May 20, 2024
Anne Marie Duquette interviewed Tom Lonsdale, BVetMed MRCVS, the Winner of the 2023 DWAA Writers Contest in these categories:
BEST WEBSITE, BEST REFERENCE BOOK AND BOOK OF THE YEAR, THE MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR PET FOOD FRAUD: HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
[Original article can be found published on the Dog Writers Association of America (DWAA) website ]
Congratulations on your wins! Tell us about your experience and expertise, and how this relates to your entry. What target audience did you write for, and why?
Thank you to all at DWAA for staging the competition and then providing generous peer group recognition for www.ThePetFoodCon.com and Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud.
Dogs have been telling us for long enough, but mostly trivialized and ignored, that consuming raw meaty bones is the key to their existence. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I belatedly woke up to the essential truths below.
Q: What is the role, the job, of carnivores in the wild?
A: Regulating populations of herbivores and other prey species.
Q: What is the carnivores’ reward for doing a good job?
A: Ripping, tearing and crunching raw meaty bones—it’s both reward and validation of their existence.
Before we consider ingredients in the diet of dogs, we first must acknowledge the essential role of the raw meaty bones texture. Dogs crave to rip and tear and crunch raw meaty bones. Describing someone with an obsession we say, “like a dog with a bone”. And in the absence of the real thing, dogs obsessively gnaw on plastic replicas!
Getting the raw meaty bones texture right, including the balance of nutrients, falls into place. I communicated that advice in early writings and TV segments as per the case studies at https://www.thepetfoodcon.com/before-after-raw-meaty-bones/
Since the early 1990s I’ve campaigned to share the abundant good news with everyone on the planet. It’s information of immediate benefit to every dog, cat and their caretakers. However, it’s more than that. The information can trigger civil and criminal investigations into the junk pet food industry/veterinary/fake animal welfare alliance. Potential benefits to the global community could be measured in billions of dollars.
What prompted you to submit this specific entry? Why do you think it struck a special chord with the public and the judges—and with you?
I submitted www.ThePetFoodCon.com in the Online Website competition and submitted Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud: Hiding in Plain Sight in the Book – Reference competition. Primarily I wanted fellow dog writers to become aware of information that has been suppressed and trivialized by the junk pet food industry/veterinary alliance and by false “experts” promoting their ground meat and vegetable recipes.
Many dogs are condemned to a life of cruelty and suffering due to abuses by the above-mentioned self-serving interests. Pet owners suffer massive consumer fraud. They are lured into buying harmful products for their dependent pets, then adding insult to injury, paying vast sums for overservicing of their pets’ needs by various incompetent, unscrupulous veterinary profession.
On the website and in Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud I present foundation science and then a series of parables showing how institutions and professions we’ve come to rely on—universities, vets, journalists, lawyers, politicians and regulators—have forsaken their obligations. The book sets out the need and suggestions for repairing and replacing failed systems utilizing scientific, legal and political action.
An eminent consumer law professor said the book is an excellent manifesto for change. Others have likened the book to Silent Spring, the book that kickstarted the environmental revolution. And the true-to-life stories prompted Australian literary scholar Dr Mark O’Connor to remark that the book had a “touch of James Herriot”. These are some of the factors that influenced the DWAA judges’ decisions.
How big a part have dogs played in your personal and professional life? Was there a particular dog that sparked your interest in interacting with the public? Tell us about this special dog, and/or the dogs in your contest entry.
The dogs I grew up with were everyday companions running loose in the English countryside. It was an easy interaction featuring reciprocal recognition and respect.
Later, as a qualified vet, I was conscience stricken that I had unwittingly harmed my patients by recommending junk pet food diets. However, I was able in part to assuage my guilt by helping to restore patients to health with the simple two-handed approach, 1) remove diseased teeth and restore a healthy mouth and 2) change the diet to raw meaty bones.
Simultaneously I felt obligated to blow the whistle on the unholy junk pet food/vet/fake animal welfare alliance.
Elderly terriers Duchess, Tess, Tuffy and Blossom and Jane the Labrador were seriously ill due to a lifetime consuming processed food. Their immune systems were in decline and internal organs were failing. Dental surgery and a switch to a raw, meaty bones-based diet worked wonders. I wrote about my epiphany explaining the important medical, veterinary and scientific implications in a short 1992 article: Raw Meaty Bones Promote Health. Readers who click on the link will see Tuffy and Blossom featured as patients.
Noting the importance of the raw meaty bones “miracle” information Dr Douglas Bryden, Director of the Sydney University Centre for Veterinary Education, commissioned me to write the definitive article, Preventative Dentistry, for all vets, all pet owners and all dogs everywhere.
How big a part have people played in your association with dogs? Family? Friends? Do you have any favorite writers/bloggers/media or graphic artists? How have they influenced your career?
There has always been a pairing of people and dogs in my life. Growing up in the English countryside with friends and their dogs were integral to our lives. As a vet, clients often became friends united by our mutual interest in the patients under our care.
In the early days of the Raw Meaty Bones Lobby Group of concerned veterinarians, Drs. Bill Hood, Breck Muir, Alan Bennet and others made significant contributions to our understanding of key scientific principles.
When you consider both your personal and professional canine-related achievements, which one of each stands out the most? And why? What is the driving force that sparks your work?
For me the personal and professional are indivisible. The majesty of nature’s creation is a wonder to behold. I’m in awe at how ripping and tearing at raw meaty bones constitutes the key to the carnivore code. It’s a realization with profound scientific, medical, economic and environmental significance. Personally, I feel privileged to have grasped the significance. Professionally I feel obliged to communicate the information. I was honored that my work was nominated for the Australian College of Veterinary Science College Award. I believe my main scientific achievement is the formulation of the Cybernetic Hypothesis of Periodontal Disease in Mammalian Carnivores.
I still feel like a small boy let loose in a toy shop. I want everyone else to share in the thrill. Also, at age 74 years, there’s a sense of urgency prompting me to communicate essential truths, first revealed in 1991, to anyone who will listen.
What ongoing or future canine projects do you have planned? Are they personal (like cuddling your favorite pooch or volunteering at the local shelter) or professional (like selling articles, training, or conducting medical research)?
New research is welcome; however the main problems involve the suppression of abundant, foundational, existing raw meaty bones information.
I propose to continue writing blog articles and recording podcasts. Otherwise, I hope to encourage wider access and acceptance of existing information in the Raw Meaty Bones Trilogy of books and the website www.ThePetFoodCon.com.
I remain accessible to dog owners, vets, journalists, lawyers and politicians who are interested to know more about the multi-billion-dollar pet food fraud.
What would you recommend to those peers who wish to enter your winning category in next year’s contest?
Be sure to have something interesting to share, say what you mean and mean what you say. Give your 100% commitment to the task such that, win or lose, succeed or fail, you will be secure in the knowledge that you did your best.
Of course, I shall be delighted if others study the information I have presented and put it to good use in their creative endeavors and in their DWAA competition entries.
To conclude this interview, what thoughts from the heart would you like to share?
I’m most grateful to DWAA for this opportunity to express my thoughts. I hope at this late stage in my life that others will investigate and build on my work. Since 1991 I have fought for recognition of the principles of raw meaty bones. It’s vital for the health of dogs, dog owners, the wider community and natural environment that these principles be implemented.
Congratulations again and thank you for sharing with us.
