Dr John Lowe, the Trophy Nutritionist and Sue Reid Trophys resident expert wrote this piece for our Winter 2013 Newsletter. The Trophy Customer Hotline (01367 240333) has been very busy this week on the same subject. I know it is long, but it is well worth a read. Dogs and cats are living longer today than in the past. This is without doubt due to the combination of improvements in both pet nutrition and veterinary medicine. Studies have examined not just specific aspects of the pet’s needs and nutrient requirements, but also looked at lifetime impact of diet, concepts of optimum nutrition and the way in which nutrition at one stage of life impacts another. Nutritional research has also extended into the role of designing diets that directly support and are integral to the success of veterinary care, for example where specific disease situations force changes in nutrient supply to help manage the animal more successfully during the period of illness or in some cases for the rest of their life. Such diets, termed diets for particular nutritional purposes (PARNUTS), are controlled under additional legislation to that for conventional pet foods, and are almost exclusively sold by the veterinary profession. These diets should be considered as a key component of veterinary management. One can readily understand some pet owners’ reactions to being told that they need a “special” diet for their pet, particularly when they see the price. However, in some circumstances these specialist diets will aid the management of and the success of the treatment of their pet. They are bound to be expensive as they are difficult to make, use very specific ingredients and have limited distribution and demand in the market place. For some disease conditions the use of such a diet is for a limited period only and once the animal recovers it can revert to a conventional pet food. The return to one of Trophy’s top quality premium diets would seem highly appropriate in such circumstances, guaranteeing the pet owner the delivery of quality nutrition at affordable prices. The use of these diets for specific nutritional purposes should not be confused with the fact that like all of us, veterinary surgeons need to make a living. Consequently, many have turned to selling conventional pet food (often made by the same company as the veterinarian prescribed ones) as well as veterinary services. Selling pet food in this way means the veterinary surgeon can not only recommend a diet of his or her choice, but can actually earn from this endorsement, by selling from the surgery. Trophy Premium Foods and many of the Trophy additional ranges compete extremely well with those conventional pet foods sold from veterinary surgeries. When one looks at ingredients, nutritional content and the range of recipes which do not contain certain ingredients, they provide the pet owner with a wide choice with which to feed and manage their pet’s needs. It is easy to consult your Trophy representative in order to be able to make an informed selection from the Trophy range that matches the pet food recommended by the veterinary surgeon. However it would be unwise to consider alternatives if the diet was an integral part of the veterinary management of a disease or life-threatening, long-term condition. Let’s look at one problem. Food allergy - an adverse reaction to a food ingredient with an immunological basis - seems to have become a very topical subject and as such, reactions are often manifested as skin irritation. Sometimes these conditions are also called food hypersensitivities or intolerances. Given the wide range of foods and food ingredients our pets consume it should not be surprising that adverse reactions occur; but they are comparatively rare. The incidence often reported is 1-6% of all skin conditions seen by veterinary surgeons and no more than 10-20% of all allergic reactions reported; flea hypersensitivity and atopy, a genetic predisposition towards allergic reactions to common antigens, like pollen, mould, and house dust, are far more common. Plug in air-fresheners and concrete dust are less common, but can also cause a reaction. The causal agents of food allergies in dogs are considered protein-based and thus any protein could be the agent. However, the most common food ingredients resulting in reactions are wheat, dairy, beef and soya. Hardly surprising as these would be common in many dog foods and prior exposure is a factor in developing an allergy. The protein molecule has to be of a certain size to stimulate the immune system. A number of diets specifically designed for dogs that have developed allergies to food contain hydrolysed protein. These proteins, in simple terms have been made broken down into tiny fractions which the immune system does not recognise. They will essentially ‘fly under the radar’ of the immune system and not provoke an allergic reaction. These diets can be useful in cases where food allergies are suspected, but the exact culprit can never be pinpointed. The problem with the allergy-prone dog is that they can develop intolerances to any ingredient (or indeed more than one ingredient). Thus the preferred approach for initial management is to use an exclusion food trial. This will hopefully pinpoint the problem ingredient and thus allow you to select a food that avoids it. Ask your local Trophy Nutritional Advisor about the best way to go about this. Remember that treats are food too and these need to be looked at in terms of what ingredients are in them. If your dog is eating any of the ingredients most commonly associated with allergens, eliminate these first. It’s a good place to start – wheat, dairy, soya, beef. Try our Trophy Premium or Holistic Range, which contain none of these ingredients in the recipes and lots of key benefits for the allergy-prone dog.Bear in mind that it can take 6-8 weeks for skin conditions to recover, so it’s important to give a food trial a fair chance. Unless the symptoms get far worse on the new food! The intestinal tract may well have suffered damage so it important to make life as easy as you can from this point forward for the immune and digestion systems – Trophy Premium Lite, Trophy Premium Hypo-allergenic, Trophy Premium Holistic and Trophy Premium Duck & Vegetables are all very suitable diets to try.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 09:50:03 +0000
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