By Samantha Hayes
A small Kiwi company is trying to take a bite out of the $300-million pet food market by turning owners off conventional pet food and on to raw products made from pests like rabbit and possum.
Raw Essentials has just picked up a sustainability award for its novel approach, but not without some controversy.
Lyn Thomson has been a vet for 15 years and has used her expertise to develop the range of raw pet food for cats and dogs.
“We use a lot of rabbit, lots of hare, possum, goat, venison, chicken, lamb and fish as well,” she says.
Pest species like rabbit are gathered by hunters and processed at a factory in Ohoka, Canterbury.
This earned Raw Essentials a sustainability award earlier this month because it decreases the amount 1080 poison needed to control the population.
“At the moment there are a lot of rabbits down in Canterbury, so we've probably got at least 12 hunters out nightly,” says Ms Thomson.
The other meats come from the human food industry and would otherwise go to waste or be shipped overseas, made into conventional pet food and shipped back.
But it's that dry food diet most vets back, not Ms Thomson’s.
“I wouldn't recommend a raw food diet at this stage,” says veterinarian David Bond. “I don't think there's enough evidence to show it's entirely safe and also that it is completely balanced.”
Ms Thomson says it's a complete diet based on prey that pets would naturally eat in the wild.
“Theoretically we know what's in them and at some stage when our company is big enough and we've got the budget to be able to do it, we will do all the testing,” says Ms Thomson.
But Mr Bond says millions of dollars has already been spent researching animal nutrition to make a better product, and nature doesn't always know best.
“The African wild dog has a life expectancy of five years, whereas the pets that we have today feeding on commercial diets would live 12 to 15 years.”
Independent testing to prove whether Raw Essentials stacks up will cost $50,000. But Ms Thomson says anecdotal evidence and a loyal customer base at her four Auckland stores prove for now she's doing something right.
3 News
source: newshub archive
