 I have consumed thousands of pounds of raw meat, fish, dairy and eggs over the past seven years on a high quality nutrient-dense animal foods based diet. Raw foods have many benefits ranging from increased nutrient content to beneficial bacteria. But most importantly, all indigenous groups, hunter-gatherers, consumed raw animal foods and they were free of degenerative disease. No diabetes, no heart disease, no obesity. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of misinformation about raw meat safety lately. People saying that all bacteria is natural and good for you, parasites are symbiotic. A lot of dangerous, harmful, stupid, idiotic advice is being given out. I have had dozens, probably more, people reach out to me that have had issues by blindly following a raw diet because people just think raw is better without actually understanding and doing research on bacteria, on parasites, on pre-on diseases. Yes, there are natural strains of bacteria that occur in us, that occur in our environment, that are native healthy bacteria, that aren't harmful. But if you feed a cow grain and increase the acidity of their rumen, the E. coli strain is no longer natural. It becomes acid resistant and turns into native unhealthy bacteria. You can also give animals antibiotics, which make antibiotic resistant strains of E. coli, which again are no longer natural and become native unhealthy bacteria. Sanitation, large amounts of animals, thousands of chickens in a small place, high bacterial counts create native unhealthy bacteria. So native healthy bacteria being naturally occurring bacteria on the product that is okay to eat, unhealthy, naturally occurring bacteria on the product that has been altered by modern problems such as our farming methods, and then you have opportunistic bacteria that can occur in like a pasteurized environment or like mold or fungal growth in maybe a high humidity or very hot environment. So we have the issue of how the animal is raised impacting what type of bacterial strain there is, and then you have this bacteria in the digestive system of the animal as that's where most bacteria is, that's now very dangerous. So if the feces or parts of that digestive system come in contact with the rest of the meat, that's how people get sick. And our indigenous ancestors consumed all of the organs, the digestive tract and all of that stuff, but it wasn't full of native unhealthy bacteria. So if you're buying mince meat, if you're buying steaks, if you're buying eggs, you know, if there was feces on the outside of the egg, ground up into the meat, you're going to have an issue there. The two most common types of bacteria that most people know are salmonella and E. coli. Salmonella being mostly in chicken and poultry, turkey, E. coli occurs in all animals, but again, we have natural strains and unnatural strains, ones that won't harm our digestive system and ones that'll burn a hole in your stomach. I know there are recent recalls for spinach, for salmonella and romaine for E. coli, so it's not specific to animal foods. But to alleviate the issues from salmonella and E. coli, buy quality animal foods. You can sear the outside, but most people don't cook the internal temperature of their meat high enough if the meat was actually infected. If you're having a rare or a medium rare burger and they ground up the digestive tract in that meat, you know, 125, 130 degree Fahrenheit rare burger is not going to kill the E. coli. The next few bacteria aren't really specific to animal foods. There are more of an issue as waterborne diseases in general, but because of modern agricultural practices, you know, we see brucellosis, aka brucella, in raw milk, you know, if a wild pig or dog is eating or drinking from the same source that a cow is eating or drinking from, you know, they can get infected with brucella. A campiobacter is contained in raw poultry and in the feces of the raw poultry making chicken one of the most dangerous raw meats to eat. Straight trip to the hospital. Not good. I want to be really careful with consuming chicken unless you raise the chicken yourself and you saw how the animal was slaughtered. I wouldn't touch it. Lysteria, again, most commonly known as a waterborne illness, but imagine, you know, that person that was processing that raw dairy, maybe there was Lysteria somewhere in their environment and it ends up in your raw dairy product. We have vibriosis, which is a bacteria contained in summer oysters, so you want to be careful and just get your oysters from cold or water at that time of the year. And when you start looking at food sources and see which ones are of more concern, it's pretty obvious why. You know, raw milk is a liquid. It's much harder to keep raw milk sanitary than it is to keep beef sanitary. Same thing with chicken. These are smaller animals. The slaughtering process is a lot sloppier. That's why chicken tend to have, you know, much higher microbial, much higher bacterial content. So that's most of the bacteria. Again, quality, sear. And it's worth mentioning that you want to adjust your gut bacteria because if you've never eaten raw ground beef before, you don't want to eat a pound of it, maybe have a bite or two. But if you're having digestive issues past the first or second time you're eating the food, it's probably not adjustment. There's probably something wrong with the food source. I think just about everyone is deathly afraid of parasites. The most common one being trichinosis. It's known for being in pork, but for the most part, trichinosis has been eradicated in pork in the United States. The main issues and most trichinosis cases now are from wild forager animals like bear, like boars. The meat has to be cooked very hot to kill trichinosis, 165 degrees. Meat would pretty much be inedible. Or I believe it can be frozen to like negative 35 degrees for a period of time. There is no cure for trichinosis. This is actually a parasite that burrows through your intestinal wall, lays eggs in the muscle tissue, you get spasms. The way to avoid this is to be careful with your food sourcing. They do have raw pork in certain European countries that is meant for raw consumption. They raise the animals in a very specific way. Obviously, you don't want to be eating wild bear or wild boar. The omnivorous game meat, very high-likely of trichinosis contamination. This is from the animals eating garbage. Not 100% sure if trichinosis was something we would have seen in wild animals thousands and thousands of years ago, but it is a concern now. The reality is, if you don't eat pork, you probably won't have to think about trichinosis. Anisochiasis and diophilobotherium radium are the two common types of tapeworm that we can see in fish. Anisochiasis are nematodes or roundworms. They're very, very common. Not really harmful to humans. They might cause some digestive issues, but they can't actually take holes in the small intestine. Mostly in ocean and saltwater fish. The issue occurs with the diophilobotherium radium, segmented tapeworms that occur in freshwater fish. But some ocean and saltwater fish travel through freshwater areas and can be infected with these tapeworms. So as with a lot of this bacteria, it has to do with the butchering process, the cross-contamination process. With bacteria, having a clean facility avoids the issue. With parasites having a keen eye and a good butcher, they will notice all of these things. No one's going to sell you meat with trichinosis in it. No one's going to sell you a fish filet that has roundworms in it. And no one's going to sell you a fish that has these giant tapeworms in it. They're going to see them in the slaughtering process. Of course, you can cook the fish to about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. You can freeze the fish at negative 30 for a period of weeks. But again, make sure you're paying attention when you're cutting the fish, when you're buying the fish, and that these aren't contained in it. I'm not to believe that the rates of parasites are much higher in fish farms, you know, where they can transfer between the animals much easier. They're eating each other's fecal matter. So wild fish, you shouldn't really expect to see these too often if you're buying really high quality stuff. Tenaeus aginata, Asiatica, and Solium are the types of tapeworms that can occur in beef and pork. These are mainly an issue in non-American countries, especially Southeast Asia, especially Asia. Sometimes Europe. These are not really an issue for Americans. I wouldn't focus on them if you guys want to look up these beef and pork tapeworms. It's similar to trichinosis where, you know, the parasites burrow through the intestine. They lay eggs in the muscle tissue. And then you can see it in the tissue of the animal. So if this stuff gets past the butcher, you know, it's very obvious it's not microscopic, you can see the animal is sick. If the animal has a parasite infection, you're going to see it, you're going to notice it. Moving on to flukes. Flukes are a parasite that affects the liver as well as the gallbladder of certain animals. Faciola occurs in sheep as well as cattle. I've never seen it. This is another one of those things that occur more in poor sanitary conditions, not really the United States. There are two flukes that occur in shellfish in Asia and Southeast Asia. Most of my viewers are American, so I didn't put that on here. But be mindful with a lot of these parasites, you know, in seafood if you're traveling. Be very mindful of what type of conditions you're purchasing animals from. These flukes can be killed by freezing for a period of time, but again, guys, hundreds of pounds of raw liver. I've never seen them. There's a lot of fear mongering around this. And I think that has a lot to do with people trying to shove crappy grain of beef down your throat. Cryptosporidium is a waterborne parasite and not specific to animal foods, but you know, again, if it's a really dirty shop or supermarket and someone had crypto and got it on your meat, that's how you would get it. Red tide is actually an algae bloom. Sometimes ocean surges bring nutrients up from the ocean floor and the seafood becomes infected with red tide. It's actually a neurotoxin and you can't even be on the beach when this happens. I don't think this is really something you should be worried or thinking about, but it's pretty interesting to check out and you might have heard of it. Next up are prion diseases. Pryons are misfolded proteins, not actually a living thing like parasites or bacteria. It's kind of scary how they stay in their environments. You can't kill them with heat and you can't kill them with freezing. What these actually do is turn your brain into cheese and they're not only contained in the brain and nervous system and spinal cord of the animal. You know, usually people say, oh, don't eat beef brain, don't eat animal brains. It's in all tissues of the animal. You know, all those people that got Med-Cow disease years and years ago, they weren't all eating brain tissue. They were eating steaks. So keep in mind, you know, you can't really avoid prion diseases if the animal is infected just by choosing certain body parts. Cruceful Yacob disease is the form that occurs in humans. You can have it genetically or you can get it from human infected brain tissue. I think it's called Kuru, which is some cannibalistic tribes would get it from eating the brains of other humans. You have scrapie, which is the form that occurs in sheep, goats. Has not been shown to be transferable to humans. The sheep actually scrape their sides when they get this disease. That's why it's called scrapie. You have chronic wasting disease, endear, elk, ranger, and moose. Hasn't been shown to be transferable to humans, but it can be transferred to monkeys and non-human primates. And last but most importantly, we have bovine, sponge form, encephalopathy, which is mad cow disease. To my understanding, they fed sheep that was infected with scrapie to cows and it mutated the disease. So now BSE mad cow disease was able to be transmitted to humans. And that's how it all started, allegedly. Interestingly enough, there has never been a U.S. case of mad cow disease from consuming cattle in the United States. People usually eat cattle in outside countries and then they are diagnosed here. I mean, prions are pretty interesting to talk about and it's a very scary disease. But there's no real way to avoid them outside of being very mindful of the quality of the food you're buying, naturally raised, pastured animals. It actually takes cows several years to develop mad cow disease. So if you're buying younger animals, they can't be infected. That also has to do with why most American slaughterhouses are required to process cattle before they are three years of age so they don't have the chance to develop this. This might seem really overwhelming, like, oh my God, there's so many ways to get sick but reality is I don't worry about any of this. I purchase quality animal foods that were slaughtered and processed in a clean environment. So I'm not thinking about any of this bacteria. Maybe with the exception of brussellate if I'm buying raw milk. The parasites, same thing. I don't eat pork. I don't eat boar. I don't eat bare meat. I haven't been eating fish lately but if I do eat fish, I go to a sushi restaurant and they're very careful when they prepare it. Beef, tapeworms, flukes, crypto, all this stuff is usually non-American third world countries. And same with prion diseases. These can't be transferred to humans and there have never been any US cases. So reality is, this stuff isn't much of a concern. I will say that raw milk can be very dangerous because of the combination of allergies and these water-borne bacteria. So picture this, I'm lactose intolerant, I have a severe dairy allergy, maybe there was some type of bacteria in the raw milk and I drink it and then my body goes crazy. I get these huge histamine reactions, these allergic reactions from the dairy, I get dysbiosis and gut bacterial imbalances from the lactose not being digested. And now I have brucella or campiobacter or whatever it may be from the raw milk in my stomach that's wreaking havoc on my compromised immune system. If you have a dairy intolerance and you consume dairy that's infected with a bacteria, it can make you very sick. If you have a dairy intolerance and you consume perfectly clean raw milk, you might get some like allergic and mild inflammatory reactions but the combination of both, it's a nightmare. Let's just leave it at that. Thank you guys for joining me today, I put a lot of work into this so if you could please like the video, if you're not subscribed, definitely do hit that bell icon, share the video if you can. If you guys want to support me further, check out frankiesfreerangemeat.com providing you guys with high quality nutrient-dead animal foods at the most affordable price. You can also go to frankiesnaturals.com, Minimal Ingredients, Minimally Processed Hygiene and Cosmetic Products. If you guys do want to reach out to me for one-on-one consultations, maybe pertaining to your raw diet, shoot me an email frankatofano at gmail.com. Thanks again and enjoy your day guys.