Home-prepared diets for dogs

On behalf of Just Food For Dogs LLC, I would like to express concerns with the recent study by Stockman et al¹ regarding their evaluation of the nutritional adequacy of a large number of recipes for home-prepared maintenance diets for dogs. Many dog owners, for a wide variety of reasons, have elected to seek alternatives to commercial pet foods and are choosing to cook for their pets.² As veterinarians, I believe we have an obligation to these owners to help them ensure that the meals they feed are healthy and balanced. As such, there is good reason to examine the nutritional adequacy of the recipes that these owners may be using. However, I believe that the authors should be more circumspect in their conclusions.

There are two established ways to evaluate the nutritional adequacy of pet foods: comparing nutrient profiles with published standards and longitudinal feeding trials.³ Feeding trials are considered superior to evaluation of nutrient profiles⁴ because feeding trials can provide data on palatability, acceptability, digestibility, and bioavailability. Understandably, the authors did not perform feeding trials of the 200 diet recipes they evaluated and, instead, compared estimated nutrient profiles with established standards. However, because of this, the deficiencies identified by the authors may not ever translate into clinical deficiencies when these recipes are used.

In addition, in developing their nutrient profiles, the authors used their own proprietary software program and relied on information from publicly available and proprietary databases of nutrient analyses of recipe ingredients. Without more information regarding the validity of the proprietary software program and proprietary nutrient analysis database, it is hard to know how reliable their results are. The authors did attempt to address this by comparing results of their computer-based nutrient analyses with results of laboratory analyses of nutrient content. However, only 15 of the 200 recipes were selected for laboratory analysis, and even for these 15 recipes, only a few nutrients were analyzed because of cost constraints. Nevertheless, nutrient concentrations obtained by means of laboratory analysis differed by 0.21% to 62.10% from those obtained by means of the authors’ computer-based analyses.

We are in an exciting time in pet nutrition, and the study of pet diets should remain as objective and unbiased as possible because our pets’ quality of lives and health are at stake.

Oscar E. Chavez, dvm, mba

Just Food For Dogs LLC

Newport Beach, Calif

The authors respond:

We appreciate the opportunity to address the concerns Dr. Chavez has about the methods used in our study. We used the National Research Council Nutrient Requirements of Adult Dogs for Maintenance¹ and the Association of American Feed Control Officials Dog Food Nutrient Profiles² as standards for comparison. The software used in our study simply provides a way to automate the quantitative comparison of the nutrient profile of a combination of food ingredients to these standards; the same process was applied to all recipes. Further, computerized assessment of the nutrient profiles of foods and comparison to accepted standards is a recognized method that has been used for decades in both human and animal nutrition. More specific to the current issue, this was the technique used in several previous studies^3–5,a evaluating recipes for home-prepared diets for dogs and cats and is a common method for substantiating the nutritional adequacy of many commercially available pet foods in the United States.² Our study took this one step further by analyzing 17 components in 15 recipes in the laboratory, giving us 255 data points to compare to the computerized assessments and support our conclusions regarding the prognostic value of software in predicting nutritional excesses and deficiencies in prepared diets. The challenges and limitations of extrapolating database information to practical application (including consideration of bioavailability, digestibility, and many other factors) were addressed in our paper.

Regarding the nutrient profiles of ingredients, most of the information used in our study came from the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. This was supplemented by data we obtained by submitting food samples for laboratory analysis for specific nutrients for which there frequently are gaps in the database (eg, vitamin D, choline, and amino acids). This would have impacted the reliability of the results only if our sampling and preparation procedures resulted in values that are not representative of similar products available in a range of grocery outlets. However, this limitation is not different than that which applies to the use of any ingredient database and is something we consider regularly when formulating home-prepared diets for our patients.

These issues, in addition to others discussed in our report, serve to underscore our point regarding the importance and value of soliciting the input of an individual with extensive, in-depth training and expertise in animal nutrition when formulating home-prepared and commercially available diets. Additional information and resources for veterinarians and pet owners about a wide variety of nutrition topics, including home-prepared diets, can be found online.⁶

Jennifer A. Larsen, dvm, phd, dacvn

Andrea J. Fascetti, vmd, phd, dacvn, dacvim

Department of Molecular Biosciences

School of Veterinary Medicine

University of California-Davis

Davis, Calif

AVMA governance changes

We believe that the recent JAVMA News article “HOD wants to maintain its existence”¹ missed the essence of why so many members of the AVMA House of Delegates oppose the proposed changes to the AVMA governance structure, particularly the HOD, and feel that additional clarification is necessary.

Simply put, we vehemently disagree with the effort to alter the governance structure of the AVMA to make it an association solely representative of individual veterinarians, rather than one also organized as a federation of diverse veterinary associations. By eliminating direct representation of groups of like-interested veterinarians, such as make up the HOD, minority aspects of the profession will see their interests subsumed by the overwhelming majority of private companion animal practitioners. We believe that is not in the best interest of the profession or of the AVMA.

It is quite true that we and, apparently, a majority of delegates to the HOD (as evidenced by the response to the resolution requesting that any final proposal for governance change include the HOD) feel that the HOD should not be going anywhere, but not for our own sake, rather for the good of the profession as a whole. The AVMA is, for all practical purposes, synonymous with the veterinary profession in the United States. It is therefore critical that the AVMA remain fully representative of all areas of veterinary medicine and all the various geographic, professional, social, political, and economic aspects brought about by our diverse makeup.

We contend that the current makeup of the HOD achieves this goal by providing for representation from all 50 state veterinary medical associations, the Puerto Rico and District of Columbia veterinary associations, and 17 other allied organizations. The proposed governance model would, in our opinion, change the AVMA into a large group of self-interested individuals, rather than a composite of all aspects of the profession with the shared collective goal of protecting and improving all the elements of our beloved profession. In adopting the proposed model, we believe much more would be lost in terms of cohesiveness, the shared wisdom of our collective experience, and intraprofessional unity than might be gained in nimbleness, efficiency, or other characteristics touted as desirable by the now dissolved Task Force on Governance and Member Participation.

We believe that some form of a federation model for the AVMA governance structure best represents all aspects of the veterinary profession and all veterinary practice segments and should be preserved. We should seek much simpler and less disruptive methods to solve the issues of fiduciary duty, timely decision making, and volunteer productivity, while preserving direct representation of professional associations. Fresh eyes should explore those methods so that all AVMA members remain best represented and served by their most important professional association.

Arnold L. Goldman, dvm, mph

Delegate, Connecticut

Canton, Conn

William De Witt, dvm

Delegate, Alabama

Birmingham, Ala

Joni Scheftel, dvm, mph

Delegate, Minnesota

Saint Paul, Minn

Thomas Candee, dvm

Delegate, New Hampshire

Exeter, NH

Robert H. Belden, dvm

Alternate Delegate, Connecticut

New Milford, Conn

Y. M. Saif, dvm, phd

Delegate, American Association of

Avian Pathologists Wooster, Ohio

Gregg Cutler, dvm, mpvm

Alternate Delegate, American Association

of Avian Pathologists Moorpark, Calif

Jennifer Stevens, dvm

Delegate, American Association of

Swine Veterinarians Brandon, SD