From:
Pam Sessoms
Date: 2003-04-13 16:19:49 UTC
Subject: taurine (was RE: Hypoallergenic Diet)
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <Pine.A41.4.44+UNC.0304131211390.44154-100000@login5.isis.unc.edu>
> Hi Pam, I'm not thinking correctly, of course pure chemical taurine in
> powder form will stand high temperatures. I was thinking about how
> cooking meat destroys its taurine content. Chris.
Hi Chris,
Yes, the taurine-in-meat question is pretty much exactly what I'm trying
to figure out. The melting temp isolated taurine so far is all I have
been able to find, and I just don't know if the melting temp of the
isolated compound is the same as the temp at which cooking would destroy
it in its natural state (ie, in meat). A chemistry grad student I worked
with this weekend mentioned that in general, the melting temp of a
compound is lower than the temp for denaturation of that compound, but he
was very clear that he studies the wrong branch of chemistry to really
answer my question.
I'm sure this is a known figure, given the research that has gone into cat
kibble, but so far it hasn't been easy to find. I'll keep looking and
will post when/if it's found. If anyone knows, please reply!
To summarize since I kind of side-tracked the hypoallergenic food topic
(I've changed the subject line this time), the specific questions I see
that need to be answered regarding taurine and ferrets are:
1) What amount is specifically required by ferrets for healthy eyes,
heart, nervous sytem? (I doubt anyone really knows this for certain,
given the lack of concrete info even in James Fox's book - but there is
good reason to believe that they do have a requirement for dietary
taurine.)
2) At what cooking temp is taurine in meat destroyed? This should be
answerable. I'm gonna keep looking...
3) At what temp is meat baby food (ie, the gerber's chicken baby food so
often used to feed ferrets) processed? That would help tell us if we need
to be supplementing long-term baby food fed ferrets with taurine. This
might be hard to come up with, but probably the manufacturer would answer
it. If it's cooked at a lower temp than the temp that destroys taurine,
it's less important to figure out the specific taurine requirement for a
ferret, since their natural diet is meat, and meat, water, and cornstarch
are the ingredients in the meat baby foods usually used.
Best wishes,
-Pam S.