. We’ve seen a variety of resistant bacteria first became a problem in people, and then
Back in 2008, we reported an association between feeding raw diets to dogs and shedding of cephalosporin-resistant bacteria in dogs (that makes me feel old… one of many things that does these days, I guess). It didn’t get too much attention at the time, since the main focus of the study was on Salmonella,
Raw diets have been in the news a lot lately because of Salmonella contamination. It’s not surprising at all since bacteria like Salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter and Listeria are expected to be found in raw meat (that’s why we cook it). We know that dogs and cats fed raw meat are at increased risk of
Human health risks from raw pet food (either from exposure to pathogens in the food or in the feces of pets eating the food) are known to exist but they’re not well characterized. We know that dogs fed raw meat-based diets clearly have increased risk of shedding various pathogens, particularly Salmonella and multidrug resistant E.
Bacteria are smarter than we give them credit for.
Or maybe we’re not a bright as we think we are.
Antimicrobial stewardship is sometimes (wrongly) assumed to simply be the practice of “using fewer antimicrobials,” but it’s more complex than that, because the issue is complex. At face value, overall reduction in antimicrobial use is
Recent identification of mcr-1, a gene that makes bacteria resistant to colistin (an antibiotic of last resort) raised a lot of concern. Now, there’s another one to be worried about, as a related gene, mcr-2 has been identified (Xavier et al, Eurosurveillance, July 2016).
In this study, 105 colistin-resistant E. coli from
