Like many others these days I would like to cut my carbon footprint, and try to eat locally-grown foods where possible. I eat very little meat myself, and what I do is free-range or organic, but I accept that my dogs do need to eat meat! The other day I read a statistic that really shocked me, and that was that 50% of a food animal is unfit for human consumption, and much of it is thrown away. I would like to feed my dogs meat that is ethically raised, but preferably too from parts of the animals that would not otherwise be used. There's no point feeding them fillet steak, but they could be eating the lungs, tripe, heart and all the unmentionable bits! How can I be sure the food I give my dogs is from animals raised to high welfare standards – but not using food that humans would otherwise eat? What's the best way to feed from the point of view of the environment, welfare of the food animals, and food miles?
Joanne Holmes, Burford, Oxfordshire
Also posted on the What should I feed my dog blog
Richard Allport, alternative vet, advises...
Doesn’t life get more complicated by the day! It is so hard to weigh up the pros and cons of the benefits of eating organic produce versus the downside of the ‘food miles’ that may be involved. I think the best way forward is to find a good local independent butcher (supporting a small local business) who can provide you with the raw meaty bones and offal that should indeed be the basis of a healthy diet for your dogs. If this is organic so much the better, but I do think local produce even if not organic is preferable to organic food flown in from far away places. A good butcher will always source meat from animals reared to high welfare standards simply because the quality is better; the selling point of independent butchers is always the quality factor of their produce.
I can see that your dogs are going to be very well fed indeed!
Hi
ReplyDeleteI, too, am doing my best to reduce our carbon footprint, for ourselves and our dogs. I feed mainly raw and use either rabbits, which my son in law catches with his ferrets OR which are shot by the local gamekeeper - he's amazing, he shoots around 2,000 a year, all with a clean head shot. I freeze them for a month to reduce the parasite load.
In between (because they become fed up of rabbit pretty fast), I feed pork ribs with either pork or lamb heart, plus bits of liver or kidney if we're eating them. The dogs also get human leftovers as long as it's not too salty and/or spicy.
As treats, I bought a dehydrator and use lamb or pig lungs cut into slices and dehydrated - this is part that truly would be thrown away. I get a set of lungs (often plus heart and a good bit of diaphragm, for 50p and add in a pound or so of liver cut into strips which fills the dehydrator. I run it for 12 hours and have training treats for a week (actually, that's not entirely true, I substitute with kibble too, but am trying to phase that out - just that I need variety and cheese passes straight through)
Anyone else?
Manda Scott
I feed Naturediet, and have heard that it's made with human grade ingredients. My dogs love it, and they're very healthy on it.
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