I try to guide cat owners towards using a raw chicken recipe because some cats will vomit beef meats.
To know if the chicken you purchase is fresh, smell it. Raw chicken has NO SMELL. And please buy from a store you know and purchase meats you would buy for yourself. Not all raw chicken meat sources are good.
It is very stressful after seeing expensive vets for their cat only to have your cat vomit a beef recipe that took you time and more money to make. My brochure guides you to feed poultry first (or de boned rabbit) which is closer to the cat’s natural diet anyway. Dogs can tolerate beef.
Dr Belfield wrote in his book back in the early 90’s, that cats will lose the ability to digest RAW beef meats after being feed a processed cooked diet of cat foods. My King Ramses was one of them and many customers experienced this also. Raw chicken thighs and de-boned rabbit are more tolerated.
Many cat owners go to holistic vets that lean towards Chinese advice and are told to use cold raw meats or hot raw meats; in the Chinese vet world chicken is considered a cold meat and beef is hot.
Always test the cat on a piece of beef before using it. Just because your kitty ate cooked processed beef will not prove raw beef is tolerated. Try feeding a piece of raw beef alone before making a recipe with it.
I cannot control Cat owners to use our recipe and meats correctly or buy from good sources. Naturally, they try to get the best prices thinking all food stores have good sources of meats. Costco chicken meats for instance do cause cats to vomit or walk away from a recipe. I know this because it happened to some of my customers and when I told them to try a different source of chicken meats the cats returned to loving the recipe. Some use organ meats to replace muscle meats to cut on costs but this can cause diarrhea and will also mess up the calcium to meat ratio in my formula.
Some customers are stressed enough just switching to a raw diet after expensive vets and trying to help their precious kitty get well. They don’t need to be more stressed seeing their cats’ vomit right away when using beef meats.
Dr Becker explains more about feeding raw here…