Chef'sChoice 615A Electric Meat Slicer

I bought this meat slicer after arduous long research to make organic jerky treats for my dogs with a dehydrator since pet treats prices have been going up insanely. Initially, the meat slicer seemed to work well but at the end of slicing, I noticed that some meat got stuck between the blade that I had to pull out. When I detached the blade for cleaning, I was horrified to see that the plastic drive gear underneath was wrapped around with raw beef and the meat I pulled out was probably tainted with lubrication that looked like blobs of white shortening. The entire saw base plate was a huge mess with meat fragments and blood combined with the lubrication that's hopefully food safe for the contaminated meat slices but the manual only mentions using Vaseline for plate lubrication and no extra lub was supplied. I used wooden toothpicks to pick out all the meat fragments from the gear slots and checked the reviews to see if anyone else reported the problem with meat getting lodged behind the saw blade. Since nothing came up for meat wrapping on the gear, I tried again with thicker cuts and tried grabbing each meat slice as they were coming out the back through the slice deflector, but some meat still managed to get caught into the blade, again making a mess. I also noticed the edge of the blade support paint was ground down from the back side of the saw blade exposing the base metal from cutting a few pounds of meat that 1st day I received the unit. Whether this particular slicer was a lemon or not, I couldn't imagine keeping it and dealing with the bloody unsanitary mess. I sent it back for a refund that day. I've since resorted to slicing half frozen meat by hand and realized that it is actually much quicker than using a meat slicer including the cleanup, and my dogs absolutely love homemade jerkies.