Seems some raw companies have changed their tune on raw diets.  Several raw producers have chosen to pasteurize or pressure sterilize their meat material to be sold as frozen raw diets.  This decision may be due to pressure from the FDA after recalls or a mind change about the safety of raw diets.

Raw diets were not favored by a pet food industry that had developed around grain by-products produced in extrusion plants costing $20 million or more.  Canneries are even more costly.  So from the start a big brouhaha developed over possible salmonella or e-coli contamination of raw products.  The industry was so used to using 4D beef (these are downers or dead stock) and charcoal chicken (these are spoiled chickens blackened with charcoal) that the idea of not cooking the life out of it was alien to them.  The cooking allows a producer to use low grade materials because they kill all the contamination in the steam retorts or extrusion cookers.  The problem is that everything else is also killed including the vitamins and good bacteria.

Raw products have been on the market for many years now and have done extremely well at improving pet health without causing any problems.  The dry kibble and canned producers can’t say that. We do not think pressure sterilizing the product will improve the raw diet in any way.  As a matter of fact we believe it will degrade the diets to do that. We want the good bacteria to remain in the food. If the raw material is sterilized it will become a Petri dish for growing bad bacteria.  For raw producers to change manufacturing process to allow for contaminated raw material is not a good idea.  The best way to avoid recalls is to use the highest quality meat material and produce in a clean environment.  You need trusted ingredient sources and trusted distributors to ensure that what you are taking home is safe for your pet.  Sterilization may make manufactures lazy since they will be cleaning the product.

We do not use HPP and have not had a recall in our 10+ years of distributing raw food.  We really hope that manufactures, retailers and customers become educated about this before deciding if HPP is what they want.