Article at a Glance
- Every animal deserves the same love and respect and there are choices that we can all make to help with animal welfare.
- Organic Farming has the highest farming welfare standards.
- There are numerous health benefits of Wild Game.
At Rocketo we believe that every animal on the planet deserves the same love and respect. It is a fact of nature that some animals are part of the food chain for other animals. That is the way nature works. Despite this, over the years, many farming practices, developed by humans, have alas failed to take into account the dignity and welfare needs, be it physical and emotional, of the animals that are part of the food chain.
There are choices that we can all make every day to help with animal welfare. The welfare of the animals used in the food will have a direct impact also on the quality of the food. Not only does the way that an animal is fed, and medication, directly affect the quality of the meat, but we all know the way that an animal is reared and kept will also have a big impact.
Organic Farming has the highest farming welfare standards, both in terms of what is fed to the animals, the medication they are/are not allowed to receive, and their animal husbandry. However, allowing the animals to live as natural a life as possible, in their wild habitat, is always better than any farming. Some of the reasons for this include:
Benefits of Wild Game
1. The animals are living in their natural habitat and natural herds – this reduces the physical and emotional stresses on the animals, as they can forage naturally, live in a herd in a way they have evolved to do so;
2. They are shot/killed in their habitat – of course, the killing of any animal causes stress to that animal, and other animals in the herd, BUT slaughtering the animal in their wild environment is far far less stressful to the animal than transporting it to, and slaughtering it in, a slaughterhouse.
3. The animals that live in their wild environment are generally physiologically healthier. Farmed animals have been shown to have a higher fat percentage, lower protein, fewer minerals and antioxidants and often unbalanced fat profiles [1], than their wild counterparts. Therefore, when feeding raw diets, where the protein is from farmed or ‘domesticated’ animals, these significant differences must be taken into account. An example is given in table below:

4. Wild animals eat what nature intended and exercise more, with natural exposure to fresh air and light. All of these factors are crucial to optimal health, for all species. Farmed animals are often fed low quality, non-species appropriate food, and have restricted environments that do not promote movement to the level required to keep them at optimum health. This obviously has an impact on the health of the animal and therefore the nutritional benefits of the meat fed. The food fed to farm animals normally contains synthetic vitamins and minerals – which are far inferior to the real thing. More on this in a subsequent blog!
5. Generally wild game is far less exposed to agricultural chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides, than their farmed counterparts. This means that wild game has much lower chemical contamination risk.
6. All of the above factors result in wild game having a species appropriate mictrobiome profile. Farmed animals generally have a far restricted moictrobiome, which will impact all aspects of their health, and hence the health of the animal when it is consumed.

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