Pottenger's Cat Study

An excerpt from Hooked on Raw by Rhio

"In the 1930s a physician named Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. undertook a series of studies, which lasted 10 years and involved over 900 cats, to ascertain the effects of a raw food versus a cooked food diet on a cat's physiology. All the cats were fed either milk or meat or both. Some were fed raw meat and raw milk, some were fed cooked meat and raw milk, and others cooked meat and cooked milk. All the cats receive cod liver oil. Pottenger kept meticulous records which met the most rigorous scientific standards of the day. The studies, while initially well received, have unfortunately been much criticized in the ensuing years, yet no one has attempted to replicated them in order to disprove the results.

These results were both profound and enlightening. The most startling finding was that the cats fed almost exclusively cooked meat (with one-third their diet consisting of raw milk) did not survive beyond the third generation. They could not reproduce. There seems to be a parallel in our human family today. As reported by John Robbins in Diet for a new America (Stillpoint Publishing, 1987), "Tests done at several major universities have found nearly 25 percent of today's college students are sterile." This finding is substantiated by the increased prevalence of fertility clinics, which are trying to fulfill the needs of couples who cannot produce offspring on their own..."