Neal: Hey, everybody. It's Neal from Growlies. Today I want to talk about FUD. F-U-D. It's an acronym meaning Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. We had a customer come in and say that she told her vet that she was going to be offering her pet some raw food. Then the veterinarian said, using hyperbole, I assume because it's not a fact-based statement. "Do you want raw chicken around your house? Do you want raw chicken everywhere in your house if you feed your dog raw chicken?"

Jo-Aanne: Cat.

Neal: Okay, Jo-Anne's corrected me. It was about a cat. Same point. That is a ridiculous statement of hyperbole that has no basis in fact. If it had the same basis, in fact, any basis in fact, when you go to the butcher, do you feel unsafe? When you go to the supermarket, do You feel unsafe? When you walk in my store, please let me know, do you feel unsafe? Because you don't, because we use simple things like cleanliness to mitigate any risk in our lives.

What he's talking about is the risk of salmonella. Salmonella is a natural part of our environment. It is in soil, it is in romaine lettuce, it is in peanut butter. It is in everything. There's good salmonella and there's bad salmonella. I don't know enough about salmonella to tell the difference, but what I do know is by washing my hands and cleaning up in a food-safe standard way, like doing my dishes and wiping the counter, I'm safe and so are you if you feed your dog fresh foods. Again, so are you if you feed your dog fresh foods.

That kind of marketing tactic and that's what that was. That was not a health care advice. That was marketing so that he could sell them their dry foods or canned foods. That was something he's been taught to or she-- That's something that veterinarian had been taught by a salesperson to say in response to a customer saying that I feed a fresh food diet or I feed a raw food diet. That's called FUD. It's a marketing tactic called Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. That's what they offer to you in order to make you reconsider the common sense approach of feeding fresh foods.

Let's talk about risk. Is there a risk of salmonella in fresh foods? Yes. There's a risk in salmonella in all foods, whether it be your romaine lettuce or your peanut butter or your chicken or your beef or your dog food. Yes, there's risk in everything we do.

Now, let's talk about that risk. Every year, there's millions of pounds of kibble recalled for salmonella, among other things. Commonly when they screw up the vitamin packs, where you're getting all the nutrition. Those are often screwed up and will harm a number of pets and they'll do recalls and not. The most common recall that we see in kibble is salmonella. The most common recall we see in raw food is salmonella.

There's tens of millions of pounds of kibble recalled a year for salmonella, and there's thousands of pounds of raw recalled a year for salmonella because all foods have similar risk. That's why we use food-safe handling techniques when using both fresh foods and kibble because they all have that same risk. You should wash your hands, wash your bowls and wash the area with a cloth, and maybe a little soap in the same way that you do for any of your other meat-based products or even non-meat-based products like romaine lettuce and peanut butter.

That fear that he was trying to implant in the customer in order to make a sale is the worst form of marketing. Sell your products based on truth, sell your products based on the fact that they're good, sell the products based on the fact that they make sense. Do not lie. Do not use hyperbole. Do not make things up about your competition. That is the lowest form of marketing.

I used to do sales in the software industry and FUD was common. One of the standard stories that you can find online when you look up FUD. marketing or Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt marketing, was that IBM. They would always say, "Nobody ever got fired for recommending IBM." Nobody ever got fired for recommending Oracle or Microsoft either, but that's not what they say. They put the fear of the fact that you might get fired if you recommend the other guy into your brain by making comments like that.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Do not buy in to the lowest form of marketing available today. It's easily refuted by looking online and saying, "How many pounds of kibble were recalled for salmonella?" You're going to find millions depending on when you search and how you do your search, but there's going to be millions of pounds. "How many pounds of raw?" That's going to be a harder number to find, but it's going to be in the thousands.

Your risk is two things in the way that you handle it. Don't handle raw meats and then put your fingers in your nose. That's a bad idea. The other is in how you deal with your dog's excrement. Don't play in their poo. Don't play in their poo if they're feeding kibble. Don't play in their poo if they're feeding raw. Come on. A little common sense here.

The other thing they use against raw is it's not complete or balanced. Let's talk about that term. That's a term that's owned by an organization called AAFCO, American Association of Feed Control Officers, I believe it is. They are essentially run by the industry to govern the industry. That's a trademarked term that they own.

There was a vet many years ago, probably in the late '90s, who did a show called A Dog's Dish, I believe. It was a W5 or one of those guys in the CBC. She met their standard. Complete and balanced using boot leather, crankcase oil, and wood shavings. The wood shavings were the fiber, the crankcase oil was the fat and the boot leather was the protein.

For protein, fat, and fiber content, she met the completely balanced label. What Dr. Marion Smart or Meg Smart was trying to show when she did that, was the label is in a lab, it's not in your pet's bowl. The label matters more to the laboratory than it does to what's actually in the bowl. What happens is a company purchase, it goes to the lab, send some samples, meets the basic criteria, which is based on old science, by the way. They don't want to update it because that would mean they'd have to increase the amounts of food or the amounts of meats in kibble products. They don't want to change it, they don't want to update it. They use out-of-date standards to create this complete and balanced label that they can then market against and say, "Your's don't say the complete and balance label."

A complete and balance label doesn't mean that the thing by itself is complete and balanced. That's ridiculous, that's a foolish way to look at nutrition, period. What it means is they purchased the right to say that. Let that sink in. They purchased the right to say that because it doesn't make sense. We're not allowed to say in human nutrition, this is complete and balanced. The only thing you need to eat for the rest of your life because it doesn't make sense. It's nonsense. It's foolish. It's marketing. It's Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. They can say, "It's not complete and balanced," and you think, "Wow, it's not complete and balanced." Nothing in life is. Let's get that out of your head. If they're using that again as another tactic to combat their competition, fresh food, fresh food.

I think I've said enough. I wish you all the best. What else is there to say? I should usually push a product. I never really do that enough. Come and buy some of our cookies. Dang, these things are good. There you go. Howlies. Come and buy a box of Howlies. They're awesome. Support your local business. There you go. I did my sales pitch too. I hope you guys have a good day. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Growlies Show. Cheers.